Department of Architecture and Contemporary Art

Collection of contemporary architecture / collection of contemporary art

Collection of contemporary architecture (after 1945)

Collection of the department of contemporary architecture of the Museum of Architecture includes nearly 5,000 items, mostly design drawings (conceptual, competition or execution), as well as sketches and drawings from nature, compositional studies, a small number of architectural models and documents (certificates, identity cards and diplomas). In most cases, these items were donated to the museum by the authors or their heirs.

Romuald Loegler, a study of the design of the church in Rzeszow, 1981

If we look at the biographies of the architects whose works we have managed to collect within over five decades, a significant and interesting group will emerge among them - holders of a diploma of the Faculty of Architecture at the Lviv Polytechnic (WAPL). It includes Julian Duchowicz (1912-1972) and Zygmunt Majerski (1909-1979) - assistants at WAPL before 1939 and professors of the Faculty of Architecture at Silesian University of Technology in post-war Poland; Tadeusz Brzoza (1911-1978) - associated with the Faculty of Architecture of the Wroclaw University of Technology and Science since 1947; Andrzej Frydecki (1903-1989) – a WAPL employee until 1941 and a lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture of the Wroclaw University of Technology and Science since 1948. The group of WAPL graduates of also includes Tadeusz Teodorowicz- Todorowski (1907-2001), a co-founder and professor of the Faculty of Architecture at the Silesian University of Technology after the war. A small collection of his works includes, among others, a development concept for the Grunwaldzki Axis in Wroclaw (1951), as well as designs of the administrative and teaching structures of the Silesian University of Technology (1948-1973).

Another large group is formed by graduates of the Faculty of Architecture at the Wroclaw University of Technology and Science, most of whom became a part of academic staff at the very university. These include: Ewa Cieszyńska (1923-1972), specializing in landscape architecture and landscaping; Jacek Burzyński (1931-1966), a co-author of a prototype of Trzonolinowiec (line-based) residential building, realized in Wroclaw (1961-1963); Roman Tunikowski (1919-1982), an architect and urban planner, a co-author of Kosciuszko Residential District and Południe housing estate in Wroclaw in the 1950s, Piast housing estate in Bolesławiec and a development plan for the downtown district in Jelenia Gora (1960s); Maria and Stefan Müller, whose design of residential and services development of Jawor market (1957-1960) gained wide recognition. The list of distinguished artists in the post-war architectural community in Wroclaw is finished by Maria and Witold Molicki whose extensive and very interesting archive including designs of housing complexes, churches and theaters was donated recently.

Witold Lipiński, Waldemar Wawrzyniak, meteorological observatory on Śnieżka, second half of the 1960s

Witold J. Molicki, a model for the design of the Millennium Church of the Wroclaw Diocese, competition 1990

Due to their innovative and artistic qualities, the most valuable items from our collection include designs, sketches and drawings by:

• Maciej Nowicki (1910-1950), for years associated with the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology and the legendary Biuro Odbudowy Stolicy studio, and since 1947 - member of the international team of architects creating a design of the United Nations headquarters in New York;

• Jerzy Sołtan (1913-2005), a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and after moving to the US a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge and a dean of the local Faculty of Architecture (1967-1974);

• Jan Głuszak (1937-2001), an architect and a visionary, author of the futuristic designs of the 1960s, through which he sought spatial forms that would enable solving the problem of settlement on a global scale;

• Włodzimierz Gruszczyński (1906–1973), whose archive, with nearly 800 items, forms separate thematic groups: regional architecture (Podhale and Zakopane regions), the so-called touching architecture and designs for the development of Wawel Hill and the Main Market Square in Cracow;

• Władysław Czerny (1899–1976), a renowned architect and urban planner, associated with the Faculty of Architecture of the Gdansk University of Technology since 1947 and since 1964 with the Faculty of Architecture of the Wroclaw University of Technology and Science. The collection includes compositional studies and urban-architectural concepts of modern central districts, made in the 50s, 60s and 70s of the last century for Gdansk, Szczecin, Warsaw and Wroclaw;

• Romuald Loegler, a well-known Cracow architect, initiator and participant of many national and international architectural projects. The collection gathered in the museum, including a series of seven compositions under the name of Aesthetics of order from 1978 and a series of architectural pictures for the architect’s own designs (including sacred buildings, housing estates and individual houses), constitutes an interpretation of the author’s creative method, based on a spatial module - a cube .

