Industrial buildings from the 1960s in the context of their potential for reuse. Example of the Warsaw Pump Factory building

Abstract

Following 1945, industrial construction in Poland was subject to strict guidelines of economic planning. In the period in which the pseudo-classical doctrine of socialist realism was in effect, it represented one of the few exceptions not subject to the mandatory use of decoration that referred to the idea of ‘the form and content of socialist realism’. In this context, the industrial buildings erected in the 1950s and early 1960s in Poland stand today as examples of original and modern technical thought. The solutions applied in the buildings often bear the features of an experimental search for new, optimal solutions for the erection of large, single-space halls of production plants. Thus, the period of industrial construction development in the 1950s and 1960s was a time of special and close cooperation between architects and constructors, to which industrial buildings are visible testimony. The ambition of the designers of the time was to arrive at the best possible structural solutions and to make them manifest in architectural form, articulation, and composition, while at the same time ensuring usability - consistent with the purpose of the facility. However, it ought to be emphasised that designers sought aesthetics of the structural solutions that were not reduced to mere technical aspects, but co-created the architecture of the building. The present article attempts to assess the solutions applied in the building of the Warsaw Pump Factory at ul. Odlewnicza in Warsaw. Consideration is given to the validity and potential for protection and re-use of the industrial facility whose production process has been reduced or extinguished. The article contains an analysis of valuable structural and material solutions, which testify to its innovativeness and significance for the development of modern industrial architecture. The premise of the article is to analyse the indicated facility from the point of view of the legitimacy of its protection or reuse to formulate conclusions for wider application in facilities of this type.