As part of an international architecture competition for a European Solidarity Center (ESC) to be built in Gdansk, Poland, James Biber proposed a building called the Interrex. The competition called for a structure that would act as an international center of culture, housing a museum, temporary exhibition space and an academic research center. Conceptually, the building is to memorialize Solidarity, the first non-communist trade union in a communist country founded in Gdansk in 1980. Solidarity was integral in helping establish the grassroots anti-communist social movement that changed the history of Poland, Europe and the world. An interregnum is the period of time between the end of one regime and the beginning of the next, a position Solidarity held in Poland in the late 90s as the government transitioned from communism to democracy. The proposed building creates a literal interregnum in the form of a building. The site, on the northern side of Gdansk’s Solidarity Square, next to the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers, is a complex arrangement of icons and urban interventions that tell the story of Poland’s road to freedom.The proposal contains two interconnected parts, the Interrex, a dramatic structure that separates Poland’s earthbound past from its reconsolidation as a truly free nation, and the Interregnum, an expansive horizontal representation of the breathing space created by Solidarity. The Interregnum is an expansive space that connects to the city of Gdansk and the square’s iconic monuments, while the power of the floating Interrex above gives physical expression to the miraculous feat Solidarity accomplished by refusing to yield throughout years of repression. The Interrex is loosely conceived of as a ship—with a hull, mast and sail—as the Solidarity Movement was founded by workers from the Gdansk Shipyard, the site of the proposed building. In consideration of this context, the Interrex has been designed to be fabricated with the skills and materials that shipyard workers uniquely possess.
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