Architectural Relatives from Central Europe
The experience of political or economic reality shared by the countries behind the Iron Curtain, as well as the aesthetic trends prevailing at the time, resulted in similarities in some architectural designs. Let us take a look at the Polish buildings from the second half of the 20th century that have architectural brethren in neighbouring countries.
We live in a time of globalisation and freedom, where the flow of information, inspiration and design templates is fluid and continuous. Today, we also understand perfectly well that borrowing is natural in architecture, just like following trends and fashions. But this exchange of ideas and implementations, the flow of trends and styles, is by no means a new phenomenon. In the history of architecture, there have always been centres of influence and fashion that were willingly copied. It is, after all, to this phenomenon that we owe the Baroque palace in Wilanów, which was inspired by similar residences in France, or the cubic shapes of the WSM Rakowiec housing estate, which flowed directly from the pan-European modernist trend. The Dutch architect Tylman van Gameren, who worked in Poland in the second half of the 17th century, very consciously used the designs of Andrea Palladio, who had worked in Italy a century earlier, because they were very fashionable at the time – not unlike today’s glass edifices of office buildings, which bear a striking resemblance to one another regardless of the latitude in which they are built.
Various fashions have shaped and continue to shape our architectural landscape. It was no different even in times when the flow of information was hampered for political reasons. In the second half of the 20th century, when Poland and its neighbouring countries remained in the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence and had limited access to ‘Western’ solutions, with architectural creativity being shaped by state regulations, norms and industrialised production of building materials, the exchange of ideas and inspiration continued between the countries separated from the rest of the world by the Iron Curtain.
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Poruba, Ostrava, photo: Wikimedia Commons; MDM, Warsaw, photo: Wojciech Kryński / Forum
It is difficult to acknowledge socialist realism as a fashion – this trend in architecture was closely linked to the political situation and was imposed by those at the top (although its forms were never precisely formulated). For several years after the war, the several countries that remained under Soviet rule produced buildings that conformed to the required ideology. And just as the Marszałkowska Dzielnica Mieszkaniowa (MDM, Marszałkowska Housing Estate) was built in Warsaw and Nowa Huta in Kraków, so Karl Marx Alee was constructed in Berlin and the Poruba district in Ostrava. The Warsaw and Berlin projects are quarters of inner-city, multifunctional housing, while Poruba and Nowa Huta were built as exemplary, independent, socialist settlements linked to developing industrial plants. They are all characterised by monumental, ornate architecture forming the frontages of wide avenues with somewhat more modest residential developments behind them.
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Hotel International, Prague, photo: Simon Legner / Wikimedia Commons / CC 4.0; Palace of Culture & Science, Warsaw, photo: Andrzej Bogacz / FORUM
Socialist realism, imposed at the end of the 1940s, brought Warsaw one of its most recognisable, most famous and largest buildings – the Palace of Culture and Science. Although it was designed by the Soviet architect Lev Rudnev, Polish architects, designers and artists worked on the details of the form or the decoration of the monumental edifice. However, this does not change the fact that the Palace of Culture and Science was built on the basis of the Soviet model of a high-rise building, whose silhouette and decorations were to fulfil the idea of an ‘architecture that was national in form, socialist in content’. Similar ‘palaces’ were built over the years in the USSR (e.g. the famous Seven Sisters in Moscow – seven Stalinist skyscrapers built between 1948 and 1953), but not only there. The hotel commissioned in 1956 in Prague, which was called the Družba (Friendship) at the time and today houses the four-star Hotel International, is 88 metres high and resembles Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and Science in shape. In the Prague building, the main body, topped with a high spire, is surrounded by six-storey wings with hotel rooms (of which there are nearly 300). As in Warsaw, the interiors of the Prague ‘palace’ are also filled with carefully designed decorations and details, from marble floors and columns to frescoes, bas-reliefs and chandeliers.
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Slovak Radio, Bratislava, photo: Thomas Ledl / Wikimedia Commons / CC 4.0; Dolmed, Wrocław, 2015, photo: Mieczyslaw Michalak / Agencja Wyborcza
The headquarters of Slovak Radio in Bratislava is one of the most recognisable buildings in the city. The very large, 80-metre-tall building, visible from afar, is the work of an architectural team consisting of Štefan Svetko, Štefan Ďurkovič and Barnabáš Kissling. The building was given the unusual shape of an inverted pyramid; its structure is an excavated steel skeleton filled with prefabricated concrete elements. Although it was designed in 1963, the first broadcast from the studio within was not made until 1984 – that’s how long it took to build this spectacular edifice. Dolnośląskie Centrum Diagnostyki Medycznej Dolmed (Dolmed Lower Silesian Medical Diagnostic Centre), located on Legnicka Street in Wrocław, can be considered its younger and smaller brother. It was designed by Anna Tarnawska and Jerzy Tarnawski and built in 1974–77. Here, too, we are dealing with an inverted pyramid, and this form, as the architects themselves emphasised, was the result of adjusting the shape to the technical requirements of a very modern, for those times, computerised medical diagnostic and research centre.
