Autoportret 15. Przestrzenie handlu

-- a meadow full of desires - cesky sen / vit janedek
An elaborate hoax staged on several thousand inhabitants of Prague or a brilliant media happening which shows the emptiness of consumerism? Janedek looks at the concept of the authors of the film Cesky sen from the moral and social perspective.

-- precinct, shopping centre, centre - the identity of contemporary places of commerce / aparta smagacz
Between a traditional hypermarket or plaza and an urban department store, shopping centres offer much more than the former, though they treat consumers to an imitation. They respect the site and its character, but the real reason for their existence is obvious: they are there to sell as much as possible by a strategy of simulating urban space. Can investors' interests be reconciled with the human longing for public space, for space in general?

-- act of purchase - commerce within city space / adam nadolny
Adam Nadolny looks at how places of commerce evolve in the city.

-- amoral space? - bulgarian bazaar / iliana genew-puhalewa
Reflecting the national temperament of Bulgarians, the Bulgarian bazaar is characterised by a network of informal interpersonal relationships and a different passage of time, which reveals the reflexive nature of southern Slavs. Iliana Genew-Puhalewa takes us on a leisurely stroll around the bazaar in Sophia, where we are not obliged to buy anything.

-- karolina nowak / idea or cash - art in (of) commerce
Set up in 1969, the Canadian group General Idea started to toy with the notion of highbrow art, using marketing techniques and concepts ranging from pop culture and the world of the media to the mechanisms of promotion. Based on "virus logic," methods of general distribution and multiple repetition, which devalue the concept of originality and artistic genius, General Idea's activities aim at an ironic and critical analysis of art as business and a gallery as a commercial enterprise.

-- tickling our senses - finnish market halls / linda gran
Linda Gran recounts the career of Finnish market halls which have dominated northern towns since the end of the 19th centurv. Built of local materials with the use of constructions following contemporary British solutions, they have retained their original functions and have successfully contended with hypermarkets and property developers' designs.

-- birth of a metropolis - market halls in warsaw / malgorzata omilanowska
Market halls of the second half of the 19t and the beginning of the 20t century, most of which did not survive the war, played a vital part in the process of the city's transformation into a metropolis. Malgorzata Omilanowska writes about the local authorities' involvement in investments which would raise the status of the city and describes the risks that they entailed.

-- markess and the city - traditional spaces of commerce for a global society / shira brand
Markets owe their uniqueness partly to the way they affect human senses, which does not happen in standard trading places. Vibrant markets offer buyers anonymity along with the opportunity to be close to other human beings - at the time when interpersonal contacts are often lost. Shira Brand claims that market places may also help revitalize distressed urban areas and restore social balance to them.

-- kioskisation - a solution for depression? / jens frecher
Can a kiosk prove to be a solution for east German depression, and become the driving force behind social change and an incubater of entrepreneurship? To what extent does it express social activity? The authors of the international proiect called "Kio-skisation" looked at Eastern European kiosks to discover the changing and differing faces of the post communist societies.

-- gesheft iz gesheft - customs of jewish merchants / julia makosz, przemystaw piekarski
The authors recall the colourful culture of commerce in shtetls, seeking its images in Yiddish literature and quoting the Basie expressions used by Jewish merchants.

-- what's a shoe got to do with a building? bat'a - a phenomenon of industry and architecture / stefan slachta
The Czechoslovak Bat'a shoe company produced not only high quality shoes but also fostered several examples of innovative architecture. Stefan Slachta's article is a story of how Tomas Bat'a's avant-garde ideas were put to practice.

-- in cracovian market square - coexistence of art, commerce and national history / jakub puchalski
sukiermice - the past and the future / anna budzatek
Jakub Puchalski writes about the changing functions of one of the finest city squares in Europe, while Anna Budzalek introduces us to the history behind the transformation of the Cloth Hall into the pantheon of national art.

-- façade as an event - or why it is impossible to enter the same city twice / paramma dziuban
First in the series of articles devoted to the complex aspects of the façade, which were prepared in the Department of Urban Culture of the Institute of Culture Studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, as part of the "Façade" project supervised by Professor Ewa Rewers.