Poland’s Surprising Socialist Realist Architecture

planetarium_katowice_en.jpg, default, The Copernicus Planetarium & Observatory, photo: Tomasz Jodłowski / East News

70 years have passed since the ideology of socialist realism was introduced into Polish architecture. Despite the passage of time, there are still many prejudices and stereotypes associated with this style.

The National Party Conference of Architects held in Warsaw between 20th and 21st June 1949 ended with a resolution in which the architects agreed ‘to fight for a breakthrough in our architectural output, for the realisation of socialist architecture’. The document is regarded as the final confirmation of the introduction of the doctrine of socialist realism into Polish architecture (which, for example, had been introduced into the visual arts a few months earlier).

Soul engineering

The ideologists of socialist realism understood perfectly well the role played by architecture in the creation of human consciousness; they realised that the right architectural ‘setting’ can influence one’s way of life and perception of reality. One of the most significant doctrinaires of the new ideology, architect Edmund Goldzamt, said during the National Party Conference of Architects:

An architect of a society building socialism is not only an engineer of buildings and streets, but an engineer of human souls. [...] He must express in his works, in the solid masses, in the rhythms of openings, divisions, in the dynamics of forms, in the plasticity of surfaces, the ideas of modernity – not the ‘ideas’ of beautiful structures or the refined elegance of forms, but the social ideas in the name of which the general population live and work [...].

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The doctrine of socialist realism, which permeated all areas of creativity in 1949, served the state’s new vision. After the period of post-war reconstruction, it was to develop according to the Stalinist model of socialism developed in the USSR. Many of the political and economic solutions introduced at the time were borrowed directly from the USSR, but the need to draw on local motifs was clearly emphasised in architecture. The new architecture was to be socialist in idea, but national in form. Edmund Goldzamt explained:

In order for the socialist vision of architecture to reach the consciousness of the masses, in order for it to fulfil its ideological and educational task, it must speak in the language of simple, comprehensible, and popular forms. They must be forms that resonate with the colours of a given country, with its architectural landscape, in other words, with what the people of that country live by. They must be national forms.

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Not only the Palace of Culture

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The Palace of Culture and Science, 1954, photo: Władysław Sławny / Forum

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The requirements that the state placed on the architects were described using lofty language, yet turned out to be very vague. Although the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, which had been under construction since 1952 (the only socialist-realist building in the country designed by a Soviet architect), was to be a point of reference and a symbol of the new era, there was no precise catalogue of forms or styles from which to draw inspiration. Renaissance attics on the side pavilions or motifs from Polish folk art in the interiors of the Palace of Culture and Science could, of course, be representative of architecture ‘national in form’, but the designers interpreted this approach in many ways. The doctrine of socialist realism was formulated on the basis of negation (it was not to be cosmopolitan, constructivist, bourgeois, or formalist) and general, pathetic expressions concerning the shaping of society (‘the characteristic feature of socialist architecture must be its realism, profound ideology and educative character’). How did the designers translate this vision into the language of architectural forms?

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A bird's-eye view of Nowa Huta, photo: Piotr Tomaszewski / wikimedia.org

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The Palace of Culture and Science, although a unique building, is still a symbol of the era of socialist realism. This is an unfair stereotype, because the period of socialist realism, although a rather grim time in the history of Poland, left behind many interesting and diverse architectural projects.

The term ‘socialist realism’, when mentioned, is immediately associated by many with Nowa Huta (literally, ‘The New Steel Mill’), a housing estate built in the early 1950s near Kraków. Although it is equipped with a monumental square and wide, radial avenues created for parades, most of the area consists of loosely spaced residential buildings. These buildings maintained traditional forms far from the pompousness of the more recognizable edifices of Nowa Huta, such as the Administrative Centre of the Lenin Steelworks or houses around the Central Square.

Fans of truly rich forms of socialist realism aesthetics should be advised to visit Dąbrowa Górnicza, near Katowice. The Zagłębie Palace of Culture in Dąbrowa Górnicza, which has recently undergone an extremely intricate renovation and on which a fascinating book-length monograph was published, is one of the most interesting examples of Polish socialist realism. The monumental, ornate building, with perfectly selected details both outside and inside, allows us to understand the ideas that underpinned this style.

