The brief history of the Faculty of Architecture:

The Faculty of Architecture was opened in 1915 as the first Polish school of design established at University level. The main education idea of this Warsaw School of Architecture, as it came to be later called, was based on the integration of arts and construction techniques, including a wide scope of human sciences and a historic curriculum. Very quickly, this new school achieved international prominence. Names such as Rudolf Świerczyński, Barbara and Stanisław Brukalski or Helena Syrkus became well known to their contemporaries. The foundations of Urban Planning, the so-called ? Warsaw School of Architecture, as well as the Warsaw School of Architectural Drawing and Teaching of Landscape Design were also formed as early as in the 1920s. The scope of the education programme and the specific approach towards subjects taught at the Faculty evolved from the various views represented by professors educated in Germany, France, Italy and Russia. The professors were at the same time the authors of most of the public buildings constructed in Poland in those years.

During the Second World War, Faculty professors took active part in the preservation of our cultural heritage. The founder of the Team of Polish Architecture, professor Oskar Sosnowski, was wounded in the School?s courtyard while trying to save the archives containing invaluable, as it later proved, surveys of Polish Historic Buildings (e.g. the Warsaw Old City was reconstructed according to the information contained in the preserved archives). Many of the faculty?s staff were executed on Warsaw streets by the Nazis or died in concentration camps. Nevertheless, teaching and underground activities continued until the tragic Warsaw Uprising of 1944, when the Faculty building was destroyed and the courtyard used as a temporary burial grounds for insurgents.

The end of the Second World War brought other famous Polish Architects, including Romuald Gutt, Bohdan Lachert and Bohdan Pniewski, to participate in the reconstruction of the academic environment. Since most historic buildings had been destroyed, professors of our Faculty ? Piotr Biegański and Jan Zachwatowicz answered the need of the time by founding the so-called ? Polish School of Conservation, integrated with the Warsaw Faculty of Architecture, which drew on the rescued archives.

In later years Urban Planning was continued by Kazimierz Wejchert, Hanna Adamczewska-Wejchert and Zygmunt Skibniewski. The History of Town Planning was undertaken by Wacław Ostrowski, while one of the first post-war deans founded the Team of Rural Architecture and Urban Planning.

Although the Faculty of Architecture has expanded over the years, it is still small enough to encourage close contact between faculty members, graduate students and undergraduates. From the very beginning, the curriculum of the School of Architecture has always responded to changes in the profession and architectural education, providing students with courses that reflect contemporary and emerging issues in Architecture. Within this flexible academic framework, our School of Architecture has retained its commitment to original goals: providing undergraduates with a wide knowledge of art and technical as well as humanistic education and a strong foundation for additional studies in Architecture, and offering graduate students a comprehensive education in design, technology, conservation issues and the history and theories of architecture.