HOUSING ESTATE OF WORKERS SOCIETY IN WARSAW’S GROCHOW

KAROLINA MATYSIAK

Housing Estate of Workers Society in Warsaw’s Grochow is one of the characteristic examples of functional low-cost housing for the poor blue-collar families in the period between the Great War and World War II. The Society was founded in 1934 and until the outbreak of the second war initiated and built housing for the poorest strata of society. Small cheap housing for workers was to provide proper health conditions for its residents and was a part of a global movement and formed the continuation of activities already initiated in the 1920s by the Warsaw Housing Cooperative.
Despite its distinguish form the Grochow Housing Estate is considered as poorly researched subject.mIt is a typical example of this kind of construction, in which the living space was limited to a minimum, and educational and social activities as well as commonly used network of devices made residents move outside their occupied space. What has been left in resources and plans let us recreate what was not completed at the time of building. Among the planned buildings we can indicate 7 consecutive residential houses and a social building. Ground conditions, the specifics of the plot and the new rules clarify the origin of the typical connectors and separate blocks located at the top of each of the building where one could find such devices as common laundries, drying rooms and bathrooms. Buildings designed in the years 1937-1939 were slightly larger, when it comes to utility area, than allowed in the first years of activity of the Housing Society. The cause is the fact that the Society was found during the worst economic situation in Poland, and experience has shown that an apartment with an area of less than 30 m2, were too tight. Complex was incorrectly attributed to the authorship. Kept sources allow us to assign an object to another architect, as well as indicate sources of the error.

Keywords: Housing Estate, workers, low-cost housing, Grochow, social building