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Vilniaus sporto rūmai, Palace of Sports, Vilnius, photo: Wikimedia Commons / CC 3.0; Olivia Hall, Gdańsk, photo: Deway / Wikimedia Commons / CC 4.0
Olivia Hall in Gdansk was to resemble both a fish and a boat floating on the waves. The architects Maciej Gintowt and Maciej Krasiński (the architects of Spodek in Katowice) and the construction engineer Stanisław Kuś designed the expressive structure housing the ice rink and stands in 1965; seven years later, the hockey club Stoczniowiec, which manages the facility, was already able to train and organise championships there. Although it was in constant use, Olivia Hall has deteriorated in the 21st century – neglected and covered in large-format advertisements, it was no longer captivating in its unique form. Fortunately, the spectre of the hall’s demolition was warded off; moreover, in 2010–16, the facility underwent a thorough renovation, and this dynamic lump of concrete regained its lustre. Less fortunate so far is its Lithuanian sister, built in 1971 in Vilnius. Designed by Eduardas Chlomauskas, Zigmantas Liandzbergis and Jonas Kriukelis, the building – also a sports and entertainment hall – is known as the Palace of Sports. It has been abandoned since 2004 (its owner, who acquired the building when it was privatised, went bankrupt) and is falling into disrepair. Although listed in the register of historical monuments and eventually reclaimed by municipal authorities, renovating it has so far proved impossible due to protests by Jewish organisations. The Vilnius Palace of Sports was built on the site of a former Jewish cemetery, and a way to respect the memory of the people buried there has not been found.
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Múzeum Slovenského národného povstania, 2007, photo: Eryn Blaire / Wikimedia Commons / CC 3.0; Panorama Racławicka Museum, Wrocław, 2006, photo: Adam Hawałej / PAP
Brutalism as an architectural trend was born shortly after the Second World War in Britain among socially committed architects seeking forms of architecture appropriate to a continent recovering from ruin. Grey, rough concrete was, in their eyes, the answer to the drama which had recently ended. Over time, however, the honesty, rawness and expressiveness of concrete began to inspire designers seeking new forms of architectural expression.
It was for this reason that Ewa Dziekońska and Marek Dziekoński reached for this material, designing a museum pavilion in 1956–57 to house the panoramic canvas by Jan Styka and Wojciech Kossak. Eventually, the brutalist vision of the architects was realised, although the building, which enclosed the painting Bitwa pod Racławicami (Battle of Racławice), was finally constructed only in the 1980s, when it took the form of a cylindrical building with a pillar-like structure exposed on the outside. The architects endowed the building with character by means of both its unusual shape and the expressive material.
A similar idea was employed by the Slovak architect Dušan Kuzma in the late 1960s when he designed the Múzeum Slovenského národného povstania (Museum of the National Uprising of Slovakia), the events of 1938–45. A massive concrete structure was erected in Banská Bystrica to evoke a bridge in shape, in the form of two parts linked by a glass connector, which are meant to symbolise the strength of national unity and integration not only by means of the exhibition presented within but also by its sheer volume.
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Leipziger Straße complex, Berlin, photo: Jörg Zägel / Wikimedia Commons / CC 3.0; Alfa, Poznań, photo: Piotr Skórnicki / Agencja Wyborcza
In the 1960s, Europe was slowly recovering from the trauma and destruction of the war. This resulted in new ideas for the organisation of space, emphasising its metropolitan and modern character. Analogous concepts were also realised behind the Iron Curtain – in Berlin or Poznań, where similar projects were created in both cities at the end of the 1960s. In Poznań, at Święty Marcin Street, a complex called Alfa was built, consisting of four high-rise buildings connected by a common, several-storey pedestal intended for retail and service outlets. The high-rise buildings housed offices and a hotel. A similar urban street design was created in Leipziger Straße in Berlin’s Mitte district. Here, a team led by Joachim Näther and Werner Straßenmeier designed a complex of eight 23- and 25-storey residential high-rises, linked by a shopping promenade. The Poznań Alfa stood in the city centre, while the Berlin complex was intended to create a primarily residential space, but both were formed in a metropolitan, modern style.
Universal apartment blocks
Podpis obrazka
Vašátkova Street, Prague, photo: Packa / Wikimedia Commons / CC 3.0; Kamýk, photo: Wikimedia Commons
What most often comes to mind when linking the architectural achievements of the second half of the 20th century in our part of Europe are apartment blocks. Large housing complexes built from standardised prefabricated elements were created not only behind the Iron Curtain, as they were also built in Great Britain, the Netherlands or France. Yet it was in Poland and in our neighbouring countries that they defined the urban landscape to a greater extent. The post-war housing shortage could only be satisfied by a mass production of flats, and the construction of blocks of flats had its economic and social justification. And even if some of these developments may be considered oversized, too overpowering in their mass or too intrusive for the landscape of small, picturesque towns, one cannot underestimate the fact that ‘our’ housing estates, unlike those in Western Europe, have not degraded and are still good places to live, both spatially and socially.
Written in Polish by Anna Cymer, 14 December 2021, updated 19 January 2022
Translated by Michał Niedzielski, 16 January 2024
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