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Warsaw Post-War Reconstruction to Present

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#1 · (Edited)
"It is one of the most wonderful urban celebrations found anywhere in the world"

Anthony M. Tung, Preservation of the World's Great Cities

"She defies the storm" (Ancient Warsaw motto)

1.
This thread will start with the herculanean efforts of the BOS (Biuro Odbudowy Stolicy - Bureau for the Reconstruction of Capital) and the newly created Pracownie Konserwacji Zabytkow (Ateliers for the Conservation of Cultural Property) in the aftermath of World War II and its later incarnations and on reconstruction efforts during the communist era to liberation and to the present.

It is a testament and homage first of all to those architects, engineers, planners and everyday Varsovians who sacrifised the better part of their lives to rebuild Poland's capital, but will also recount tremendous efforts by Polonia and people from other countries around the world who assisted in the greatest urban reconstruction effort of the 20th century of this scale.

The results may be mixed and controversial, a reflection of the ideological, cultural and political ferment that existed in Europe and especially in then Soviet occupied Central and Eastern Europe between the survivors of the pre-war regime, communists, conservators of varying opinions on how to rebuild and Corbusian modernists. Not all that the BOS did was right viewed through the prism of the present-day, many surviving masterpieces of architecture were torn down under their direction post war for ideological reasons more than technical, no one knows for sure, and rebuilt in a "purer" earlier version or a socialist realist-inspired version and some were restored as modern buildings stripped of details, such was the thinking in those days. Far worse outcomes could have befallen Warsaw if those who advocated building an entirely new modern city had won the day. Atleast today we see before us an amalgam of many different architectural styles and urban design philosophies that manage to survive as a testament to Warsaw's turbulent and very rich history.

Anyone with knowledge and photos that document this period is welcome to contribute. Before and afters are welcome, but it would be great to see photos of actual construction and the methods they used.

Basic Facts
(taken mainly from A. Ciborowski's Warsaw A City Destroyed and Rebuilt):


  • In january 1945, the volume or rubble totalled 720 million cubic feet

  • 98,000 mines and shells were removed from the ruins of the city and 1,000 buildings were cleared of mines by sappers, an additional several hundred thousand have been cleared since

  • War losses amounted to 800,000 people killed and 85 percent of the city destroyed



Assessment of Situation and First Works




Founding, Initial Directives and Organizational Structure of the BOS (Office for the Reconstruction of the Capital)

Every big journey starts with ....first page





Nomination of Jan Zachwatowicz as Director of BOS



Call to Polish Architects



New headquarters established



Initial Staff Roster



Organizational Structure








The first week

 
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#750 ·
yes, all of that is coming in the summer and fall I suspect....heritage conservators move very slowly in Europe :)
 
#751 · (Edited)
rychlik said:
From 1948. Commies destroyed it in the '50's.
The action of demolishing many pre-war buildings that were only partly damaged and thus fit for reconstruction (mainly representing art nouveau/eclectic architecture) was planned and directed not by some "commies", but by well-known pre-war Polish architects. And, a lot of the destruction work was carried out by private-owned demolition firms (shortly after the war). True, the communist authorities despised "bourgeois" architecture of the late 19th/early 20th centuries, but neither was it appreciated in the pre-war period in Poland, when some demolitions and transformations (e.g., destruction of ornaments) were also done. Btw, neither was the architecture in question respected in Western democratic countries, and for a quite long time (some of it was demolished, for example, in Stockholm many years after WW2). To blame the communists for everything what was wrong in post-war Warsaw, is a misleading simplification of history.

Urbanista1 said:
Amazing footage rychlik. I was stunned by the quality, thought it was a film re-enacting the Uprising...heart breaking as always, especially the part about welcoming Soviet soldiers afterwards, such naive hope soon to be followed by brutal soul crushing betrayal, which is what has forged the Polish personality today.
The footage shown is nothing new. All those scenes have been publicly known for many years - in black and white. Meaning, that the film has been recently coloured.

And, the scene of crowds greeting Soviet soldiers on streets shows the liberation of Lodz, not Warsaw. Both cities were taken by the Soviets long after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, therefore, all scenes with Soviet soldiers have nothing to do with the Uprising anyway.
 
