The design for the headquarters of Polish Radio in Warsaw – developed in 1938, although never realized – was part of a grand vision of expanding the centre of the capital for the return of the independent state. It is thus worthwhile for both political and architectural reasons.
Polish Radio began regular broadcasting on 18 April 1926 at 5:00 pm. That was when the radio announcer Halina Sztompkówna uttered the words ‘Hello, hello. Polish Radio Warsaw, frequency 480’ into a microphone, sitting in the first radio studio, which was located on the second floor of the building of the Landowners’ Credit Society in Warsaw (today the location of the Ethnographic Museum). In many ways, the pioneering undertaking of launching a public broadcasting station was a technical challenge, but it was also extremely important from a propaganda point of view. Radio was considered an important element of building national identity in a country that had regained its independence after more than 100 years.
Zbigniew Świętochowski, broadcasting a concert from records in the studio, 1937, photograph from ‘Cinema, Theatre, Cabaret in Prewar Poland: Artists, Places, Scandals’ (‘Kino, Teatr, Kabaret w Przedwojennej Polsce: Artyści, Miejsca, Skandale’), PWN Publishing, Warsaw, 2013
The vision of building a monumental, representative district in Warsaw with public buildings located along wide avenues and a powerful Temple of Divine Providence in the center was already coming into being at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1935, after the death of Józef Piłsudski, these theoretical assumptions began to be turned into architectural plans. Mokotowskie Field, which had recently been occupied by the airport, was to be the site of the impressive Marshal Józef Piłsudski district, with a monument to the leader of the state on the axis of the main representative road, testifying to the power of the reborn state. While the district itself was to house ministry and other most important offices, its outskirts were intended for future public institutions. And so, the headquarters of the dynamically developing Polish Radio was to be built on its southeastern end, in the quarter of today’s Boya-Żeleńskiego, Batorego, Puławska and Union of Lublin Square Streets. A closed competition for the design of the building was settled in 1938. The following architects submitted their designs: Józef Szanajca and Bohdan Lachert, Zygmunt Skibiński and Kazimierz Marczewski, Tadeusz Łobos, and Bohdan Pniewski. The jury gave the highest score to Pniewski’s proposal. Marek Czapelski, Pniewski’s monographer, believes that if the vision of the winner’s design had been implemented, it would have probably been one of the most interesting and best buildings in the architect’s oeuvre.
Design of Polish Radio’s edifice in Warsaw by Bohdan Pniewski, 1938, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)
Pniewski designed a complex for the needs of Polish Radio consisting of three buildings of 5, 8 and 21 storeys. The first one was the largest in terms of area. Although the lowest, this monumental block structure was to house 30 recording studios. The plan called for the creation of an observation deck on its roof, which was to be accessed by wide, decorative stairs added from the outside to the western façade. Halfway up the stairs, Pniewski also planned a platform with the entrance to the concert hall, which on the other side of the building was visible against the building’s body in the form of a semicircular ‘extension’. The heavy building with stone elevations was to be integrated by means of several connectors with an eight-storey building, where technical facilities were to be located. The whole was completed by the soaring tower of a 21-storey office building (a TV studio on its top floors was planned for the future).
Marek Czapelski, in Bohdan Pniewski: Warsaw Architect of the 20th Century (Bohdan Pniewski: Warszawski Architekt XX Wieku), highly appreciates the concept of radio buildings. He wrote:
Together with the designs for the Temple of Providence [Świątynia Opatrzności] and the residential complex of the Municipal Credit Society (Polish abbreviation: TKM), the radio complex was the third element of the Piłsudski district that was being developed by Pniewski. The edifice was especially closely related in terms of composition with the TKM. It seems that the Polish Radio team had a special place in this architect’s monumental vision of Warsaw. It was not only – as in the case of other projects, such as the Military Housing Fund [Fundusz Kwaterunku Wojskowego] or the Bank of Domestic Economy [Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego] – one of the components of a compact city development, but an independent element, having the urban value of a good, ‘monumental’ distance from the surrounding buildings, and also visually completing the vista of several main roads.
Bohdan Pniewski carefully planned not only the functional division of the complex or the interplay of shapes within it, but also the way of finishing individual buildings. The architect differentiated the appearance of the buildings by using stone cladding to cover the façades. Some were to be rusticated, supplemented with sculptural decorations, others Pniewski wanted finished with geometric patterns, while others were to be left plain. The façades of the skyscraper were to be decorated with vertical razor pilaster strips and high windows – in this way the skyscraper broke the horizontal arrangement of the two heavy lower parts of the complex. Researchers of the architecture of the interwar period agree that in the competition for the design of the headquarters of Polish Radio, Bohdan Pniewski submitted the best work in terms not only of functional layout but also of form. Digging the foundations for this investment began in 1939, and the completion of construction was planned for 1942. The outbreak of the war not only interrupted but buried the plan for the implementation of this unique complex.
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