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Peter Martyn


1. Warsaw, panorama of the 'CBD' as viewed from the
top storey of a 1960s housing błock at the back of
Theatre Square, summer 2002

Successive Watershed?
In Warsaw a latent arena can be said to exist for the encouraging of social and civic responsibility
through public debate and confrontation on key issues relating to architectural design and urban
planning. This potential civic forum may become especially animated when wind of significant
change is in the air. Beyond the universally increasing accessibility through computer technology
to innumerous sources of not necessarily useful information, the past year or so has witnessed a
wealth of open gatherings attended by a wide spectrum of professional and student architects,
municipal employees, business people, journalists, conservators, artists, theoreticians, academics
and any variety of other individuals.2

symbolised in the 'reconstruction', which was widely acclaimed at the time, of the prewar Town Hall's frontal and
selected side elevations as a stylised screen wall concealing from the 'historie' edifices of Theatre Square the new and
architecturally quite unremarkable headquarters of two Western business-financial corporations (one American, the
other [West] European); cf, e.g.: M. KWIATKOWSKI, Round the Town Hall Tower, Warsaw 2000.

2 Such forms of more or less formal public debate, involving professionals and specialists in a number of humanist,
social and polytechnical fields, are an optimistic sign that a civic forum capable of responding to the sheer enormity of
changes being brought about in Warsaw exists. The more established institutions, hosting lectures and presentations as
well as organising symposia and exhibitions, with the potential to act as focal points of public debate, include the Centre
of Modern Art housed in the former Ujazdów Castle, Zachęta, Royal Castle, various institutes and departments of
Warsaw University, Warsaw Polytechnic (officially the city's Technical University: WUT) and Polish Academy of Scien-
ces (PAN), as well as the more professionally-orientated Association of Polish Architects (SARP) and Association of
Polish Town Planners (TUP). The latter organisation launched its own monthly periodical, 'Urbanista' in January 2003.
To celebrate its 80th anniversary, TUP staged the first 'All-Polish Congress of Town Planning' - not in Warsaw but
Gdańsk. In a dispatch addressed to the 300 or so participants, President Kwaśniewski stated his conviction that 'the
Poles wish to live in modern towns/cities, well-run, congenial to their inhabitants, and ensuring comfort on a daily
basis'. 'Architektura' provides up-to-date reports and commentaries on some of the more innovative as well as presti-
gious designs and developments being carried out, more than anywhere else, in the capital. With an active, committed
editorial team led by E. Porębska, this monthly magazine, sponsored by the builders' review, 'Murator', presents ano-
ther potential focal point of activity in whatever can be said to exist of an urban community for people determined not to
be reduced to the role of passive spectators to all-embracing urban transmutation. The variety of information relating to
Warsaw on the Internet, available to anyone anywhere in the world with access to the necessary technology, is already
considerable and growing by the day. Cf., e.g: the municipal council (http://um.warszawa.pl.), SARP http://warsza-
wa.sarp.org.pl., 'Architektura' (www.architektura-murator.pl) and 'Urbanista' (www.urbanista.pl) websites.