Between Crisis & Freedom: Polish Architecture of the 1980s

elblag_stare_miasto_z_lotu_forum.jpg, default, Old Town in Elbląg, photo: Wojciech Wojcik/Forum, Between Crisis & Freedom: Polish Architecture of the 1980s

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In the 1980s Polish architecture, although in a deep crisis, managed to begin undergoing major changes. It was then that architects began to regain their creative freedom and were able to manifest their aversion to modernism.

Between 15-21 June 1981, the International Union of Architects (UIA) congress was held in Warsaw. This event was of a much more than just prestigious importance. Among the speakers at the congress were the most renowned researchers and critics of architecture at the time. A Briton of Polish origin, Joseph Rykwert presented an overview of the architectural realizations of the last decade, which, in contrast to the still ubiquitous modernism, reinforced symbolic content, hidden meanings, and thus a greater variety of forms in architecture. The most important guest turned out to be Charles Jencks, an American historian, researcher, theoretician and critic of architecture, a great advocate of postmodernism. Jencks' visit was not limited to participation in the congress; the critic gave interviews, held a lecture for students of the Warsaw University of Technology, his visit and the views he expressed were widely echoed in the Polish architectural community.

Architecture of good intentions

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Modernist housing development, Osiedle Tysiąclecia, Katowice, photo: Robert Neumann / Forum

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In an interview with the monthly Architektura, published in the early months of 1982, Charles Jencks said:

Modernism has been called the ‘architecture of good intentions’. The intentions were excellent, but their execution – much worse. Postmodernists approach these issues with more irony. Certainly, architecture will not change the world and will not solve the problems of poverty in Third World countries. But the ‘architecture of good intentions’ promoted by postmodernists is about changing the world into a more joyful and happy place, and at the same time referencing the cultural traditions of a given society. Life is nicer then.

These words fell on extremely fertile ground in Poland: and it is also here where modernism turned out not to be a cure for all ailments, and its degenerate fruits, which dominated the Polish landscape, aroused general dislike. New means of expression and forms corresponding to the moods prevailing in the country were sought for. Their birth was largely due to the political and economic crisis. The crisis was the direct reason why the state that hitherto had had a monopoly in the field of architectural production began to loosen the rules governing the industry.

In the early 1980s, it was rather clear that the crisis devouring every aspect of life would also bring an end to huge public construction investments. There was no longer any prospect of building new large estates or factories, plants producing building materials were becoming ineffective. For edifices to continue being built, changes in the law and regulations governing architectural creativity were required. And these were introduced by way of baby steps. Although the state was the most important investor since the late 1940s and architects worked under its supervision, in the mid 1980s the first legal gateway for the autonomy of designers and investors opened. Architects gained the opportunity to set up cooperatives, i.e. legal entities freeing them from the work regime of state design offices (they finally gained design autonomy in 1988, along with the so-called ‘Wilczek Act’ which gave full freedom of economic activity). Cooperatives and proprietary companies gave architects a chance for greater freedom in terms of the proposed forms and the selection of investors. The investors too around that time finally got a chance to operate on their own, outside the state structures. The domination of prefabricated elements, which had to be used a moment earlier, has also ended. The materials were scarce, but if they could be obtained, they could be used in whatever fashion. After years of predominance of standardized concrete and industrially produced built elements, the long-unseen wood, brick and roof tiles could finally reappear in architecture.

To convey the spirit of the times

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Housing estate on the Jamna River, Mikołów, photo: Anna Cymer

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This gradual loosening of rules and the growing autonomy in design went hand in hand with formal changes. The general public was tired of modernism, with uniform buildings made from large prefabricated blocks, as well as with dull urban planning, which had to result in a return to more decorative, diversified and individualized forms. Detail began to make a comeback in architecture (often clumsy and modest, sometimes reduced to the form of a wooden roof attached to a large-panel facade), references to historical or regional forms became fashionable. These were promoted by postmodernists headed by Charles Jencks – one must remember that at that time, postmodernism was triumphant in Western Europe and the United States, and Polish architects knew the assumptions and achievements of this trend very well. In Poland, the postmodern passion for mixing styles, juggling details, shapes and colours has gained its local variation. It was a mix of ambition to catch up to the West and the patriotic revival caused by the carnival of Solidarity, the search for a new Polish tradition and identity, and a mix limited by modest financial and material means.

The loosening of the rules of activity for architects and investors, the possibility of reaching for other than prefabricated materials, tiredness with modernism and the popularity of the postmodern style – the combination of these few new and important phenomena that emerged in the 1980s significantly changed the architecture of that time. This decade became a prelude to changes, sometimes a retreat from the modernist style associated with the iron grip of the state regime, sometimes a search for new means of expression, a new language of architecture, which was the result of the years of the Polish economic depression, but also hope for a better life. The aesthetics developed in the 1980s had a rather short life, because after the transformation it was replaced by the commercialized architecture of the globalized world of capitalism, created already fully in line with free market principles, but this only makes it more interesting and valuable. It was a necessary transitional stage, the fruit of an exceptional time when the way of building was largely influenced by social moods.

