Architect, urban planner, educator
Kaja Schelker, last edited on 03.03.2025
Name:
Helena Syrkus
Life Dates:
1900–1982
Country:
Field of expertise:
Architect, urban planner, educator
Education:
Warsaw University of Technology
Helena Syrkus, née Helena Eliasberg, also known as Niemirowska, was born on 14 May 1900 and died on 19 November 1982, both in Warsaw. She was an urban planner, architect, professor at the Warsaw University of Technology at the Faculty of Architecture, member of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and co-founder of the Polish avant-garde group Praesens.
She studied architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology at the Faculty of Architecture from 1918 to 1925.
In 1925, together with her fellow students Szymon Syrkus, Barbara Brukalska, Stanisław Brukalski, Bohdan Lachert and Józef Szanajca, she co-founded the avant-garde group Praesens, which published a journal of the same name. The magazine became a central publication for the advocacy of modernism in architecture and art in Poland, known beyond Poland’s borders.
From the moment of her marriage to Szymon Syrkus in 1925, the couple co-signed all her projects.
In 1928, the Praesens Group became a section of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and Syrkus co-signed the Charter of Athens at the fourth CIAM Congress in Athens in 1933. In 1937, at the 5th CIAM Congress in Paris, Helena Syrkus gave a lecture entitled ‘La généalogie de l’architecture fonctionelle,’ in which she discussed modernist urbanism.
During the Second World War, after the German occupation of Poland, Helena and Szymon Syrkus worked in the underground organisation Pracownia Architectoniczno-Urbanistyczna (PAU, engl.: Architectural and Urban Planning Studio), of which she became president after Szymon Syrkus was deported by the German authorities to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp.
In the post-war period from 1945, she was involved in the reconstruction of Warsaw, first as a member of the Biuro Odbudowy Stolicy (BOS) and later as secretary of the Naczelnej Rady Odbudowy Warszawy. From 1948 to 1955 she was one of the vice-presidents of CIAM, which was dissolved in 1959. Helena Syrkus turned against modernism by officially rejecting it in a speech at the 7th CIAM Congress in Bergamo, Italy, in 1949. Her announcement can be seen as the culmination of the competition between two ideologies, as Helena Syrkus was at the same time advocating the use of Socialist Realism, a new national style imposed on Poland by the communists in the same year. Despite her official announcement in 1949, she returned to modernism in architecture, urbanism and theory after the end of Stalinism and the abandonment of Socialist Realism by the Polish socialist regime in 1956.
In 1955, Helena Syrkus was appointed professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw Polytechnic University.
Her book Ku idei osiedla społecznego (engl.: Towards the idea of a social settlement) was published in 1976. In the first part of the book, Syrkus gives detailed insights into the CIAM congresses, while the second part is devoted to interviews with some of its famous members, such as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius.
– 1928: Building for the district health insurance fund in Kutno; co-author Szymon Syrkus.
– 1929: Fertilizer factory pavilion at the General National Exhibition in Poznan; co-author Szymon Syrkus.
– 1931–1935: residential building for the WSM (Warszawska Współdzielnia Mieszkaniowa; engl: Warsaw Housing Cooperative) Rakowiec housing estate in Warsaw; co-author Szymon Syrkus. The modernist housing estate is situated in Rakowiec, a district of Warsaw on Pruszkowska Street.
– 1939: Villa at 6 Jaworzyńska Street in Warsaw. In her design, the architect applied LeCorbusier’s 5 Points of Architecture.
– 1947 to 1950: residential buildings for the WSM (Warszawska Współdzielnia Mieszkaniowa; engl: Warsaw Housing Cooperative) Koło in the Wola district of Warsaw; co-author Szymon Syrkus. The project is known as Koło II, corresponding to the construction phase.
– 1948–1952: residential buildings for the ZOR (Zakład Osiedli Robotniczych; eng.: Department of Workers’ Estates) Praga estate; co-author Szymon Syrkus. The project is known as Praga I, corresponding to the construction phase. The ZOR Praga estate as a whole has been transformed by later projects by various architects. Still, in 1993, the Syrkus’ Praga I estate was entered in the register of monuments.
– 1958–1962: residential buildings for the WSM (Warszawska Współdzielnia Mieszkaniowa; engl:: Warsaw Housing Cooperative) Koło estate in the Wola district of Warsaw; co-author Szymon Syrkus. The project is known as Koło IV, corresponding to the construction phase. The Koło neighbourhood in Warsaw’s Wola district comprises a total of six housing estates built by various architects from the interwar period onwards. The two estates designed by Helena and Szymon Syrkus, Koło II and Koło IV, illustrate the Syrkus’ long-standing involvement with the rationalization of construction processes. The residential buildings consist of prefabricated components and, depending on the construction phase, these vary from small-scale panels to large formats. The architects also tried to design the buildings and floor plans to be as varied as possible, while at the same time paying attention to the cost-effectiveness of the construction method. In terms of urban planning, the residential buildings are embedded in extensive green spaces. Generous building spacing allows the apartments to be well lit.
https://www.archimemory.pl/pokaz/helena_syrkus,4311
Czaplinska-Archer, Teresa. 1981. „Polish Modern Architecture“. Architectural Association Quarterly – The International Journal for Architectural Ideas 13 (1): 37–44.
Kulpińska, Katarzyna. 2018. „Studentki szkół artystycznych i artystki w Polsce okresu międzywojnia – wybrane aspekty profesji“. Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Sociologica, Nr. 66 (September), 33–53. https://doi.org/10.18778/0208-600X.66.03.
Loderer, Benedikt. 1998. „Die ersten 50 Jahre“. Hochparterre: Zeitschrift für Architektur und Design 11 (3): 4–6. https://doi.org/10.5169/SEALS-120855.
Roth, Alfred. 1959. „Sozialer Wohnungsbau und Baurationalisierung in Warschau : Wohnquartier ‚Kolo‘ : Architekten : Helena und Szymon Syrkus, Warschau“. Text/html,application/pdf,text/html. Das Werk : Architektur und Kunst 46 (1): 22–24. https://doi.org/10.5169/SEALS-35926.
———. 1983. „Heleny Syrkus 1900–1982“. Werk, Bauen + Wohnen 70 (5): 19.
Syrkus, Helena, and Szymon Syrkus. 1934. „Dom wypoczynkowy na Królewskiej Górze pod Warszawą“. Architektura i Budownictwo X (4): 117–21.
———. 1948. „Architekt i uprzemysłowienie budownictwa“. Architektura – Organ Stowarzyszenia Architetków Polskich 8–9: 34–35.
Trebacz, Piotr. 2019. „Affordable single-family housing. From the traditions of the Warsaw School of Architecture“. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering 603 (3): 032080. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/603/3/032080.
Tulkowska, Karolina. 2019. „Masters and teachers, housing innovations in designs of the professors of the Faculty of Architecture in the Warsaw University of Technology at the beginning of the 20th century“. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering 603 (4): 042087. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/603/4/042087.
Uchowicz, Katarzyna, Maja Wirkus, und Aleksandra Kędziorek, Hrsg. 2019. CIAM Archipelago. The Letters by Helena Syrkus. Wydanie I. Źródła = Origins. Warszawa: Narodowy Instytut Architektury i Urbanistyki.
Fig. 1–4: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (NAC)
Main image: Portrait of Helena Syrkus. Source: Biblioteka Narodowa
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