After the war, sporting life flourished in the YMCA hall, initiated by the younger generation. Now, the hall has been revived thanks to music and one of the most original music events in Poland.
Stefan Koziński and Bohdan Damięcki are already recognisable figures in Warsaw’s architectural community by the time they reach the seaside. Their output includes public buildings, such as libraries, schools, and sports halls. Both grow out of the tradition of pre-war modernism, believing that space should be functional, open, and serve the community.
After the war, Gdynia waited for a symbol of modernity. Already in the 1930s, the Polish YMCA bought a plot of land in the city centre, planning to build a youth house, but plans were interrupted by the war. After 1945, the city needed an edifice that set a new direction – just as the port and quays set its economic rhythm. Koziński and Damięcki proposed a simple, modernist block: a tall body with halls and offices on the Derdowskiego Street side and a lower sports hall on the Żeromskiego Street side. The streamlined corners, circular windows—portholes, skylights, and unusual details — give it an expressive, avant-garde character.
Construction of a building lasted from 1948 to 1951. Support from the YMCA of the USA and Canada proves invaluable. When the building stands, the citizens of Gdynia look at it with admiration. Some speak of a “ship moored at Żeromskiego Street”, others half-jokingly call it a “UFO”. For young people, it is becoming, above all, their new home—a space where they practice, dance, learn languages, read books, and grow up.
The corridors are bright and airy, with almost no decoration on the walls. What adorns the building is the light. Luxafers – imported partly from glassworks in Silesia, partly thanks to foreign donors – diffuse the light into a soft, milky glow. They create an atmosphere of concentration in the teaching rooms and libraries, as well as a feeling of openness and freshness in the sports hall. The brickwork contrasts with the smooth plasterwork, and the steel railings of the staircase lend lightness. Everything is subordinated to the idea: the architecture is meant to be a backdrop for young people’s activities, not a burden.
The most unusual area of the edifice is the exhibition and sports hall. On the floor is a carefully laid parquet floor of oak planks. It carries the acoustics of the space – the clatter of the ball echoes rhythmically off the walls, and the sound of footsteps mixes with the shouts of the youngsters. The warm colour of the wood used to create the parquet floor contrasts with the cool brick and glass of the luxuriously designed windows.
In the 1970s, the building bustled with life. One of the people who visits the place is Mirek Studniak – he comes here for the aeronautical modelling. There weren’t many cultural venues in Gdynia at that time – everything took place here. Over time, the building is deteriorating. Valuable wooden and metal details are covered with successive layers of oil paint, the facades are disfigured by graffiti, and alterations take place inside, often without regard for the original architectural context.
In 2015, the building was entered in the provincial register of monuments. It is saved by Studniak, who renovates the interior. He excavates the oak parquet from beneath layers of paint, gradually repainting the yellow walls in light ash, and restores the ceiling using the original doorframes and the old gymnasium ladders. At the same time, it is leaving parts of the 1990s changes, preserving traces of history and time. The band Koty bez Oczu, Psy bez Nóg is holding a concert here in 2023. Its founders know that it is not the last time music will appear here. A year later, they organise a festival that takes its inspiration from the place in its name: Luksfery.
I didn’t catch the first edition of the festival in 2024; now I’m at every concert. I think of the dancefloor when Petar Petkov plays. He creates drone music, against the backdrop of a basketball court in the YMCA hall, he generates dragging, almost looped, low bands on his electric guitar. They drag on endlessly. At one point, he reaches for his bow, with which he gently and casually drags across the strings. The music intensifies, resonates. In the midst of the audience, I lie on the carpet spread out – I can feel the bass sound spreading from the floor. Petkov’s music is monotonous and yet endless. I don’t know how long it lasts, because the more I get into it, the longer the time seems to go on. The concert seems to go on indefinitely.
Another moment when the hall reveals its appropriateness is the concert-performance by Ferdinand Schwarz. I arrive a little late; it is still light outside. The setting light reflects off the bright walls of the Social Innovation Laboratory building across the street and, hazy, peeps into the room through the luxe glass. Schwarz performs a simple yet evocative trick: he plays one, at most two notes, on melodicas set up on tripods at eye level. He tapes the keys on one instrument and then repeats the process on the next. There are six of them; together, they form a polyphonic, acidic drone. He is dressed in white, and every now and then he suggests to the audience to shield and cover their ears – then we hear something different. We attend an unusual musical service, which is perfect in the middle of the day on one of the few warm August days by the sea. It also goes on indefinitely, buzzing in my ear.
On Saturday and Sunday, almost all the concerts take place at the YMCA building; however, there is also a tour through the city to various locations.
