Benutzerspezifische Werkzeuge

Fellows und Mitarbeitende des ZI sowie Gastwissenschaftlerinnen und Gastwissenschaftler berichten über laufende Arbeiten. Die offene Form des Workshops ermöglicht eine intensive Diskussion.

During his fellowship at ZI, Adam Przywara is working on the manuscript for his first monograph, Second Materiality of Warsaw: Reuse, Recycling, and Landfilling in Postwar Architecture. Adam will present the book project, addressing the challenges he has encountered and discussing its relevance for historiography and contemporary debates on architecture and the environment.

The book focuses on Warsaw, the capital of Poland, which was radically transformed by six years of World War II and German occupation into an alien landscape of ruins. It examines how the defining feature of that environment – rubble – became the material basis for postwar reconstruction. The narrative follows state officials, architects, engineers, and residents as they engage in salvaging, reusing, and recycling rubble. At the same time, the book aims to demonstrate how the sheer mass of rubble, in its material agency, shaped the history of postwar architecture in Central and Eastern Europe.

 The monograph draws on original primary sources from archives across Poland and Europe, as well as visual material gathered while curating the major historical exhibition Rising from Rubble: Warsaw 1945–1949 at the Museum of Warsaw (2023). It positions postwar Warsaw as a key site for historicizing practices of reuse, recycling, and landfilling, contributing both to historical knowledge and to contemporary debates on circular architecture and sustainable construction.

[Caption: Machine for processing rubble into aggregates and sands, and production of rubble-concrete blocks. Over a dozen of such machines bought in Zurich arrived in Warsaw in the summer of 1947, because of the trade agreement between the Polish and Swiss governments. Collection of Military Press Agency, National Digital Archive (Public Domain)]