Aleja Profesorów (Avenue of Professors) in the main campus of Wrocław University of Technology – history of the spatial system development

Joanna Majczyk, Agnieszka Tomaszewicz

doi:10.5277/arc150106

Abstract

Aleja Profesorów has been conceived as the main representative urban interior of the campus of the Wrocław University of Technology. Its building began in the after-the-war period, between Grunwaldzki Square and the bank of the Oder River. The compositional frames of the avenue were defined in the first plan of creating a fragm ent of the Wrocław town centre which was worked out in 1949; it was to compose one of the transverse axes laid out perpendicularly to Grunwaldzki Square – the most important communication route of this district. The process of forming Aleja Profesorów began with the erection of buildings of the Faculties of Electrical Engineering and Aviation (buildings D1 and D2) in the years 1950–1955. The identical buildings designed by Professors Zbigniew Kupiec and Tadeusz Brzoza raised along Grunwaldzki Square defined the width of the avenue and its north-east and north-west boundary. In the 50s and 60s of the 20th century several concepts of forming the frontage of Aleja Profesorów came into being, of which none, however, were realized. The overall plan of the new campus of the University of Technology came into being as a result of a contest in 1964. The authors of the winning work, Krystyna and Marian Barscy, presented a vision of creating Aleja Profesorów whose fundamental part they solved in the form of a square bordered with two rows of trees. However, due to very difficult conditions of accommodations at the university, the interior of the avenue was successively filled with temporary pavilions, trying, at the same time, to realize quarters for consecutive faculties provided in the project of Barscy. Acceleration of works bound with building of the Technological University’s campus followed only after Poland joined the European Union. New potentialities of financing investments bound with science allowed constructing buildings of the Integrated Student Centre and the Library of Science and Technology which closed off Aleja Profesorów from the south and the north. In succeeding years building was completed along the east and west boundaries of the avenue, the temporary pavilions were pulled down and a plan of composing the avenue’s interior was presented. In the conception worked out by Bogusław Wowrzeczka, the original plan of creating a representative urban interior perceived as a meeting-place of students and staff of the university was preserved.

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