#752 ·
I like these pics by Polex showing the pre-war street line of Marszalkowska moved back to make way for socialist realist MDM centre and Plac Konstytucji:



 
#753 ·
Anyone visiting Warsaw this summer should check out the sculptures, bas reliefs and mosaics that adorn the socialist realist buildings around Plac Konstytucji (at the southern end of Marszalkowska Street). Not just hard core socialist iconography, but some amazing folk motifs as well:















































 
#754 ·
A fascinating film of pre-war Poland produced by the daughter of Marie Curie-Sklodowska. Krakow at 15 min and Warsaw at 23 min:

Pre-War Poland
 
#760 ·
New development at the corner of Zelazna and Grzybowska will include reconstruction of the iconic Warsaw ghetto buildings that were dismantled last year brick-by-brick, catalogued and warehoused in preparation for their eventual reconstruction:



This small factory complex has already been restored (don't have up-to-date pics)



New development with restored factory walls on the right hand side of the development:





Ground floor retail will help to revitalize street life in this area:

 
#761 ·
Love this pic...the restoration of the old Warsaw against the backdrop of the emerging Warsaw:



thx michal1701

and here, the mistakes of the past gradually engulfed by progress (interpret as you wish):

 
#767 ·
it lost lots of the old glory but it's acquiring a new scale of glory...a lot of the new construction is really well designed and innovative.
 
#769 ·
Some discussion. Kind of a sad article:

Warsaw's National Stadium a symbol of progress but also the latest threat to a historic area

