AGATA WAGNER

The Southern border of Pole Mokotowskie was developed from the beginning of nineteen-twenties by locating scientific institutions there – the beginnings of the planned university district. The design of the National Geological Institute (PIG) was prepared as the first one in 1920. Marian Lalewicz, designing the head office of the PIG, departed from the stylistically uniform architectural convention in the spirit of neoclassicism of the beginnings of 20^th century, from the time of his operations in St. Petersburg, for a syncretic composition of historical motives referring to various periods of the magnificence of Polish architecture of classical roots: renaissance, baroque, and classicism. The spatial composition of this huge, three-part building was derived from residential assumptions of the entre cour et jardin. However, the unfavourable post-war urban changes: resignation from the square in front of the entrance from the North and replacing it in the 1960s with residential development in the form of blocks of flats, obscuring the facade, which results in deformation and lack of understanding for the original spatial concept, and the impossibility of correct reception of this outstanding masterpiece of the Warsaw architecture of the interwar period.