Small-town atmosphere

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The Palace of Culture in Zagłębie, photo: Marek Wesołowski

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Socialist realism did not last long. Officially it was in force from 1949 to 1956, but some of its ideas were put into practice earlier. Warsaw's Mariensztat neighbourhood is one of those projects that was slightly ahead of its time. It was built between 1948 and 1949, as a part of the flagship project of the time, namely the W-Z Route cutting across the capital from east to west. Mariensztat was designed by Zygmunt Stępiński, who referred to the historical pattern of a picturesque modern town. Surrounded by arcaded tenement houses, the market square and a small group of houses immersed in greenery is a housing estate in an idyllic-romantic costume, fulfilling the socialist postulate of providing housing for the working class.

A street vendor chiseled by Barbara Zbrożyna in Mariensztat, Warsaw, photo: M. Dąbrowski

A similar reference to the old times, when the market square and colourful tenement houses were the heart of a settlement, was made in Łódź. There, in 1949, on the site of the former Jewish district destroyed during World War II, a team led by Ryszard Karłowicz designed a new housing estate.

Thumbnail — Market Square, Łódź, photo: Małgorzata Kujawka / AG

Here again, workers' flats were ‘wrapped’ in idyllic forms inspired by small-town buildings. It was not possible to implement the entire vision drawn at that time, but thanks to the socialist realist style, industrial Łódź gained the Old Market Square and buildings resembling those of a small historic town. Ryszard Karłowicz himself admitted that the inspiration for these houses was the classicist architecture of the Congress Kingdom of Poland.

Socialist classicism

The elegant and often monumental forms of classicism from the beginning of the 19th century were eagerly used in the designs of important public buildings. Powerful colonnades, monumental porticoes, rustications, high roofs – all these elements perfectly reflected the rank and seriousness of buildings connected with power. This is perfectly evident in the form of the, so-called, house of the Polish United Workers’ Party in Białystok (today it houses the Faculties of History, Sociology, and Philology of the University of Białystok). The building, designed by Stanisław Bukowski, was built in 1952 and is considered the best realisation of the socialist realist era in the city. Situated at the end of a busy street (which was designed as a space for marches and parades), preceded by a square, it received an elegant façade with a column balcony, a high, rusticated ground floor, and a roof balustrade.

A much more impressive form – although less obvious due to the building's integration into the densely developed city centre area – was given to the Ministry of Agriculture headquarters in Warsaw. A team of designers, including, among others, the co-creators of the W-Z Route and the MDM Housing Estate, Jan Knothe and Stanisław Jankowski, turned one of the four wings of the vast building into a massive double colonnade. Three storeys high and 70 metres long, it has a purely decorative function; it draws attention, makes the building stand out from its surroundings, and marks it with importance.

Józef Polak applied his elegant classicist forms to a building of a much smaller scale – the Culture House of a manufacturer of aircraft engines (Wytwórnia Sprzętu Komunikacyjnego) in Rzeszów. The building, which now belongs to the Institute of Music of the University of Rzeszów, was preceded by a square and raised above pavement level atop a low platform. The symmetrical, orderly structure is characterised by perfect proportions and subtly applied detail. The Rzeszów building may evoke associations with the architecture of the times of Stanisław August (1764 to 1795), a period when expressive classicist elements were replaced by decorative but much more subtle ones; for example, massive colonnades were replaced by delicate pilasters. Over 100 years later, Józef Polak shaped the silhouette of the Cultural House in Rzeszów in a similarly decorative manner.

Stylish housing estate

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The Latawiec (Kite) Complex, Warszawa, designed by Eleonora Sekrecka, photo: Zbyszko Siemaszko / Forum

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Although socialist realism is often associated with the heavy, ostentatious edifices of Nowa Huta or the MDM Housing Estate in Warsaw, it did not always manifest itself in such heavyset forms. The Kościuszko Residential District in Wrocław is a good example of this. Designed by a team led by Roman Tunikowski, the district is a complex of houses symmetrically placed around a quadrate square with stone facades and high roofs. Their elevations, devoid of ornamental details, are diversified by arcades. A similar effect of big-city elegance devoid of excessive decorativeness was achieved by Eleonora Sekrecka in her design of the ‘Latawiec’ Housing Estate in Warsaw, which was inspired by the Place des Vosges in Paris.

Cursed modernism

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The interior of the Gdynia Główna train station, photo: Adam Warżawa / PAP

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In the era of socialist realism, modernism was officially a forbidden style, deemed too cosmopolitan, formalistic, and capitalistic. Of course, this is just in theory. Many of the architects working in the 1950s had received their education and experience before the war, when modernism was considered the most appropriate style for contemporary times, so it is not surprising that they drew on this convention in their designs. Elements of pre-war art deco and early modernism can be found in the form and interiors of the Gdynia Główna Railway Station, designed by Wacław Tomaszewski, an artist with considerable pre-war experience.

