Brutalism in Poland

Postwar Poland built prolifically in concrete, and alongside standardized housing the country produced genuinely inventive late modernist architecture, particularly from the 1960s to the 1980s. Wrocław became a center of experiment, where Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak designed the sculptural Plac Grunwaldzki Estate (1973), its curved concrete facades unlike anything else in the Eastern Bloc.

In Kraków, Krystyna Tołłoczko-Różyska created the Bunkier Sztuki (1965), a gallery with a rough board-marked concrete front, and the circular Rotunda Panoramy Racławickiej (1985) by Marek Dziekoński and Ewa Dziekońska gave Wrocław a purpose-built home for its panoramic painting. Polish brutalism has moved from neglect to growing appreciation, though demolitions such as Kraków's Hotel Forum debates continue.