WARSAW, Poland - The National Stadium in Poland, built for the 2012 European Championship, rises in the shape of a wicker basket over one of Warsaw's most popular neighbourhoods: Saska Kepa, an enclave of towering trees and architectural gems dating back to the 1920s.
To some, the colossal stadium — with a retractable fiberglass roof and a shimmery red-and-white facade in the colours of the national flag — is a source of pride, a symbol of a capitalist surge that has remade the country since it threw off communism in 1989.
To others, the 58,000-seat arena is an eyesore and the latest affront to a unique neighbourhood already threatened by a rising class of entrepreneurs and developers. Proof, if any more was needed, of how breakneck economic growth can jeopardize a vulnerable architectural heritage.
"It's like a big giant UFO that landed nearby," complains Marcin Eckert, a 40-year-old tax lawyer whose view at breakfast is now dominated by the stadium. Says his wife, Dorota Jurkiewicz-Eckert: "We feel we have been squashed by an elephant."
Any change to historic areas in Warsaw provokes strong emotions because of how little survived World War II. Saska Kepa, an exclusive area before the war that was home to doctors and lawyers and other upper middle-class professionals, has the unique distinction of being the city's only prestigious neighbourhood to survive in its entirety.
But it's been under attack ever since.
During communism, several unsightly apartment blocks went up across the neighbourhood, built by people who "did not understand the meaning and beauty of the place," said Marta Lesniakowska, a historian of architecture with the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Capitalism hasn't been kind either. A spectacular modernist villa built in 1929 was torn down to widen a road. A square, Plac Przymierza, disappeared under a complex of apartments and shops that dwarf surrounding homes. Now developers are busy dismantling or radically restructuring prewar homes to build much larger structures — changes that erode their historic look and swallow up leafy plots that long gave the area a distinctive garden city feel.
"This is not the Saska Kepa of my childhood," says Jurkiewicz-Eckert, a 40-year-old art historian. She and her husband are members of a group trying to preserve the neighbourhood, Zielona Saska Kepa — meaning Green Saska Kepa. "We are on the way to losing the old-fashioned atmosphere of the place. And it's because of the greed of the developers."
Saska Kepa — where maple, ash and linden trees give shade to prewar homes and trendy restaurants — has the unusual distinction of surviving the war in its entirety because of its location on the eastern bank of the Vistula River, where Soviet troops sat idly during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the occupying German forces. Polish insurgents hoped for the support of the Red Army, which by that time had made it to Warsaw in its westward push that defeated Hitler. But Soviet leader Joseph Stalin preferred to let the Germans destroy the city and its people, knowing they would have also become a democratic opposition to Moscow's postwar domination.
Hitler's forces, in retribution for the revolt, razed most of the city to the ground. During the decades of Soviet control that followed, the capital was rebuilt in a grey and heavy Stalinist style that is still predominant. Over the past two decades the city has been transformed again by glass-skinned skyscrapers.
Despite its architectural decline, Saska Kepa boasts some of the most expensive real estate in the city of 1.7 million people. The city centre is only a couple of tram stops away across the river, yet a small-town residential stillness reigns over its smaller streets, quiet but for the sound of birds and dogs, the air in spring fragrant with lilacs.
Streets are lined with embassies and family homes, some built in the style of classical Polish manor houses and others in the modernist Bauhaus style pioneered by Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. It is one that is simple, boxy and restrained but for the odd bit of whimsy: a curved outdoor staircase here, circular submarine-style windows there.
Elsewhere the style is celebrated: in Germany, where it arose in 1919; in Tel Aviv, where Jews who fled Europe in the 1930s made their architectural mark; in the Czech city of Brno, where the recently renovated Villa Tugendhat of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is an iconic example of modernism. The villa and Tel Aviv's modernist buildings have been declared world heritage sites by UNESCO.
Yet the simple modernist style of usually white or grey homes isn't always valued in Poland. Sometimes their understated beauty doesn't come through because they are rundown, their owners unable to afford restoration work. It also doesn't help that the modernist buildings have an architectural austerity that reminds some of the also simple but bleaker style favoured by the communists.
"People were starved through the communist period of detail and colour," said Lidia Polubiec, an art historian and local resident trying to protect the neighbourhood. "Often they don't understand the value of simplicity."
Polubiec has witnessed residents throwing away decades-old oak doors and beautiful brass door handles that are in bad shape, replacing them with cheap modern fixtures rather than trying to salvage the old ones. She is also fighting a wave of homes being repainted in "fruit- and yogurt-colored pinks, buttery yellows, greens — colours totally unsuited to the area and style of the buildings."
Barbara Jezierska, a conservation official in the Warsaw region until last year, says the devastation of historic homes is happening across the city and beyond.
She has witnessed wealthy Poles buying historic homes in older neighbourhoods and then tearing them down to build larger modern homes. Sometimes homes burn down mysteriously after owners are denied permission to alter historically protected structures — leaving them then free to proceed.
"Hitler began ruining this city, then Stalin took over and now the Poles are doing it," Jezierska said bitterly.
Lesniakowska said part of the problem, aside from a general lack of respect for "refined" architecture, is that although Saska Kepa has been designated a historic district, not all individual buildings are protected.
Warsaw's modernist homes are a testament to a Jewish world that was wiped out during the Holocaust. Many of the original owners and their architects were Jewish. One, Maksymilian Goldberg, designed several family homes in Saska Kepa before he perished in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. Another, Lucjan Korngold, fled early enough and ended up in Brazil, where he designed buildings in Sao Paolo.
"By destroying Saska Kepa, the developers are also destroying a part of Poland's Jewish history," said Katarzyna Shannon, 44, a resident and a co-founder of Zielona Saska Kepa. She walks her dog regularly along its streets, keeping her eye out for signs of construction work — vigilance that has helped stop the transformation of a couple of homes.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sp...test-threat-to-a-historic-area-157752905.html
 
#771 · (Edited)
#775 ·
nice job rychlik. unfortunately they picked the wrong architect who lacked experience at projects at this scale. the whole selection process was flawed....only experienced architects should have been allowed to the final stage. a shorter and faster competition is starting in a few months.
 
#777 ·
yes it will be international, don't believe it was a conspiracy, they really needed this project to revitalize Plac Defilad, but this guy couldn't deliver, 4 years of delays in producing a finished project, lots of excuses. having said that, the project did look interesting.
 
#778 ·




 
#779 · (Edited)
Restoration of the Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1409, 1492-97, tower - 1581, rebuilt after Swedish invasions - 1690, 1709-34 Chapel of the Virgin Mary of Szkaplerz, 1726 - Chapel of St. Barbara, interiors remodelled 1851-58, numerous alterations to exterior during 1800's)

Pre-war



The church suffered damage during the war mainly to its nave and part of the tower. Post war it went through a regothicization shedding its neo-romasque accretions

2003



Now

 
#781 ·
yes, that's right intervention, thanks for the clarification, nice that you're paying attention :)
 
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