A Home for the Radio

rozglosnia_w_poznaniu_nac.jpg, default, Radio station in Poznań. Technical devices, 1927 - 1939, photo: https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/National Digital Archives (NAC)

#architecture

Broadcasting radio waves is possible thanks to the existence of radio towers and stations, listening to them – thanks to radio receivers. And what do the headquarters of radio stations look like? Does their architecture carry any content?

‘Hello, hello, this is Polish Radio Warsaw [Polskie Radio Warszawa], frequency 480’. The words spoken by the presenter Janina Sztompkówna at 5:00 pm on 18 April 1926 were the first sounds that Polish Radio broadcast, initiating their permanent broadcasting (previously, test programs were broadcast). The broadcasting of Sztompkówna’s words was possible thanks to the broadcasting antenna mounted on the building at 29 Narbutta Street, and the presenter herself was then in the first headquarters of Polish Radio, i.e. in the building of the Landowners’ Credit Society (Towarzystwo Kredytowe Ziemiańskie) at Kredytowa Street. The pioneering years of Polish radio broadcasting took place in temporary premises and were enabled by modest technical facilities. Everything changed in 1931, when the radio tower in Raszyn near Warsaw was introduced – being 335 metres high, it was one of the most advanced (and thus having the strongest signal) installations of this type in Europe. The tower serves its function to this day.

Polish Radio station in Warsaw, Raszyn radio transmitter equipment, construction of the tower from the inside, 1931-39, photo: https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl / Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (NAC)

The skyscraper & four towers

The editorial office of Polish Radio was less fortunate in the prewar years as it did not have appropriate accommodations. When the premises at Kredytowa Street turned out to be too small for the growing medium, Polish Radio moved to a building on Zielna Street. However, it was still a temporary facility: it was clear that the medium, which was also crucial for political and propaganda reasons, must find its place in an adequately conspicuous building – it must have headquarters commensurate with the role it was supposed to play in society. The architectural competition for the design of the headquarters of Polish Radio was settled in 1938, and it was part of the grand vision of building the Marshal Józef Piłsudski district in Mokotowskie Field. The monumental urban layout was to consist of public utility buildings, headquarters for public offices, and office buildings. Polish Radio was to have its headquarters at the southeastern end of the planned quarter of the new development, at Union of Lublin Square (in the place where the Supersam shopping pavilion was erected in the years 1960-62). Many renowned architects took part in the competition for its design; first prize was won by the most prominent of them, the creator of many important public buildings, Bohdan Pniewski.

Headquarters of Polish Radio Channel 3, Myśliwiecka Street in Warsaw, photo: Adrian Grycuk / (CC BY-SA 3.0 PL) / Wikimedia.org

The architect proposed a set of three structures: a 21-storey radio office tower overlooking the two lower buildings (of five and eight storeys) and the entire neighbourhood. On top of the tower, a television studio was planned to be built in the future. Pniewski designed the buildings to be modern and monumental – the architect had a rare skill of being able to shape the rhythmically divided, massive but simple stone facades in such a way that the seriousness of the institutions located in them was immediately evident. The design of the headquarters of Polish Radio, together with the vision for the Temple of Divine Providence (Świątynia Opatrzności Bożej), are considered by experts in Pniewski’s achievements to be among the best of his career. Unfortunately, none of them was realized.

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Polish Radio headquarters in Warsaw, photo: Adrian Grycuk / wikipedia

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The headquarters of Polish Radio in Warsaw was built in 1952, in a completely new reality, at a time when the doctrine of socialist realism was ruling Polish architecture. Interestingly, the authorities at the time entrusted its design to Bohdan Pniewski, as if assuming that having designed such an object once, he would propose an appropriate form again. The building was erected at the intersection of Niepodległości Avenue and Madalińskiego Street; it was based on a square plan and equipped with four corner turrets. The architect planned a number of stylish details for the building, but in the end, they were not used, which resulted in a rather unsophisticated, crude building. Unfortunately, similar expressions can also be used to describe the second Warsaw radio headquarters, at Myśliwiecka Street. This low, horizontal, very simple office building from the 1990s has since then been extended and modernized, as a result of which it has been enriched with, among others, a semicircular vaulted glass portico resembling an orangery added at the front and an entrance hall.

A propaganda tool

At the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s, the radio seemed to be one of the most important inventions. It became not only a method of transmitting information but also of building national identity, which had to be reinforced after the period of the partitions. Through radio waves, the authorities transmitted pro-state messages; in parallel, entertainment, culture and education were served to the listeners in the same way. By 1933, broadcasting stations in Warsaw, Lviv (Lwów at the time), Poznań, Vilnius (Wilno at the time), Katowice, Kraków, Pinsk, Łódź and Toruń already had their frequencies. The development of regional broadcasting stations was an extremely important point on the agenda of state propaganda, particularly where Polishness was more ‘feeble’ – as in Upper Silesia or by the border with Prussia.

