The project by the WXCA GROUP studio was the winner of the architectural and urban design competition for the development of a concept for the reconstruction of the Saxon Palace, the Brühl Palace and three tenement houses on Królewska Street in Warsaw, together with land development. The results were announced at the headquarters of the Warsaw Branch of the Association of Polish Architects in Warsaw.

‘It is high time for Warsaw, its inhabitants and Poland to regain this old part of the capital with great elegance and class, inscribed in its history and, at the same time, in a very modern developing Warsaw’, said President Andrzej Duda during the announcement of the competition results.

Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Professor Piotr Gliński, said that “we are rebuilding the Saxon Palace as it was in 1939 as an architectural symbol of the city, together with the iconic colonnade, seen in thousands of pre-war photographs and films, whose arcades protect the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. With respect for its contemporary form, which is full of tragedy, we also recall the original form, and according to the intentions of the creators, it was designed to be triumphal and joyful, so not a tomb but a monument of glory with an architectural structure”, added Piotr Gliński.

The reconstruction of the Saxon Palace, the Brühl Palace and the townhouses on Królewska Street in Warsaw is a symbolic completion of the post-war reconstruction of Warsaw.

According to the Act on the Preparation and Implementation of Investments in the Reconstruction of the Saxon Palace, the Brühl Palace and the tenement houses on Królewska Street in Warsaw, the buildings are to be reconstructed according to their external architectural shape of 31 August 1939. The challenge includes the need to adapt the historic edifices to the completely new functions they are to perform and to contemporary standards (e.g. technical norms, security, accessibility).

Adrian Andrzejewski