THE CORE OF THE CITY and ITS IMAGE OF TRANSFORMATION

Athanasios Kouzelis, professor UniWA, researcher CTH.

Abstract

The objective of this essay is the core of a city as transformed by historical event and formation. It is
focused on the contradiction between idealism and pragmatism that seems to be fundamental to city
planning praxis, were of a new design perspective has to be laid on it, via researching the experienced
cases of two European Capital Cities: Athens and Warsaw. Both cases were objects of ‘urban rebirth’ or
‘urban revival’ after a desertification of their urban space by foreign occupants.

KEYWORDS: urban design history, city core transformation, urban rebirth.

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 The core of any city has been the kernel of a consequent settlement accumulation forming an urban
environment. Usually it is erected on the site of an earlier open space market, or of administration, worship
and military installations. In history the original form of the core space in a city, has been mainly developed
by the hegemonic establishment which chose to build its facilities, imposing and marking its sovereignty
on the city’s community. In any case, the progress of the core of the city has been also depended on the
accumulative power of its founders in order to turn it into an urban grid, which ensured the wealth of its
rulers and the services of its citizens.

It is no coincidence that the first urban settlements in ancient Greece were called ‘poleis’, as they etymo-
logically explain their origin from the word 'polos' which means ‘a point of attraction and interest’. The
word ‘polis’ designates a ‘nucleated settlement’ indicating a political community, namely inhabitants living
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under the same customs and laws. This designation is also well known from Plato’s dialogue ‘The
Republic’, where he first draw a cause to describe the terms of the ideal city (polis) transformation, as
means to achieve for its city’s people a lawful space order and moral conduct (433a and c). He based his
vision to the notion that the scheme of self-sufficient and regular forms ratify absolute ideas.

1. Representation of the utopian urban plan of Atlantis (Source : Kiroro, ‘Mystery of Atlantis’ Rabu, 2010)
2. Representation of the urban organization of the center of ancient Athens during the classical era (5th century BC)
(Source : Hellen Papakyriakou-Anagnostou, www.sikyo.gr/ athens / , 1998)

Plato's teacher, Socrates, considered that the core of the city, being depended mainly of market and
political activities, reflected the spirit of corruption, which was responsible for the youth’s decadence and
the ugly image of the city. For this reason, Critias the Athenian politician and Plato’s friend, proposed a
rationalization through his vision of an ideal city modelled on that of Atlantis. According to his ideal model,
the core of the city should have a palace and a temple of Poseidon (because Athens of his time was a naval
power) surrounded by a circular water ditch. Perimetrically of the core of this city had to be developed
three circular regions which would each belong strictly to the ranks of warriors, craftsmen and growers. 2

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 Same imaginary concepts were approached later, inductively by Aristotle in ‘Politics’, which, challenging
his teacher Plato, examined the creation and the nature of the city - as a structured whole - from its existing
and real components, to its ideal state. In the light of his teleological view, in which everything is governed
by a ‘τελος’ (end) and therefore have a purpose that tends towards it, it states that the city exists in nature
and man lives in it as a social being (Πόλις δε η γενών και κωμών κοινωνία ζωής τελείας και αυτάρκους). 3
Aristotle emphasized that the city is a decisive final product from which societies can be studied and their
functional purposes examined. The integral elements of the city image are its laws and spatial lay-out that
corresponds to the universality of aesthetic definiteness based on geometric order features, as ratio
proportionality and symmetry. The city as such consists of many subdivisions. The knowledge of the whole
presupposes the previous knowledge of its parts and their relation to the whole. And thus the image of
the city is to facilitate its visual identification as a rational structuring. 4

3. Miletus town plan (source: Roy George, Museum Encyclopaideia).

4. Α representation of the urban center of Miletus (source: Pergamon Museum in Berlin).

