WALDEMAR BARANIEWSKI

After World War 2, plans to rebuild the centre of Warsaw were connected with the political objective to transform the „class” aspect of the city's central quarter. Downtown Warsaw was to see monumental housing estates for workers and state-owned shopping and service areas. The first attempt (and the only one realized on this scale) was the construction of the Marszałkowska Housing Estate known as MDM. It was to lay the foundations for new urban planning and socialist architecture. The monumental, widened Marszałkowska street was to run from the centre to Unii square, through a brand-new central square (now Konstytucji square). The necessity to preserve and reconstruct the Church of the Saviour (Zbawiciela) caused spatial complications, resulting from the ideological conflict between a temple and socialist housing. There was an attempt to hide the church behind a high-rise block or neutralize it with sculptures. A lack of formal examples and decisions on the theme of the sculptures meant that the decorations finally realized for MDM have the nature of camouflage and do not carry the intended radical ideology.

KEY WORDS

Warsaw, Marszałkowska Residential District, 20^th century architecture, socialist realism