Guided tour with Varsovians
Maria Sołtys guides through the "Reconstruction Disputes" exhibition

During the Saturday walk around the “Reconstruction Disputes” exhibition, an architect Maria Sołtys, who represents the Warsaw Branch of the Polish Association of Architects, will be talking about urban plans that represent the first stage of preparing urban investments.

They belong to external conditions of engineering and architectural projects, since they determine directions and regulate principles of the city’s spatial development and, in the event of wartime destruction – its reconstruction. 

There is a merely thirty-year interval between the reconstruction of the Capital City of Warsaw from destruction caused by World War II and the first planning task commissioned by the City Board under German occupation in 1916 to the Architects Group at the Association of Technicians in Warsaw. This task had been preceded by the preparation of a reconstruction plan for Kalisz, destroyed at the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914. Initial studies and a sketch of the regulation plan for the Capital City of Warsaw was drawn up according to the abovementioned principles, which have been applicable in terms of substance in the field of spatial planning to this day. 

The first step was, and continues to be, the recognition of a current state of the city, devastated by the invader’s policy as well as wartime destruction and contributions policy imposed by the occupant. From the point of view of urban planning – the reconstruction dispute in Warsaw began in 1916.