The austerity of form and the geometric order of a simple structure characterise the work of Zbigniew Solawa, including the Silesian Planetarium, built between 1953 and 1955 in the Regional Park of Culture and Leisure in Chorzów (today: Silesia Park).

Echoes of the harmony modernism gave to shapes also can be found in the silhouette of the Youth Palace in Katowice. The building, designed by Zygmunt Majerski and Julian Duchowicz, was equipped with details typical of socialist realism, but its massive, simple form is far from being pompous, just like Warsaw’s Stolica Cinema (today, the Iluzjon Museum of Film Art). When Mieczysław Piprek designed this and several other cinemas in Warsaw (e.g., W-Z and Ochota) in the late 1940s, he drew on modernist aesthetics, combining a cuboid and a rotunda, and giving both structures simple forms, devoid of decoration.

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The Iluzjon cinema, Warsaw, 2012, photo: Kuba Atys / AG; the Stolica cinema, Warsaw, 1955, photo: Zbyszko Siemaszko Photographic Archive / www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)

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Even further from the aesthetics of socialist realism was the Warsaw 10th-Anniversary Stadium, designed in 1953. A team led by Jerzy Hryniewiecki created a remarkably modern structure; a vast sports facility sunken into an earthen embankment, which, despite its enormous scale, seemed almost invisible, thanks to its integration into the landscape. Had it not been demolished in 2006, it would probably be presented today as a flagship implementation of ecological architecture.

Juggling history

Socialist realist building was supposed to be ’national in form’. That is, it was to reference well-known, recognisable architectural styles from the past. To meet this requirement, architects had to be very creative. We see evidence of such architectural imagination amidst the Mariensztat tenement houses, on Bednarska Street near the Wisła River, where an oblong building was erected, equipped with long galleries running along its façade. These galleries are almost a literal copy of the renaissance cloisters from the Wawel courtyard.

There are a number of other buildings around Poland that reflect the influence of earlier architectural styles. For example, the seat of the Presidium of the Government (today the Ufficio Primo office building). Here, architect Marek Leykam used Wawel motifs in the galleries surrounding the courtyard. Interestingly, from the outside he made the building resemble a 15th-century Florentine palace. In 1950, Wacław Rembiszewski combined socialist realism with the form of the historic buildings found in the Main City in Gdańsk. Designing the so-called ‘Dom Prasy’ (Press House), he adapted the shape of the new building to the characteristic rhythm of narrow, vertical houses with high roofs. Built between 1953 and 1956, according to a design by Jerzy Zaręba, the Fisherman's House in Władysławowo has a grand staircase, galleried arcades, and a soaring tower, undoubtedly inspired by the forms of Renaissance town halls in Polish towns. Baroque forms can be found in the ornate body of the Community Cultural Centre, which was designed by Barbara Brukalska and Stanisław Brukalski in the modernist pre-war WSM housing estate in Żoliborz.

In 2019, the seventh edition of the Warsaw Under Construction Festival hosted by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, recalled the historic moment when, after the end of World War II, a visionary decision was taken to bring the ruined city back to life.

At the National Party Conference of Architects in June 1949, Edmund Goldzamt said:

Adopting the principles of socialist realism in our architectural work will make it possible to fulfil the difficult and responsible tasks ahead of us, it will make it possible to refer to the valuable achievements of Polish architecture from the past and creatively multiply these achievements with new works, worthy of our great era.

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Today, we know that socialist realism did not revolutionise the world, and that the architecture of that time did not become a tool for engineering the soul. And yet, after seven decades, it is easy for us to recognise the buildings of the 1950s as monuments, and to appreciate their aesthetic qualities, as well as the quality of their workmanship. The political overtones of this architecture are less and less offensive. Such enduring appreciation is due to the creativity of the architects of that time who, even within the restrictive framework of the imposed doctrine, tried to create remarkable designs.

^{Sources: 'O polską architekturę socjalistyczną, materiały z Krajowej Partyjnej Narady Architektów, odbytej w dniach 20–21.04.1949 roku w Warszawie', ed. Jan Minorski, Państwowe Wydawnictwa Techniczne, Warsaw 1950}

^{Originally written in Polish, translated by AD, Sept 2021}

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social realism

social realism in architecture

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Poland under communism