On December 5 this year, just before his 90th birthday, Wojciech Zablocki, architect, SARP Honorary Award winner (2017), lecturer, fencer and three-time Olympic medalist on the saber team, passed away. The death of the designer and outstanding athlete was announced by the Polish Olympic Committee.
Professor Wojciech Zablocki, an outstanding Polish fencer, architect, former President and Honorary President of the Polish Olympic Academy, passed away on December 5, 2020. A true enthusiast of sports, science and culture. A cordial and charismatic Man. [...] In addition to his illustrious career and sports life worthy of emulation, he was also an excellent architect, creator of many sports facilities, watercolorist, author of many books, and privately the husband of Alina Janowska, a well-known and respected actress, as well as a participant in the Warsaw Uprising," reads the PKOl announcement.
Olympic Training Center and games room at the AWF in Warsaw.
© Wiktor Zając
Born in Warsaw on December 6, 1930, Wojciech Zablocki worked as an architect alongside his sports career. In 1954 he graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow, a few years later he earned his doctorate at the Warsaw University of Technology (1968), received his habilitation (1981) and became a full professor (1999). He was the author of designs for many sports facilities, including the Olympic arena and swimming pool complex in Aleppo, the Olympic Center for the 1987 Mediterranean Games in Latakia, Syria, the games hall of the Academy of Physical Education in Warsaw, and the Olympic Preparation Center and Cycling Track in Pruszkow. Together with Prof. Gustaw Zemla, he also designed the Silesian Insurgents Monument in Katowice andthe Monte Cassino Monument in Warsaw.
Monument to Silesian Insurgents in Katowice
© Marcin Kuna
In 2017, he received the SARP Honorary Award for:
creative works, accurate in content and form, enriching the indigenous cultural heritage of our time, also reflecting the high civilization standards of the current era; testimony that Architecture is not closed only in building, but is a state of mind, whose energy finds an outlet in various fields of creativity andcreative passions; testimony that Architectural Ideas can transcend cultural boundaries and serve to communicate between people from all over the world; testimony that architectural form can, by the touch of the Creator's magic wand, go beyond the static limitations of construction into the realm of poetry.
