Gdyńska architectura militaris autorstwa Mariana Lalewicza

Abstrakt

The complex of the Fleet Command and Navy barracks at Gdynia’s Oksywie is one of the most interesting examples of military architecture of the Second Polish Republic. The extensive urban and architectural complex was the work of one architect Marian Lalewicz; raised over a brief period of time, in its core it represented architectural homogeneity. It was one of the first projects on such a scale of the Polish army after Poland had regained independence. The whole was to be composed of the Fleet Command premises as well as the buildings of the Navy barracks, together with the organizational and technical infrastructure, and dwelling houses for non-commissioned officers and officers together with their families. Lalewicz laid out the whole complex using the radial scheme. The axis of the scheme was to be found in a roundabout closed from the north with a gatehouse on the layout of a quarter circle whose three gateways marked out three axes of the complex. The middle one led to the building of the Fleet Command, the right (eastern) was the backbone for the dwelling complex for the non-commissioned officers and officers, while the left one (western) led along auxiliary buildings to the non-commissioned officers’ house, and its eastward bifurcation continued to the barrack complex in a form of a square of buildings placed around the trapezium drill ground. The design having been created in 1924, its implementation conducted in stages was completed in 1931. The complex was subsequently added a hospital building, a garrison church, and, in 1934, the monument commemorating the Battle of Oliwa.

The classical forms Lalewicz echoed in his design for the Oksywie complex make one first of all recall the application of the legacy of the antiquity in shaping architecture characteristic of Jean Nicolasa Louisa Ledoux, though also the Italian Renaissance is referred to, particularly Sebastiano Serlio, and St Petersburg’s Neo-Classicism after 1910, with some impact of the oeuvre of such architects as Andriey Bielogrud, Vladimir Shchuko, or Marian Peretyatkovich, particularly such of his designs as Russia Trade Bank. Search for the form adequate to the architecture of power, or more strictly speaking its armed forces, made Lalewicz place his work within the network of both universal references: Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, urban layout of the imperial capital, and the national ones: perfectly associated by the contemporary with the Polish accomplishments of military architecture from King Stanislaus Augustus’ times and Napoleonic wars. The Oksywie Fleet Command and Navy barracks complex has remained one of the best and grandest architectural implementations not only from the period of the Second Polish Republic, but also of all modern architecture, of thoroughly thought-out urban layout, coherent stylistics, and transparent ideological message.