Polish Radio, Pomeranian Broadcasting Station in Toruń, 1935, photo: https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl / National Digital Archives (NAC)

For this very reason, the headquarters of the radio stations in Toruń and Katowice were given very intentional forms. Both buildings – the one in Toruń, built in 1934, and the one in Katowice, three years earlier – are examples of modernist architecture of that time. The headquarters of Polish Radio Toruń was designed by Antoni Dygat, an architect from Warsaw who designed in the spirit of the most avant-garde variety of modernism – functionalism. In the Toruń realization, he was undoubtedly inspired by the achievements of Le Corbusier, creating a raw composition of four interpenetrating cuboids, dynamized only by the rotunda-like entrance portico. Today, the building serves residential functions and, unfortunately, as a result of thermal modernization, among other things, has lost its original appearance. The headquarters of Polish Radio Katowice, built at Ligonia Street in 1937 according to the design of Tadeusz Łobos, has retained its original function and form. And here, the seriousness of the institution is conveyed by the austere, geometric building with a regular rhythm to the windows. The modern character is emphasised by the glass staircase riser, or the entrance located in an indented corner with stairs in front. Aiming for a modernist style shows how important the radio was back then – the most modern forms of architecture at that time were to emphasise progress and the importance of this medium for the region.

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Edifice of the Polish Radio station in Katowice, 1937, photo: Ewa Podgórska / https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl / National Digital Archives (NAC)

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Although Polish Radio has existed since 1926 and since then has undergone many changes, both political and organisational, the period that was particularly important for the architecture of radio headquarters, apart from the interwar period, was the time after the political transformation. After several decades of centralisation, the Committee for Radio and Television ‘Polskie Radio i Telewizja’ (the so-called Radiokomitet), i.e. the institution supervising state radio and television, was dissolved after 1993, when Polish Radio again ‘split’ into a number of regional stations. In this way, they regained their autonomy and importance. They also needed new headquarters.

The strength of the regions

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Radio Kraków, photo: Anna Cymer

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In the years 1994-96, a team lead by Tomasz Mańkowski and Piotr Wróbel designed a new building for Radio Kraków (their concept was selected in an architectural competition). The task was not easy because the new building had to be integrated into the frontage of Trzech Wieszczów Avenue, dominated by prewar historical buildings. However, the architects opted for modernity: they designed a five-storey building constructed on a semi-circular plan with an arc-curved façade and a silhouette that slightly widens upwards. The designers themselves emphasised that the semi-circular plan was their way of inscribing the object into the existing space, at the end of a block of buildings, with reference to other public buildings located on the same street, such as the National Museum or the Jagiellonian Library. The headquarters of Radio Kraków is connected with postmodernist architecture because, while conducting a dialogue with its context, it refers to it in an oblique, not obvious way. The monolithic form of the curved façade, covered with polished granite tiles, is broken up by the undercut ground floor, supported by poles, by the rhythm of small, square windows, and above all, by the large, four-storey-high glazing, which the architects themselves called ‘a window to the world’. The building houses the radio offices, recording studios, and a studio which can be used as a concert hall for 300 people.

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Radio Gdańsk, photo: Anna Cymer

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In 1996, designs for the next regional offices of Polish Radio were created, which, interestingly, were radically stylistically different. KD Kozikowski Design Architectural Studio was responsible for the extension of the building for Radio Gdańsk. First occupied in 2000, it was created as a result of the expansion of a historical palace at Grunwaldzka Street. The architects reached for postmodernism, wanting to adjust the shape to the existing buildings: they created a building inspired by historical forms but re-created with originality. The result is a building with walls of various sizes, topped with an undulating cornice and clad in yellowish stone that is contrasted by details and extensions made of green steel and reflective glass.

KKM Kozień Architects, after winning the 1996 competition for the design of the headquarters of Radio Koszalin, created a high-tech concept. Between the intimate, historical buildings of Piłsudskiego Street, they inserted a dynamic edifice with façades made of glass and metal. A characteristic element of the building is its glazed façade, in front of which are slightly sloping pillars supporting a semi-circular roof. The three-storey building consists of several interpenetrating structures, complemented by details made of shimmering grey sheet metal and crowned with a metal openwork balcony running around the building on the top floor.

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First radio in Warsaw, photo: https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl / National Digital Archives (NAC)

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The building in which the radio station is located bears no significance compared to the strength of the transmitted signal or the quality or attractiveness of the broadcast. However, as the examples of the construction of buildings for Polish Radio demonstrate, attention was actually paid to them. And they in turn in many cases also played a role in shaping the image of the state.

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