Wroclaw and prefabricated concrete housing [PHOTOS]

(click to see the gallery) At the beginning of the 1970s, Poland's post-war baby boomers began entering into adulthood. Young people wanted to set up families, but they had nowhere to live. Communist Poland was hardly able to meet the demand. For fear of a snowball effect, Edward Gierek's cabinet took the challenge to solve the problem at the end of 1970. For more photographs, join us on Facebook: Unforgettable Wroclaw. "One way to improve the capacity was to use prefabricated concrete. The so-called "house factories" would turn-out ready-made modules that were later assemble into apartment blocks. First such factories were set up in Wroclaw in 1971 in ul Borowska and in Popowice. The factory in ul Strzegomska began operation three years later. While 10 thousand rooms were completed in Wroclaw in already 1972, the record breaking number of 27 thousand was turned out in 1979," says Piotr Sroka, PhD from the Documentation Section of the Remembrance and Future Centre.. ">

(click to see the gallery)

The construction of Barbara and Dorota housing estates located along ul Komandorska was one of the most important housing projects in the mid-1970s. Over 10 thousand rooms were completed from 1970-1973 in the area.

"The residents must have been elated to have an apartment of their own. But their life was hardly easy at the beginning. People started to move in before all the necessary facilities were created, including roads, pavements, shops and services as well as schools and nurseries. 'You had to cover a long distance to do your shopping,' reads "Wieczór Wroclawia" daily. People in other housing estates encountered similar problems," adds Piotr Sroka, PhD.

Prefabricated concrete and housing in Wroclaw

Already in 1973, the west side of the city, including Gądów Mały and Popowice, were transformed into Wroclaw's main construction site. Designed by Witold Jerzy Molicki, the Popowice estate was intended to serve as many as 17.5 thousand people. The apartment blocks, which ranged from four to eleven storeys in height, were built with characteristic balconies that added an "undulating" quality to their elevations. The city authorities took pride in the Popowice estate. However, the estate was eclipsed in the latter part of the 1970s by another of Molicki's designs, namely that of the Polish-Soviet Friendship Estate between ul Krzycka and Przyjaźni. Completed in 1976-1977, the estate was created with segments of varying height arranged on a semi-circular plan. According to "Wieczór Wrocławia", W.J. Molicki's design demonstrated that "you can use prefabricated concrete to create something intriguing, functional and far from monotonous, which is rampant in contemporary architecture." Sadly, the estate was one of the rare exceptions to this rule (along with Wroclaw's "Manhattan in Plac Grunwaldzki, which was designed in the 1960s and completed in the following decade). Designed to solve the housing predicament, prefabricated concrete technology inflicted irreparable damage to Polish cities.