Professor Waldemar Wawrzyniak, architect, university teacher, co-author of one of the architectural icons of Lower Silesia - theMeteorological Observatory on Śnieżka - died on January 28 this year.
Waldemar Wawrzyniak was born in Podolia, learned and studied in Wroclaw - in 1963 he graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the Wroclaw University of Technology, where he also defended his doctoral thesis (1975). He earned his habilitation at the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology (1999).
Among the most recognizable buildings he co-designed are the famous "Plates" built in 1974 on the highest peak of the Karkonosze Mountains, the Meteorological Observatory on Śnieżka (together withProfessor Witold Lipinski), which in recent years he tried to protect from destruction, and the Church of the Holy Spirit, located in Wrocław's Tarnogaj district (together with Jerzy Wojnarowicz and Tadeusz Zipser).
Sketch and archival photographs of the observatory
© archive of Prof. Waldemar Wawrzyniak
From 1963 to 2020, he worked as an academic teacher at the Wroclaw University of Technology, the University of Science and Technology in Oran, Algeria, the Catholic University of Lublin, Bogdan Janski High School and the Magdalena Abakanowicz University of Arts in Poznan. He was the supervisor of more than 250 diplomas and 7 doctorates. He designed a total of more than a hundred single-family houses.
He is the author of the books "Sacrum w architekturze", in which he leaned on the paradigms of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Wroclaw and the Antioch Pentecostal Church, built to his design, and "Home. Idea. Space," in which, when asked what architecture is, he wrote:
In my opinion, it is an unlimited art form, a kind of music in sculpture. Both architecture and music should carry - and do carry - some kind of message... it can't be just playing with sound, or playing with form.
As he emphasized in the publication dedicated to the houses, the thought of Alvar Aalto accompanied him during his creative work:
An architect cannot save the world, but he can set a good example.
