To town for the leaving-do of a colleague (always a sad occasion when a excellent, competent and all-round nice person moves on) a beautiful cloudless sky brings on that 'crushed-velvet dusk in the city of my dreams' vibe again. Warsaw's city centre has developed fantastically over the past three decades, its skyline once dominated by Stalin's Palace of Culture slowly becoming crowded out by new skyscrapers. Little by little, Warsaw's central business district is shifting westward, its epicentre no longer focused around the axis of ulica Marszałkowska. Rondo ONZ ('United Nations Roundabout') and aleja Jana Pawła II now constitute the eastern edge of the CBD, and it's around here that I strolled yesterday evening.
Below: Rondo ONZ, an entrance to the Line 2 Metro station in the foreground. Note cycle path snaking round it. Two pizza delivery guys are setting off with their orders. To the left, the Ilmet building, completed in 1997, destined to be pulled down and replaced by a taller building in 2011, and still standing. The giant rotating Mercedes-Benz logo on the roof was taken down in 2021 (a shame!); demolition was postponed because of one thing after another, but as you can see, there are no longer any tenants in the building (no lights on) and new plans to dismantle it and build something new in its place were announced in 2023. Plans for building a 188m-tall skyscraper, Warsaw One, have been announced by developer Skanska, with construction due to start in 2026, which suggests that the Ilmet building will finally be torn down sometime this year.
Night falls. Below: a view of Warsaw largely unchanged since the 1970s, though with more (and bigger) cars. A reminder of the time when the Palace of Culture, seen here flanked by postwar apartment blocks, was the only tall building in Warsaw.
This time nine years ago:
Searching for growth
This time 12 years ago:
The more it snows - a decent snowfall in Warsaw
This time 13 years ago:
A Dream Too Far - short story
This time 14 years ago:
Compositions in white, blue and gold
This time 15 years ago:
Dobra and the road
This time 16 years ago:
Polish air force plane full of VIPs crashes on landing in bad weather
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2 comments:
It’s not the bitterness caused by my loss of an economic stake in Warsaw that I speak through when I say that the buildings you refer to, synonymous with modern Warsaw, are an abomination but an offence to the sense of beauty. The most aesthetically pleasing “skyscrapers” in Warsaw are the Palace of Culture and the Prudential Building, and I can argue anyone under the table who says otherwise. The Warsaw skyline has been marred by copies of the Seagram Building (NY, 1958) on steroids, because, like the rest of the world, Poland joined the game late and wanted to sate its appetite for what it always believed was a symbol of America when that symbol in America had long been discredited. And partly because these buildings are cheap to build. They are though like modern car design – arrogant and hostile. Such Guernicas only mean that there will be a war soon, as nature abhors ugliness. To be fair, ugliness in American architecture is alive and well today but there has been a parallel trend where outstandingly beautiful modern buildings have been built in cities like New York and Chicago.
Everyone to their own tastes, de gustibus non disputandum est and whatnot. Mies van der Rohe can't be present in every mid-sized city. My father, a civil engineer, on his return to his native Warsaw after 43 years, was absolutely delighted to see so many modern skyscrapers. At dusk on a sunny day in January, they captivate my imagination.
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