Colourful Comebacks: Polish Architecture's Escape from Greyness
As recently as three decades ago, Polish cities were criticised for their omnipresent greyness. Now that we have the whole colour palette at our disposal when it comes to architecture, do we know how to make the most of it?
When it was working on the production of powder paints in 2012, the Swiss company Axalta commissioned research into colour trends in European architecture. It turned out that the design of newly raised buildings on our continent is basically dominated by two colours: white and grey. They are used in 38% and 36% of new projects, respectively. Far behind them, with an 8% share, are black and brown. Green, blue and red appear in only 2–3% of buildings; yellow, only 0.7%; and orange, 0.2%. Why then are Poles so convinced that it’s our architecture specifically that’s dominated by greyness if architects all over Europe continue to be eager to opt for these colours as well? It is probably because of the burden of the second half of the 20th century – buildings from that period still evoke strong associations with grey, not only because of the then dominant colour of façades but also symbolically, as a metaphor of tough, unlikable times.
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Home of architect Romuald Gutt, 5 Hoene-Wrońskiego Street, Warsaw, 1925, photo: Anna Gawryś & Łukasz Piekarczyk
Grey appeared frequently in the industrialised architecture of the Polish People’s Republic – not as a result of anyone’s choice, not due to a conscious decision by the architect or investor but because of limited access to other building materials. But greyness in architecture used to be valued. Romuald Gutt – a pre-war authority and renowned architect, an author of numerous significant buildings in Warsaw and a professor who influenced numerous generations of designers – is sometimes called the ‘master of grey bricks’. It’s this material that the designer made his trademark, using cement bricks to cover the façades of schools, public institutions and houses. Gutt, an enthusiast of muted modernism who could successfully combine classical elegance and massiveness of structures with modernist geometry, considered grey bricks to be a building material that was perfectly suited to this style. And he wasn’t alone in this opinion.
In 1928–32, an apartment complex for the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was built in the Mokotów part of Warsaw. The designer of this cosy complex of multi-storey houses – Jan Stefanowicz – created apartments for rather prominent officials, but he still opted for simple designs deprived of ornamentation or monumental forms. What’s more, he picked a seemingly very simple material – grey cement brick, which endowed the buildings with a look of cool elegance.
Kinga, Jan & Paweł Bzowski, courtyard of Szare Domy housing estate, 59/59A Rakowiecka Street, Warsaw, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC) It’s to this that the housing estate owes its name, Szare Domy (Grey Houses). Grey brick also suited the taste of Halina Skibniewska (who opted for its light, almost white variety, which can be seen today in the blocks of the Sady Żoliborskie housing estate) and was used by Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, who in the 1950s designed a housing estate in Warsaw’s Bielany district. In 2012, as a part of the Synchronicity festival organised by the Bęc Zmiana Foundation, an exhibition was presented during which Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis, also known as Centrala, sought to prove that grey brick was basically Warsaw’s most characteristic building material, that it has an important place in this city and that it should be treated as its trademark.
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Bird’s eye view of Za Żelazną Bramą housing estate, Warsaw, 1969, photo: Longin Wawrynkiewicz / PAP
Although plenty of tasteful grey structures have emerged in Poland, there are many more grey blocks of flats from the 1970s and 1980s whose colour highlighted the monotony of the concept and was disliked by residents grappling with an equally grey reality. As a result, when the first opportunity emerged, blocks of flats all over Poland were painted in pastel colours. Sadly, just as the scale and quality of large-panel concrete housing estates contorted the modernist idea of a housing estate as a group of resident-friendly green complexes, the idea to paint them in cheerful colours turned into a caricature of itself. It turned out that multi-coloured patterns don’t make the buildings more attractive and that the intensity of bright colours on a large housing estate makes the space hard to live in. A real boom for the thermo-modernisation of blocks of flats combined with painting them in random and often very intense colours first appeared at the beginning of the 21st century. The imagination of the managements of cooperatives and housing communities proved boundless: blocks of flats were adorned not only with pink, green, blue and orange but also with flowers, animals, houses and even… pyramids. The phenomenon named ‘pastelosis’ undoubtedly spoilt the look of many estates and became the butt of jokes, a synonym of contemporary kitsch.
Block of flats at B. Prusa Street, Widok housing estate, Skierniewice, photo: kris1973 / Wikipedia.org One of the thousands of ‘coloured’ apartment complexes is the Widok (View) estate in Skierniewice. Here very lively colours on the walls of blocks of flats form imaginative stripes, circles and triangles (depending on the part of the estate), turning, on some of the elevations, into floral or geometric compositions. In 2015, some two years after the estate was adorned with the new colour pattern, the Teatr Realistyczny (Realistic Theatre) Foundation conducted a socio-cultural survey among the residents of Widok. Although its objective was mostly to get to know the views, opinions and expectations of young people living in that part of Skierniewice, the questions also included one regarding the colour scheme of the buildings. As summed up by the authors of the survey (the report can be found on www.realistyczny.com):
In preparing the thermo-modernization of its buildings, the Skierniewicka Spółdzielnia Mieszkaniowa [Skierniewice Housing Cooperative] developed the concept of multi-coloured patterns which were used to decorate the façades of the buildings after their insulation. The dominant motifs are floral and geometrical. The cooperative’s idea met with a variety of responses. Some (mostly older residents) believe that the colourful buildings introduce a pleasant atmosphere. Others, however, find the idea a tacky failure.
The response of one of the young residents is cited to confirm the latter opinion:
Such an odd estate. On the one hand, there are blocks of flats, and some crazy person lately painted them some absurd colours. On the other hand, there’s quite a lot of greenery.