Ryszard Jezierski, a pianist by day, plays looped rhythmic melodies in the cosy Kosmos café, endless loops with the occasional scratchy beat; the café becomes a sound casket. Laura Kowalczyk creates a performance that has something of the feel of a concert – she writes lyrics and is connected to sensors that produce sound based on her actions. She looks like a lecturer in a bright Traffic Design room, and her performance is highly immersive. In the same venue, Olgierd Dokalski later plays the trumpet, accompanied by electronics – it sounds interesting, but the middle of the day doesn’t necessarily work for him, and the drama is disrupted by the stories that follow each piece. The gloomy Mayor’s House is played by B3-33, the solo showcase of Bartosz Boro Borowski, known for 1926, Why Bother? and Lonker See, among others. The looped melodies for guitar and effects, supported by percussion, have a fleeting, appealing mood. I see him again solo, and you can hear his language crystallizing, sounding more confident and coherent.
Tymon Kolubinski and Krzysztof Hadrych play a concert for electric harmonium and electric guitar at St Anthony’s Church. At times, they score the instruments in a minimalist manner, while at other times, the guitar riffs sound metallic; the sound carries wonderfully through the church space. At a certain point, however, this intensity becomes too much – the concert goes on too long. The moment when they both sit down behind the harmonies could have been a great finale; meanwhile, everything loses resonance and tension.
Ryosuke Kayasu, a Japanese man who plays the snare drum, knows how to play with time. He doesn’t have a stand; he sets it on a table, as if it were taken from some classroom. He plays the snare drum with brushes and sticks, places the microphone on the table, and then on the floor. He plays calmly at first, then spasmodically, overturns the table, throws the snare drum on the floor, screams, and lies down on it. A peculiar and intense musical performance that turns the perception of solo snare drum playing upside down. The tension-filled concert ends after 20 minutes, and is so intense that more is not needed.
Isabell Gustafsson-Ny plays the most, one would like to say, classical concert: for piano and violin. “Hardly new for a new music festival,” says someone in the toilet queue. In fact, against the backdrop of many other performances, her performance is more of an interlude —a time to collect one’s thoughts, preceded by a meditation that is not entirely necessary. Kristia Michael makes interesting use of her voice, although, in the long run, this formula ultimately fails, and the drama wears thin.
In addition to Petkov, guitars appear twice more – once played by Martyna Basta, who’s concert was fine but this time in a not-so-ravishing version. Rosa Vertov, for a change, is the most contrasting line-up in the room – their shoegaze songs are reminiscent of school band concerts in gymnasiums, but at the same time they have something that, with the exceptional lighting, creates an almost cinematic atmosphere.
There are several concerts that happen in the middle of the hall. Emiter’s set is based on the electromagnetic nature of the city: everything that buzzes and rattles in it, the devices that build the modern soundscape. The musician combines them into a dramaturgically coherent performance, the tension builds, and at some point, a beat and… lyrics appear. Emiter used to sing ‘1000 messages’ a decades ago, now poetically tries to weave a story about the soundscape of the metropolis into the music. It doesn’t quite convince me.
Afterwards, we move to Desdemona, where, like Rosa Vertov, an extremely stylistically different concert is played by Una Mist, keeping the spirit of Icelandic electronic avant-pop song. One is reminded of Sóley, múm, but Mist plays her own synthesiser music; she does so with a touch of shyness, but unpretentiously, getting the audience to dance.
In the middle of the room, the final concert is played by Weston Olencki and Dylan Kerr, two who juggle between cultures and draw generously from them, creating a peculiar language of their own. Kerr – linguistic, Olencki – multi-instrumental. They refer to folk, playing with its electronic synthesis and the use of new technologies. In the middle of the YMCA hall, they perform ‘with sharp bitter lines’, a set of quasi-songs that look for points of commonality between Ireland and the Appalachians, their homelands.
It begins with Kerr singing loudly from the back room. Later on, the music is conquered by electronics, Olencki’s stringed transformations that ultimately resonate like dense synth ribbons. All the while with Kerr’s voice in the foreground. In the semi-darkness, the most sparingly lit concert, which enhances the atmosphere, we listen intently to the ballads – songs with lyrics and a subtle musical layer. String synthesis and mountain dulcimer are milled here, fused with sautéed vocals, and also distorted.
This final concert best emphasises the qualities of the Luksfery space and closes the programme perfectly, showing that the festival’s creators have their finger on the pulse of what is happening in experimental music. They combine names from abroad with those of Polish and Tricity artists, and are able to turn everything into a synthesized experience in a modernist building. In my opinion, this is the best new Polish festival.
The festival is organised by a group of friends, some of whom are studying sound design in The Hague. Luksfery Festival attracts attention with a fresh approach, offering a unique musical experience that considers the venue as an integral part of the concert. The YMCA is being revived. The hall has blossomed again with youth activity just as it did after the war – then they brought sport into the hall, now music.
