Pre-war Warsaw in VR at Festival of Architecture

Events

10 August 2017

POLAND What would Warsaw look like today if the Second World War had never happened? Those attending the Festival of Architecture will be able to see this with their own eyes, thanks to the brains behind ‘Deleted Warsaw’ – a project designed to transport you back to the 1940s to find out for yourselves whether our capital city did actually deserve the title of the ‘Paris of the North’.

‘Deleted Warsaw’ is a unique virtual reality application devised by the Pictureworks studio. It is the culmination of extensive research into the designs of Warsaw buildings drawn up in the interwar period but that never saw the light of day due to the break out of war in 1939.

A meeting with the creators of the project will take place at the Festival of Architecture (on September 20th this year) and anyone attending the event will also be able to try out the application in the exhibition area.

The virtual journey starts at the house of Bohdan Pniewski, a famous twentieth century Polish architect. His studio was on the ground floor of a villa on ul. Frascati (now al. na Skarpie). With VR technology it has been possible to accurately recreate the house, with the user being able to move through the digital rooms in exactly the same way as in the real world. When exploring the rooms of the studio you will be able to look at original drawings by Pniewski of interwar Polish leader Marshal Józef Piłsudski as well as architectural drawings together with additional contextual information explaining the thinking behind the designs as well as the specificity of the architect’s work in the 1930s.

A scale model of the Polish Radio building, which was never constructed, will be located in the central point of the studio. Using virtual reality it will be possible to see the building situated within its surroundings, as though it were a full-scale model. And that’s not all: visitors to the studio will also be able to teleport to a chosen point on the model and see the building in an interactive 360⁰ visualisation! In other words, they will be able to experience for themselves what Warsaw would be like now without the destruction of the Second World War.

The Festival of Architecture takes place on September 20th at the home of the Association of Polish Architects, at ul. Foksal 2 in Warsaw. You can register for the event via the www.architecture.eurobuildconference.com website.

We look forward to seeing you there!