Colour that excites (emotions)
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PKP main railway station, Wrocław, photo: Marcin Czechowicz
Thankfully, there are multiple ways of using colour in architecture. Tourists walking around the main squares of Poznań and Zamość have been enchanted by the colourful façades of ornate townhouses. There’s no trace of kitsch here, and the lively colour highlights the stone ornaments and details. Years ago, strong excitement was evoked by the reconstruction of the original colour scheme of parts of the castle walls in Janowiec on the Vistula River – it was hard to believe that in the 17th century the fort was painted in white-and-red stripes. Similar emotions were stirred by returning the Wrocław train station to the colour this Gothic Revival building was given in the mid-19th century by its author, Wilhelm Grapow. At first, the intense yellow seemed almost improper for the city centre, but it quickly turned out that it fits perfectly.
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Radisson Blu Sobieski Hotel, previously Jan III Sobieski Hotel, photo: Szczebrzeszyński / wikimedia.org
There are buildings whose colour patterns have as many enthusiasts as they have enemies. One of the best known is certainly the Sobieski Hotel, built in Warsaw at the beginning of the 1990s. While the form of the corner building evokes a row of townhouses, the pastel colours of the façade spread over it in blobs, only partially corresponding to the architectural divisions. An infill building on the Wybrzeże Wyspiańskiego (Wyspiański Waterfront) in Wrocław, designed by Wojciech Jarząbek, is striking with its bays and balconies painted in very strong colours. The architect’s other colourful realisations in Wrocław include the former department store Solpol in Świdnicka Street, the headquarters of the Dolnośląski Urząd Skarbowy (Lower Silesian Tax Office) in Żmigrodzka Street and a housing estate in Szwedzka Street. The buildings are classified as postmodernist – and it’s impossible not to notice that it was the architects designing in this style who exhibited a particularly good sense of colour.
Centrum E housing estate, Nowa Huta, Kraków, photo: pLoKI / Wikipedia.org Never before and never again have so many colourful buildings emerged in Polish architecture. A composition of pastel colours decorates the Centrum E housing estate in Nowa Huta and the pink-and-blue infill residential building on 29 Listopada Avenue – both of these Kraków buildings were designed by Romuald Loegler.
Collegium Polonicum, Słubice, photo: Tomasz Wiech / AG Another intensely yellow building is the Opole Technical University’s complex of lecture halls, added at the end of the 1990s to the simple, prefabricated structures from the late modernist period. Yellow, red and green also appear in the building complex of Collegium Polonicum in Słubice, the ‘Polish’ part of the international Viadrina European University in Frankfurt (Oder), and the sandstone façades of the headquarters of Radio Gdańsk were decorated with green and orange details.
Colour not just for children
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Regionalne Centrum Krwiodawstwa i Krwiolecznictwa, Racibórz, designed by FAAB Architekci studio / Adam Białobrzeski, Adam Figurski, Maria Messina, 2008–13, photo: courtesy of FAAB Architekci studio
It’s difficult to resist the impression when observing new architectural realisations that architects are currently wary of using lively colours in their designs. Although plenty of new buildings appear in Poland, it’s hard to find any that strike the viewer with their conscious use of colour. One of the exceptions is certainly the Regionalne Centrum Krwiodawstwa i Krwiolecznictwa (Regional Centre for Blood Donation and Hemotherapy) in Racibórz, opened in 2013. Here, in the historic centre of the Silesian town, the architects from the FAAB studio, in collaboration with a heritage conservator, erected an effective, dynamic edifice with shiny, bright red façades. Colours are currently often encountered in buildings designed for the youngest users – importantly, they’re usually used with great sensitivity, without making the building seem infantile or tacky. Kindergartens and schools designed by xystudio, such as the ones in Ostrów Mazowiecka, Suwałki and Warsaw’s Wesoła district, are characterised by cheerful yet subdued colours which not only serve as ornaments but also constitute a kind of a signpost, helping children move around the building and get to appropriate classrooms. The most popular colour for buildings meant for children is certainly yellow – it’s warm, lively and cheerful, yet it doesn’t overwhelm with its intensity.
Building D, Nowy Rynek complex, Poznań, designed by Medusa Group, investor: Skanska, photo: investor’s press materials It’s hard to say why colour is such a rare source of inspiration for architects designing public or office buildings (the latter being, indeed, particularly monotonous with their steel-and-glass elevations). Is it possible that colourful elements could deprive such an edifice of solemnity? A large multi-functional building complex is currently being raised in Poznań under the name Nowy Rynek (New Market Square). One of the elements is an office building designed by Medusa Group. The Silesian architects covered the lower-storey elevations with bright green slats; above these, the glass walls of the building are complemented with elements in a rusty-pink colour. In designing the Łódź headquarters of TME, the 3DPROjEKT architektura studio complemented the rotund, glass elevations with rainbow-coloured mullion strips; moreover, this architectural detail changes its colour depending on the direction from which they are viewed.
Main headquarters of Comarch, Kraków, designed by Architecture Studio Jose Casquet in cooperation with Buro Happold, photo: Piotr Krajewski One of the most colourful recently built structures is probably the main headquarters of Comarch in Kraków. Here, Architecture Studio Jose Casquet together with Buro Happold lit up compositions of similar glass modules with rainbow colours.
Using colour in architecture is risky – one could, of course, ignore the convention and reach for bright colours without any limitations, but few designers are bold enough to do that. As the example of painted blocks of flats shows, colours can spoil the building aesthetically, but they can also be used to create exceptionally friendly, cheerful, safe spaces. As is the case with many projects going beyond fixed conventions, the key to success is a well-thought-out idea and a colour choice that’s properly justified by the structure. Unfortunately, although there’s been a huge variety of colour-related experiences in Polish architecture, it seems that there are more grey buildings than colourful ones among those that are valued and commonly accepted. But does that mean that we’re sentenced to greyness?
Translated by culture.pl/en
