Przełom postmodernistyczny w architekturze polskiej: odbudowa Starego Miasta w Elblągu

Abstract

A post-modern twist in Polish architecture: the rebuilding of Elbląg’s Old Town

Almost all major Polish historical old towns, with the exception of Cracow, were destroyed during the Second World War. After the war most of them were rebuilt in their historical forms, although Elbląg’s Old Town remained in ruins until the beginning of the 1980s. The plans to rebuild it drafted from the late 1950s until the late 1970s were modernist in terms of architectural forms. But because of the postmodern direction in world architecture at the beginning of the 1970s and the strong criticism of Polish (communist) modern movement in the period of ‘Solidarity’ in the years 1980–1981, in 1983 the communist government decided to rebuild Elbląg’s Old Town in postmodern forms. This was the strongest impulse in the postmodern twist in Polish architecture, which was seen on a wider scale after the political transition of Poland in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.