The spirit of rationalism expressed by uniformity and rectilinearity was to be established as an

organizational principle during the classical era in the urban planning of new Greek cities in the regions of
Anatolia and southern Italy, after some disaster. Such a concept of a designed city dates back to around
466 BC., when the architect Hippodamus designed the birthplace of the City of Miletus, which had been
destroyed by the Persians. Hippodamus organized his ideal city influenced by the Ionic natural and
geometric sciences which encountered planning principles of layout and organization of space. 5

In the core of the city of Miletos the open place of the market was connected via a vertical road to the
port of the city. On this transversal road was erected the Stadium, the Thermae and a smaller market that
served the trade imported by sea from Athens and other cities in Greece. All the public buildings were
constructed on the basis of a ‘stoichedon’layout (one or more rows of columns parallel to a linear rear
wall) or a ‘peripteral’ situation plan (surrounded by a portico with columns), two distinct morphologies

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signifying their function. The first formed the market buildings and the second every secular edifice and
shrine. All other buildings that hosted a privacy as homes, gymnasia, therme and palaestrae were erected
according to a ’peristyle’ pattern (a colonnade enclosing peri-metrically an inner courtyard). 6

The acceptance of urban organization based on the ideal of a rational social organization, as well as on
the empirical application of geometry and topographic formations, influenced the entire subsequent
development of cities in Europe by the time of the first paper planning of a city. The main characteristic of
such city planning has been its imaginary nature: the aim to provide the urban area an appropriate
aesthetic performance consisting mainly of central monumental vanishing points followed by a
geometrically regulated grid of blocks and streets. 7

Since the advent of the Roman Empire, where the rectangular town planning model was disseminated
throughout much of the then known world until the so-called ‘ideal projects’ of the Renaissance, which
deviated from uniform rectilinearity, centralizing solutions seemed eminently appropriate for the image
and the function of the city. The utopian conceptions were based on a transformation determined by an
absolute classification around the core of the city, in which were placed institutional changes that
guaranteed its ideal image as a model of perfect and blissful urban living. All this suggests that utopian
visions of cities – created in different historical periods – have been reflecting problems typical of a given
period. 8

The medieval city was a corporate body, symbolized by a seal, which could act as a collective against the
outside world. The city walls ring-fenced this special status and, as a result, no one town had exactly the
same law as any other. The layout of the medieval town followed the same general patterns as the village.
There were street villages and street towns: there were crossroads villages and crossroads towns; there
were circular villages and circular towns; and finally, there were irregularly created villages and towns of
the same apparently a timeless and accidental pattern. The scale of the centrally located market place is
not directly determined by either the height of the main buildings or the size of the city: it is rather adapted
to marketing and public ceremony, for it is on the porch of the cathedral that the miracle plays were
enacted: it was within the market square that the guilds set up their stages for the performance of their
mystery plays; it was here that great tourneys would be held. 9

In the medieval planned town the market square generally consisted of a vacant block or part of a block,
and was not surrounded by any coherently designed group of buildings. When a more distinguished square
ensemble was desired, one obvious idea was to enhance the space, thus created by the introduction of
uniform architecture, preferably conceived as a whole. Inspiration may have come from medieval
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courtyards, as well as from earlier north Italian ensembles such as the Piazza San Marco in Venice and the
Piazza del Campo in Siena. 10

5. Sforzinda: a visionary ideal city named after Francesco Sforza, then Duke of Milan. It was designed by Renaissance architect Antonio
di Pietro Averlino (c. 1400 - c. 1469), also known as "Averulino" or "Filarete". (source : Kostof, Spiro (1991). The City Shaped: Urban
patterns and meanings. London, UK: Thames and Hudson).
6. Perspective view of the urban core of Lübeck during the Hanseatic era, including the market square, the cathedral and the port of the
city. (Fischer, Β., ‘Hansestädte. Gesichte und Kultur’, p.81.)

The position of the cathedral or townhall as the core to the layout of the medieval city, visible from
every point, functioned as a symbol of the relation between sacred and profane affairs. The marketplace
grew up altogether with the church because it was there that the citizens most frequently assembled. It
was in the medieval church that the city's treasury was stored; and it was in the same church, sometimes
behind the High Altar, that trade wares were deposited for safekeeping. 11