Modern townhouses

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Old Town in Głogowie, photo: Marek Bazak/East News

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The emblematic representatives of their era are the so-called new old towns. After World War II, the old town areas destroyed as its result had diverse fates; the old towns of Warsaw and Gdańsk were rebuilt immediately, many monuments in Wrocław, Poznań and Kraków were also quickly restored to their original appearance. After the political thaw in 1956, however, the tide turned completely: in the place of the old town houses, housing estates started being built, on the assumption that apartment blocks are what the society needs more. Such solutions appeared mainly in cities with a German past, the monuments of which were not appreciated, e.g. in Szczecin, Słupsk and Legnica. There were also cities whose old towns were demolished after the war, and nothing was built in their place. That was the niche in which in the 1980s passion for creating architecture based on past patterns could be revealed.

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Old Town in Elbląg, photo: Henryk Sadura Travel Photo/GettyImages

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The fullest emanation of this is the Old Town in Elbląg, designed by a team led by Szczepan Baum and Ryszard Semka. In cooperation with Maria Lubocka-Hoffmann, the then province monuments conservator, they developed a unique concept for new buildings. Tenement houses, freely and creatively paraphrasing historical forms, were erected on the carefully open streets network, on the preserved authentic foundations and cellars. The creators of the Elbląg Old Town did not want to create a conservatory falsehood and copy old houses, their aim was to create with modern means the atmosphere of the Old Town buildings. This remarkable postmodern quarter began to emerge in 1983; the implementation of the project made it possible to also allow private investors to operate here. More or less at the same time, similar projects began to be executed, among others in Kołobrzeg, Głogów, in the Szczecin Podzamcze district, in Trzebiatów. With better or worse aesthetic results, the restoration of Old Towns was important not only as an opportunity to implement postmodern architectural fantasies, but also as an attempt to restore the identity of cities that fate had deprived of their historic centre.

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Town Hall, Zielone Wzgórza, Murowana Goślina, projekt: Tomasz Durniewicz, fot. Tomasz Kamiński/AG

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In the 1980s, the projects of large housing estates ended – the crisis-stricken state could no longer afford such enterprises. Investments in residential buildings were undertaken by small cooperatives, employers, and smaller investors – so their scale changed radically. Consequently, so did the form. Since it was no longer mandatory to stick to the norms imposed by the state, there was a shift from modernist aesthetics. This could take many forms. Between 1983–1989 in Murowana Goślina near Poznań, a housing estate was built for the employees of a steelworks company (Zakłady Przemysłu Metalowego H. Cegielski), and Jerzy Buszkiewicz, its designer, gave it a form of an idyllic town. There is a square with a ‘town hall’ (it is a residential building equipped with a gateway and a clock tower), the buildings have arcades, and the consecutive quarters of intimate buildings are centered around green squares. The Radogoszcz Wschód Estate in Łódź (designed by Jakub Wujek and Zdzisław Lipski) still consists in quite modernist blocks scattered loosely among greenery, but the centre of the estate is a square surrounded by frontages of houses decorated with turrets and elaborate porticos and equipped with arcades with shops.

Thumbnail — The 'Bolek' building, view from Piotrkowska Street, Łódź, photo: HuBar/Wikimedia.org

In the 1980s, Stanisław Niemczyk, an anti-modernist and one famous for his church design, designed the Nad Jamną Housing Estate in Mikołów. Here the houses, although made of prefabricated elements, have nothing to do with blocks. They have high roofs, brick detail, numerous bay windows, arcades, loggias and balconies, the architect skilfully used the natural terrain features to create a housing estate full of nooks, landings, passages and squares. Numerous bay windows, roofs, as well as various finishing materials (wood, ceramic tiles) similarly conceal the presence of the large-panel technology in which residential buildings were erected at the intersection of Zamenhofa and Piotrkowska Streets in Łódź. Colloquially known as Bolek and Lolek, designed by Bolesław Kardaszewski, with their fragmented forms, they stand in opposition to modernist simplicity, but they do not imitate the forms of the neighbouring tenement houses constituting the frontage of the Łódź’s ‘Pietryna’ district.

Colourful houses

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The Housing estate Centrum E (view from the north-west), Nowa Huta, Kraków, photo: Zygmunt Put/Wikimedia.org

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In 1988, the Epoka Housing Cooperative started the construction of a small complex at Limanowskiego Street in Warsaw. Architects Paweł Kasprzycki, Marek Mierzejewski and Rafał M. Zagórowski put together a number of different shapes placed on several levels; there is a dominant building crowned with a barrel-shaped roof, there are front service pavilions pierced with round windows, some of the elements of this diversified composition resemble traditional townhouses with gable roofs, another part – a glass hall with a pediment and pilasters, referencing antiquity, covered with a semicircular roof. The complexity of various interpenetrating shapes is additionally emphasized by the combination of various textures (brick, sheet metal, glass, plaster) and rich colours. Pastel colours are also a means of expression for the Centrum E Estate, erected between 1988–1995 opposite to the monumental foundation of the socialist realism era, i.e. the Central Square in Nowa Huta in Kraków.