Jerzy Sołtan and Zbigniew Ihnatowicz with their team, design of the Polish pavilion at Expo’58 in Brussels, 1957

Jan Głuszak, high housing unit with weather protection, 1962

The collections gathered in the department of contemporary architecture, along with documents donated by the architects or their heirs (articles, papers, notes and memories) and book collections accumulated over the years and currently available in the Museum of Architecture library, form a synthetic picture of the most important processes and breakthroughs in the history of Polish architecture after 1945.

Foreign architecture is represented in the collections of the Museum of Architecture by a valuable, though a small group of items, mainly from the studio of Le Corbusier (1887-1965), an architect and urban planner, a painter and theorist and one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century architecture; as well as Kisho Kurokawa (1934-2007 ), a co-founder, theorist and practitioner of the Metabolism Movement in Japan (1960). Over 80 blueprints set of Le Corbusier’s designs include drawings of La Tourette Dominican monastery (1952-1957) and a housing complex in Nantes (1954). Kisho Kurokawa’s collection of works includes a series of woodcuts Architecture in the world of imagination (1981), spatial bronze compositions entitled Symbiosis (1982) and spatial models, including Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo (around 1971), the building-synthesis of metabolism movement architecture.

Kisho Kurokawa, town hall in Waki, from the woodcut series Architecture in the World of Image, second half of the 1970s

Collection of contemporary art

Museum of Architecture in Wroclaw has an interesting collection of paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, textiles and glass, created in the twentieth century and the beginning of the current century. The collection, nowadays consisting of 1,100 objects, originally belonged to the Department of Modern Art Related to Architecture. Here we find the works of outstanding Polish artists: Henryk Stażewski, Maria Jarema, Mieczysław Janikowski, Stefan Gierowski, Adam Marczyński, Antoni Starczewski, Ryszard Winiarski, Jan Berdyszak, Jan Chwałczyk, Wanda Gołkowska, Zbigniew Dłubak, Jerzy Rosołowicz, Maciej Szańkowski, Edward Krasiński, Zdzisław Jurkiewicz, Maria Michałowska, Kajetan Sosnowski and Jan Ziemski.

HENRYK STAŻEWSKI - Blue relief , 1971

Despite the great diversity of works, resulting from individual artistic concepts and used techniques, the elements of the collection are connected by the procedure of their creation, so that you can clearly define the fundamental profile of the entire collection. The ideological basis for its creation was the conviction about similarities and interactions between contemporary art and architecture. Therefore, the collection includes rational works, based on criteria similar to those used in sciences and formally belonging mainly to the area of geometric abstraction.

JAN CHWAŁCZYK - P-4 spatial form, 1967

MARIA MICHAŁOWSKA - A red object, 1970

Among the spatial compositions, a particularly interesting group consists of works from the first two editions of Elbląg Biennale of Spatial Forms, donated to the Museum of Architecture by El art gallery. The works are metal models of sculptural forms, implemented on a larger scale in Elbląg city space. Extremely valuable are also designs of projects to be implemented in Wroclaw, made by Henryk Stażewski, Tadeusz Kantor and Władysława Hasior, who were the participants SYMPOZJUM WROCLAW’70 - one of the most important manifestations of conceptual art in Poland.

JERZY ROSOŁOWICZ - Two-sided relief II, 1967

Another group is created by works (paintings, drawings, graphics and posters) thematically related to architecture, created by both artists and architects. One example can be moody drawings and watercolors by an outstanding architecture historian Stanisław Nowakowski.

ADAM MARCZYŃSKI - Changing blue reflections, 1967

Department of contemporary art also covers contemporary arts and crafts and industrial design, which are elements of decor and furnishings. In this group, special attention should be given to furniture designed by prominent architects of the twentieth century - Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier and Kisho Kurokawa. Also the work of Polish artists - Władysław Wincze and Jerzy Skąpski - is worth mentioning. The collection is open and is constantly supplemented and updated with the latest acquisitions.

Collections

Department of Wroclaw Architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth century

The most important and essential part of the Department of Wroclaw Architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth century collection constitute the designs and architectural drawings from the former Plankammer, i.e. the magistrate office of building deputation. The drawings, collected from the beginning of the nineteenth century, mainly depict public city buildings, financed by the municipality, and later - since the 1870s - also buildings and major architectural complexes.