Warsaw Modernism – Bohdan Lachert

Abstract

Bohdan Lachert’s work contributed significantly to the development of modern architectural concepts of the 20th century and his creative identity is connected with the activities at the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology. He was one of the first students, later a Dean and lecturer, but also a theorist of architecture. His creative work, which was disrupted by the period of World War II, is invariably associated with the trend of modern avant-garde and leads a dialogue with the architecture of modernism. The dialogue is the subject of this article, the dialogue of the new residential architecture of Warsaw, in which Lachert presented his own interpretation of five rules of Le Corbusier’s modern architecture. The two stages of his work, a pre-war period with Józef Szanajca, and the post-war with the reality of socialist realism, create a unity since he remained faithful to the ideas of modernism. More importantly, however, he never changed his mind about the role of architecture as useful and practical, speaking about its utilitarian and artistic role at the same time but he also saw its importance in the constant pursuit of modernity. According to Lachert the understanding of modernity is related to eliminating discrepancies between the requirements of art and technology. Such a view of the role of architecture is illustrated in the examples of buildings as ‘the prototypes of the works of future generations’ of individual houses, the Muranów residential estate- one of the flagship works of the post-war architecture and other residential buildings in Warsaw. Lachert was an extraordinary creator, a predictable creator but at the same time difficult to define. He searched for a distinct expression of modern architecture, he experimented with material and form, which cannot be overlooked. He armed his great works with modernist patterns and expressive style, which became distinct and comprehensible within time in confrontation with spatial reality of his times.