In 1920, after graduating from the School of Economics, Józef Szanajca left Lublin, his birthplace, to continue his education at the Warsaw University of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture. During his university years he met Bohdan Lachert, who shared his interest in modern architecture (which was the topic of Tadeusz Tołwiński’s and Roman Piotrowski’s lectures in their studios at the time). Despite many differences (in temperament, disposition, and origin), Szanajca and Lachert formed a well-knit tandem. Together, they created nearly 150 projects, 40 of which were realised.
In 1926, as a part of their thesis work prepared in Professor Rudolf Świeczyński’s studio, Szanajca conceptualised the development of a residential area composed of multi-storey buildings. The project, futuristic and almost unreal in its scale (each apartment block was supposed to accommodate 2,800 residents), was envisioned to form a cascade of glazed, 12-story-high buildings, designed so that they ‘would look best when seen from a fast-moving car’. The design displayed fascination with the modernist aesthetics of machines. Lifts, travelators, and interiors which adapted themselves to their user’s needs – all of this was a fulfilment of modern architecture’s premises, emerging chiefly as a result of Le Corbusier’s activity.
While at university, Szanajca became acquainted with Szymon Syrkus – an architect a decade older than him who was a theoretician of new avant-garde movements and strongly connected to the international milieu (Gropius, Malewicz, and Le Corbusier among others). In 1926, Szanajca co-founded the avant-garde group Praesens.
Villas
Soon after graduating, in 1926, Szanajca and Lachert collaborated on the design (which, as it turned out, was never to be realised) of a modern villa in Kamienna Góra (in the vicinity of Gdynia), which was commissioned by Kazimiera Scheunert. In 1928, thanks to funding from Wacław, Lachert’s father, the duo was able to realise the project on Katowicka Street, in the district of Saska Kępa in Warsaw. The three-storey Lachert family house abided by the five rules of modern architecture formulated by Le Corbusier: reinforced concrete framing allowed to freely adapt the interior and elevation, and placing the construction on top of pillars left the ground floor partly open. The cutting-edge form, use of experimental materials and the interior, consistent with the rest of the building, made the villa on Katowicka Street one of the first fully avant-garde edifices in Polish architecture.
Bohdan Lachert and Józef Szanajca at the Polish General Exhibition in Poznań in 1929, photo: public domain
In 1930, also in Saska Kępa, the architects designed a house for the Szyllers, and in 1934, again under the commission of Wacław Lachert – a tenement house on 12 Francuska Street, one of the first gallery-style apartment blocks in Warsaw.
In 1927, Szanajca and Lachert, together with the construction engineer Stanisław Hempel, took part in an international competition for the design of the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva. Their concept was not awarded, but it was appreciated by Le Corbusier and other progressive architects affiliated with CIAM (Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne) – an international organisation working to improve the condition of cities. Szanajca, as one of Poland’s two delegates, was invited to take part in the activities of the congress.
During the Polish General Exhibition in Poznań in 1930, Szanajca and Lachert presented the functionalistic pavilion Centro Cementu, built of plastered wood (strikingly similar to concrete) and surrounded by small concrete architectural elements.
Social estates
Concepts for flexible architecture which adjusted itself to its users, and were convenient but also typified (and thus inexpensive), were elaborated in articles in the Praesens journal and echoed in the designs of the estates.
In 1926, ten designs for inexpensive housing by Szanajca, Lachert, and Lech Niemojewski were presented at the 6th East Expo in Lviv. These concepts gave rise to designs for residential dwellings based on the rules of functionality and typification, later expanded on in the designs of the WSM estate in Rakowiec by the Syrkuses.
ZUS Housing and Building Association
In the years 1929-1939, Szanajca worked at the Warsaw University of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture in Katedra Projektowania Hal Przestrzennych (editor’s translation: the Factory Hall Design Cathedral) as senior assistant (and, in practice, deputy) of Professor Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz, who was commuting from Kraków. In 1932 he became a full-time architect of the ZUS Housing and Building Association.
He developed many designs for ZUS, such as the Warsaw I bureau housing on 27 Mickiewicza Street (1930-31). In the massive towers resembling silos, the architect hid staircases, connected with the gallery-style construction of the rest of the building with the use of bridges. Not long after that, Warsaw II edifice was built (located at 20 Krasińskiego Street), as well as Warsaw IV, covered in wavy fibre cement lining (20 Mickiewicza Street, designed together with S. Brukalski).
In 1936, in collaboration with Lachert and Roman Piotrowski, Szanajca designed a colony of single-family terraced houses on Promyka and Dziennikarska streets for ZUS. Functional solutions, previously used in villas on Katowicka street, were introduced: utility rooms were hidden behind small windows and sizeable glazed surfaces offered a view of the garden. In the 1930s, ZUS also commissioned a sanatorium for those with tuberculosis, located in Tuszynek in the vicinity of Łódź (1937) and in Kruk, close to Gostyń (1938).
