International Congresses of Modern Architecture CIAM. Architects, Events and Works through the Lens of Szymon Syrkus (1935-1939)
Abstract
In 2022, glass negatives taken in 1935-1939 by Szymon Syrkus – one of the leaders of the Polish interwar architectural avant-garde, were found at the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology. As it was possible to determine, among the approximately eighty surviving negatives, more than twenty document the course and effects of the construction of three residential buildings, which were designed and completed in 1937–1939/1943 in Warsaw in whole or in part by Szymon and Helena Syrkus. A dozen or so photographs were taken in 1938 on the occasion of private, sightseeing and holiday trips of the Syrkus family and friends to Czersk and the vicinity of Kielce. However, the largest collection, comprising about forty negatives, consists largely of photographs published here for the first time, documenting the activities of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) in the period of preparations for the Fifth CIAM Congress in Paris, which lasted from 1935 to 1937. The collection of negatives concerning the activities of CIAM is complemented by individual photographs documenting works of modernist architecture, which S. Syrkus visited in the years 1937–1939 on the occasion of his other official trips abroad. In 1937 he went to Budapest for the first meeting of the so-called Eastern Group of CIAM (CIAM-Ost), bringing together CIAM members from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and in the summer of 1939 to Stockholm for the 17th Congress of the International Federation for Housing and Urban Planning (IFHTP). The article, against the broader background of Szymon Syrkus’ activity as a member and activist of CIAM since 1928, discusses documented in his photographs the works of architecture, places and participants of formal and backstage meetings that took place in July 1935 in Amsterdam and in September 1936 in La Sarraz in Switzerland, as part of the work of the so-called CIRPAC, i.e. the International Committee for the Implementation of Problems of Contemporary Architecture (a body of CIAM that brought together members of its board and delegates of individual national groups) and in 1937 during the Fifth Congress of CIAM in Paris, as well as during Syrkus’s business trips to Hungary in 1937 and Sweden in 1939.
Keywords:
International Congress of Contemporary Architecture, CIAM, Szymon SyrkusDetails
- Issue
- Vol. 1 No. 2 (2025): MEMG
- Section
- Research Articles
- Published
- 2025-11-30
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