During the Renaissance, modes of representing urban places, together with geographical and
cosmological space, underwent profound change, but still retained these earlier emblematic, meta-
physical features. Neoplatonic ideas informed the Vitruvian figure and images of the ideal city, capturing
a vast place in a composite image with few words. New secular meanings gradually overlaid these
metaphysical ones as more scenographic representations situated towns in real time and real space.
Although Sforzinda was never built, certain aspects of its design are described in considerable detail. The
basic layout of the city is an eight point star, created by overlaying two squares so that all the corners were
equidistant. This shape is then inscribed within a perfect circular moat. This shape is iconographic and
probably tied to Filarete’s interest in magic and astrology. Consistent with a Quattro-cento or fifteenth
century notions concerning the absolute structure of geometry and the celestial order of astrology,

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Filarete provides, in addition to pragmatic advice on materials, construction, and fortifications, notes on
how to import urban harmony within Sforzinda. In terms of planning, each of the outer points of the star
had towers, while the inner angles had gates. Each of the gates was an outlet of radial avenues that each
passed through the core of the city, which was determined by a centrally located market square. The town
contained also two more squares: One of the prince’s palace and one of the cathedral. 12

This imagination proved highly adaptive and necessary for the momentous transformation after 1500 in
visual culture and urban design brought about by improved projective mathematics, its use by surveyors
and cartographers, and advances in etching and printing methods. Chorographic (space) descriptions of
inhabited building blocks gave way to a cartographic gaze bent on possession and requisition. The
changing modalities between the ‘built’ and the ‘viewed’ from 1200 to 1600 reflected enduring
adaptability of indigenous design practices and traditions as well as the transformations brought by the
development of early modern engineering and state rules.13

Later on, the process of reconstructing historic cities followed the ‘viewed’ planning mode, involving the
integration of the historic legacy, inheritance and sense of place in accordance to the demands of
contemporary economic, political and social situation. The lay-out of the core of the city played a major
role in enhancing place identity, memory and belonging. In addition, the core intended to create an urban
identity for the city’s ruling class as well as support the urban regeneration as a comprehensive and
integrated vision and action, which leads to the resolution of social and economic problems, so that a
lasting improvement can be secured.

A significant urban regeneration took place when Athens were officially declared the capital of the Greek
state in 1834. The location was just a small village of 7,000 inhabitants, spread around the Acropolis hill.
At that time, Athens looked like an archaeological garden of ruins, where damaged and ruined ancient and
medieval buildings were located next to the houses of the then poor inhabitants. The reconstruction of
the new capital was the result of a ‘from scratch’ urban policy. The young kingdom of Greece wanted to
implement new institutions with faces, completely marking the image of a glorious city.14

The factors that determined the choice of the new capital and to a large extent determined its future,
were mainly cultural and ideological rather than practical. However, the charm that Athens exercised,
more of course, as an idea and less as a real city, is summed up in the words of Georg Ludwig von Maurer,
a member of the three-member Bavarian regency : ‘..for of Athens’ he wrote ‘all those memories
advocated for the Attic culture, for the arts, for the sciences, for its immortal war glory.[…] What king could
choose another seat for his Government, once he has in his hands the spiritual seat of the world?’ 15
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7. Panoramic view of Athens showing the Old Royal Palace and Mount Lycabettus, taken between 1850 and 1880. (Courtesy of the Library of
Congress).
8. Perspective of the Principal View of the Royal Palace on the Acropolis: Section Through Line A.B. on the Ground Plan Looking West (published
1840), Schnechten; after Karl Friedrich Schinkel.(Scottish National Gallery).

The new urban plan of the city was undertaken and prepared in 1833, by Stamatios Cleanthes and
Eduard Schaubert. As Cleanthes later stated, the urban plan was to be: ‘Equal to the ancient glory and
splendour of this city, and worthy of the century in which we live.’ The two architects designed the new
capital according to the urban planning principles prevailing in the neoclassical garden towns of the early
19th century. 16 The proposed urban plan was accompanied by an extensive memorandum describing the
idea of the city they envisioned and analyzing the details of the composition. According to the plan of
Cleanthes and Schaubert, the new city would be extended to north of the sacred rock of the Acropolis, in
a relatively flat area. The design conception was based on a right-angled isosceles triangle with the palace
at the apex of the right angle. One side of the triangle underlined the imaginary axis of the ancient stadium
and is identified with the current Stadiou Street while its symmetrical one is Piraeus Street. Athinas Street
bisected the right angle ending at Hadrian's Library, while Ermou Street completed the third side-base of
the triangle. In this triangle was inscribed a rectangle that formed 4 ‘boulevards’ 38 m wide. The area
enclosing the 4 boulevards would be the most important in the city. 17

