SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSING COMPLEX NEAR THE MOKOTÓW FORT IN WARSAW. HISTORY, STATE OF PRESERVAI ION AND CONSERVATOR S REQUIREMENTS

As early as in 1939, the villa complex of the Off leers’ Housing and Residential Co-operative “Dom”, designed circa 1925 around the Mokotów Fort in Warsaw, formed a small modern housing estate built up with single-family houses representing various architectural traditions, embedded in the topography of the esplanade of the fort, connected by a bus line with the Old Town, provided with municipal infrastructure, a police station, a newsstand and two shops. The history of almost 80 years of construction of the housing complex near the Mokotów Fort presented in this article shows both the process of shaping the foundations of its urban design and architecture in years 1931-1939, architectural and urban developments of the estate in the 1950s and the 1960s, and finally, successive stages of the increasing degradation of its historic fabric which began at the end of the 1960s, thus demonstrating clearly that the growing dynamics and radicalism of its transformation requires conservators to take effective cure of this residential complex. The scope of such care would make it possible to retain the architectural values of various types of single-family houses preserved within its boundaries that are characteristic of several separated pre-war and postwar style formations, and to retain the historic urban complex of the housing estate and its villa & garden nature and climate, which results undoubtedly from its unique location within Warsaw. This article constitutes the first attempt made in the context of the Resolution of the Council of the Warsaw Capital City in 2009 on the commencement of preparing the local spatial development plan for the Wyględów district to present in an orderly manner our overall knowledge of the history of construction and post-war development of the co-operative housing complex near the Mokotów Fort, with special regard to its architecture and urban design, and to provide a detailed diagnosis of the state of preservation of the estate and to use it as a basis for determining effective rules of conservator’s protection that would also suit the specific architectural and urban values and location of the estate