The multifamily building Sprzeczna 4 is a manifest of prefabrication.

© Juliusz Sokołowski

This prototypical, demonstration building ordered in our office was designed to disenchant prefabrication – a technology compromised in Poland in the communism era by the large-panel housing estates.

© Juliusz Sokołowski

Sprzeczna 4 is simple in its form, written into the plot shape. Its stepping elevation follows the main street buildings line, creating an open facade with little balconies and side terraces, offering open spaces.

© Juliusz Sokołowski

Red concrete skin of the building has been designed as a modern response to the brick buildings in the district. On some parts of the external and internal concrete walls we proposed to imprint a soft pattern.

© Juliusz Sokołowski

The building is located in the 19th century, destroyed district of Warsaw, full of tenements without plasters, on a narrow plot with a crooked front.

© Juliusz Sokołowski

They chose a place that is the most unobvious place for prefabricated construction in order to show that the possibilities and advantages of prefabrication.

The only logical way to build on such a narrow plot is to build deep into the plot. We designed a building perpendicular to the street, and along the street we designed only loggias and balconies.

The finished building was made of individual blocks in 4.5 months. No scaffolding, plastering, window insertion.

The building has no decorations, it is structured and consists only of prefabricates.

Details. Balcony. The building has no decorations, it is structured and consists only of prefabricates.

A lot of prefabricated elements are designed individually, some of them with Warsaw artists.

The building was deliberately erected on a plot of land that apparently does not fit the stereotype of prefabrication: tiny, rambling and located in a compact 19th century frontage development. Consciously, at times unreasonably, all the available prefabrication technologies were applied: exposed coloured concrete, impression and reliefs, electrical installations integrated into the walls, heating ceilings and many more. The result is a building assembled from numerous large-size elements produced in a factory, not built with the hands of labourers on a construction site. The facility folded from large-size elements is not finished and it does not incorporate any accessories or decorations. It is a sincere story about what a building is, what it is made of and how it works.

Sprzeczna 4 has become an occasion to discuss current issues in housing construction. Not only does it stand as a polemic against the semi-feudal system of housing construction, which dates back to the 19th century and relies on the labor of poorly paid immigrants. It has also been exemplary in its implementation of fair business practices and appeals to society’s social responsibility with its low-cost technology.

precast sandwich concrete walls with insulation and architectural concrete elevation; aluminum glazing; timber windows; steel balustrades; timber terraces