The ambiguity hidden behind this exclamation – borrowed from Roman Załuski’s film Galimatias, czyli kogel-mogel II – perfectly sums up the architectural reality of that time. On the one hand, the 1990s were a decade of spectacle and grandeur; on the other, transience and scarcity were embedded in its very DNA. How could one not get lost amid these contradictions?

A Guide to Warsaw’s 90s Architecture presents 94 structures completed or designed during that peroid. There are well-known buildings among them – such as the University of Warsaw Library or the Sobieski Hotel – as well as those still waiting to be discovered – for example, the residential complex on Konstancińska Street or the office building on Jordanowska Street. The context for these buildings is outlined in an extensive introduction, in which the author attempts to explain why a given building stands in a specific location, why it looks the way it does, and whether it is truly postmodern.

Our book is not an atlas of architectural curiosities, though Aleksandra Stępień-Dąbrowska does not shy away from vivid language. Nor is it a proposal for a Post-Socialist canon, though the structures were selected to present a reasonably comprehensive cross-section of the design trends of the time. Rather, it is a collection of stories about who we were not so long ago and who we dreamed of becoming. Perhaps this is the last chance to hear them before many buildings from the 1990s disappear irrevocably from the city map.

The book is available only in Polish.

Aleksandra Stępień-Dąbrowska – art historian and reasercher interested in 20th-century architecture. She has published in Autoportret. A Quarterly on Good Space, Skarpa Warszawska, Kronika Warszawy, as well as in anthologies “Postmodernizm polski. Architektura i urbanistyka” (2013) and “Światłoczuły modernizm. Osiedla społeczne warszawskiego Koła” (2021). In 2017, she was awarded an artistic scholarship from the City of Warsaw. Since 2021, she has been co-coordinating the project ARCHIwum Warszawy lat 90 [Archive of Warsaw in the 1990s], which has resulted in a virtual map of the capital’s architecture during the transformation period.

Jakby luksusowo. Przewodnik po architekturze Warszawy lat 90. [Kinda luxurious. A Guide to Warsaw’s 90s Architecture]
Author: Aleksandra Stępień-Dąbrowska
Series: Przewodniki [Guides]
Book design: kilku.com (Idalia Smyczyńska and Robert Zając)
Publisher: National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning, Warsaw 2021
ISBN: 978-83-960286-8-6
Price: 55 zł