Romuald Loegler, who designed them, did not directly reference the shapes of buildings from the 1950s. He created a compact complex of residential buildings grouped around three courtyards, and preceded by a lower pavilion housing a bank from the street side. The houses themselves, in the shades of blue and pink (the colours were supposed to distinguish it from the grey surroundings), were equipped with many unusual elements; for example, they were placed on ‘pedestals’ (in many places made of glass blocks), some were raised on poles, equipped with numerous recesses or bay windows, passages and arcades. The entrances are surrounded by porticos and the risers are topped with triangular finials. Although the architect took many of these elements from the past, he gave them contemporary, geometrical and simplified forms.

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Dom Pomocy Społecznej im. św. Brata Alberta (St. Brother Albert's Welfare Home) on Kawęczyńska Street in Warsaw, photo: Marek Bazak/East News

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The postmodernism characteristic of the 1980s also appeared in public buildings. And it took a variety of forms. One instance is the massive and austere St. Brother Albert’s Social Welfare House on Kawęczyńska Street in Warsaw designed in 1981. Here, in an apparently monolithic brick block, architects Wojciech Hermanowicz, Tomasz Lechowski and Marek Żarski hid ‘surprises’ in the form of, for example, a curtain wall, an openwork corner, a cylindrical tower visible in the cutouts in the wall, or deep niches that turn out to be the façade of the residential part with balconies. A completely different set of forms was proposed by Klemens Mikuła, who designed the buildings accompanying the regatta track at the Malta Lake in Poznań. The multi-coloured, richly fragmented forms of the buildings with changing rooms, stands, podiums for judges, etc. are dynamic and cheerful, giving the impression of being composed of small coloured blocks and numerous walls, towers, posts, flags.

Jurand Jarecki, Stanisław Kwaśniewicz and Marek Gierlotka chose yet other forms when designing the building of the Silesian Library in Katowice, which was commissioned in 1989. The square-shaped building was built on a platform in the middle of the square. This gesture already shows the importance given to this edifice, which was to play the role of a ‘modern temple of knowledge’ in the city space. The building is preceded by wide stairs, and its entrance is enclosed in an extensive portal in which one easily traces the echoes of ancient forms.

Postmodernism in the church

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Kościół Najświętszej Maryi Panny Królowej Pokoju (Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary Queen of Peace) in Wrocław, photo: Masur/Wikimedia.org

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The decade of the 1980s is distinguished also by another type of building – the church. This decade saw a record amount of churches being built: according to the data of the Episcopal Commission for Church Building, between 1984-1988 over 460 churches and 590 chapels were commissioned, and at the end of 1988, about 950 more were under construction. This sacral boom was related to the political and economic situation: throughout the post-war period, the socialist authorities were very reluctant to grant permissions for church building, if at all, it was usually most often as a decoy in times of conflicts and crises (with the purpose of shifting attention and ‘catering’ to the people’s need). There were plenty of those in the 1980s, so this decade was particularly abundant in these types of projects. Architecture with sacral functions was exempt from state regulations in the years of the People's Republic of Poland, which caused implementation problems – the church investor did not have access to state sources of building materials or machines. This extended the construction process, it also influenced the final shape of the building, because sometimes the design had to be modified during execution.

However, it also had some advantages, because it allowed for great freedom of the forms employed. And it is the abundance of spatial concepts, unparalleled anywhere else, that characterizes the sacral architecture of those times. In the city of Wrocław, in the first half of the 1980s, various sacral projects were able to arise, such as the intimate, minimalistic church of St. Stanisław Kostka in Huby (designed by Stefan and Maria Müller, Barbara Jaworska) and a huge, and expressive, as if pushing itself aggressively between the blocks of the Popowice Housing Estate, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Peace Church (Kościół Najświętszej Maryi Panny Królowej Pokoju, designed by team led by Wojciech Jarząbek). The year 1989 brought a completion of a temple full of hidden meanings and postmodern games with the recipient: the temple of the Ascension of the Blessed Virgin Mary (świątynia pw. Wniebowstąpienia NMP), designed by Marek Budzyński and Piotr Wicha in Warsaw's North Ursynów district, a few years earlier, a design of a temple for the Dominican Order in Warsaw's Służewo had been created. The architect, Władysław Pieńkowski, gave it an unusual form: the slender, brick, gothic-inspired block was filled with a structure made of raw concrete, which, despite the apparent coolness of the material, creates unusual sculptural and chiaroscuro effects in the soaring interior.

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Kościół Wniebowstąpienia Pańskiego (Church of the Ascension of the Lord) in Warsaw (Ursynów), photo: Zygmunt Put/Wikimedia.org

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The architectural achievements of the 1980s cannot be easily pigeonholed, because although executed in times of crisis, they are surprisingly diverse and quite rich. Albeit today often perceived as clumsy or kitschy, they perfectly rendered the spirit of their times, as these were, after all, also marked by the same uncertainty and hope, dreams and struggles with the bleakness of everyday life.

Translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar

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