From Socialist Realism to Modernism: Józef Zbigniew Polak - a Forgotten Champion on Poland’s Architectural Post-War Map

Abstract

The article concerns work by architect Józef Zbigniew Polak, who was the first Pole to win an international architectural competition in the Polish post-war era. As a lecturer, and graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology, he continued the design school of Prof. Bohdan Pniewski. Polak’s architectural creativity can be divided into several phases, which are in turn closely connected to various developmental periods of architecture in post-war Poland. His designs and architectural realizations are often overlooked by researchers, which is among others the result of his later long-term activity in other countries.