The royal palace aimed to be the centre of the city composition. As the new Athens centre it was built
relatively far from the hill of the Acropolis, and not on it as Schinkel suggested because its main purpose
was to be a monumental building and an observation point , overlooking the Acropolis. (‘The balcony of
the royal palaces to enjoy […] the richness in proud memories of the Acropolis…’). The ruins of the classical
era would be used as ‘points de vue’, as nice endings for the streets, as landmarks for the new buildings.
The aim of the architects was not only to unite the old and the new city aesthetically, but to create ‘for the
Athenians a place of learning, a center of moral education, and a museum urban environment’ (excerpt
from the memorandum of the plan by Cleanthes and Schaubert).
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 So in 1834, the king Otto's father, Louis IX, commissioned the German architect Leo von Klenze to make
the necessary changes to the urban plan. The primary objective of the review was to reduce compensation
for expropriations. Klenze retained the basic outlines of Kleanthis and Schaubert. His main change was to
move the palace and the surrounding ministries from Othonos Square to the area between the Supreme
Court and the hill of the Nymphs, near Thission. In the revised plan, the expensive boulevards also
disappeared, the main boulevards narrowed, the squares and greenery and reduced the area of the
archaeological zone. Klenze made the above changes not only to satisfy the owners' complaints, but also
because he considered the wide streets and large squares do not suit the climate and scale of southern
Europe cities. The way he dealt with urban planning differed from the geometric rationalist approach of
strict neoclassicism. Influenced by the vision of Romanticism, he sought the deepest principles of Greek
art and insisted on the special climatic conditions of the Attic landscape. 18

Finally, the respected Bavarian Friedrich von Gaertner was called in, with the Royal Palace as his sole
subject. Gaertner decided to choose the axial running between Lykabettos hill and the Akropolis, and
worked out plans for the construction of the Royal Palace where it was finally built (today it is housing the
Parliament), with the requisite adjustment of the surrounding area. A few changes of layout in the area of
the Royal Palace were made also in 1837, with the so-called Hoch plan. The practical effect of these
repeated series of changes was, on the one hand, the preservation of a large section of the old city
complex, and on the other hand, a reorientation of the core of the City towards the final building site of
the Royal Palace, by a valorisation of the main avenues which end in a triangular formation in it as a
vanishing point. 19

9. Kleanthis & Schaubert Athens City plan

10. The plan of Athens, after the changes brought about by Leo von Klenze, 1834.
11. The final version of the Plan for the City of the Athens, after von Gaertner’s intervention and the definite reposition of the Royal Palace.
(source: Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning in Greece).

Observing von Gaertner's plan, it can be seen that the attempt for a completely idealistically
orthographic reconstruction of Athens as the capital of the newly formed state of Greece was not

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completed in its entirety, but instead adapted to the building organization of the pre-existing village, which
was characterized by an organic layout of streets, many and varied nodes that offer good proximity to
economic activities and a bioclimatic entity.

In this triangularly demarcated centre of Athens, all kinds of stable and variable activity has been living
together for 180 years. In it coexist and intertwine, the public administration and the emblematic
buildings-symbols of the Greek state (new and old Parliament, Hansen’s Trilogy at Panepistimiou Avenue,
the City Hall, etc.) the central market of the city, the handicrafts settlement, the entertainment and culture
places and of course, real estate interests. These components are constantly shifting, changing relative
gravity, evolving and redefining, forming successive layers in a continuously active urban geography.
Important buildings disappeared, leaving their traces in the urban fabric and naming places as the
Varvakeion Lyceum, the Ziller’s Municipal Theater and the Mint. 20

12. Picture of Athena Street with the Acropolis in the background.

13. A bird’s view of Athens triangular core of the city: the regular building blocks have receded to the irregularities of the older one around
Acropolis.

The movement throughout the core of the city allows the observer to build a perception of its regular
and varied urban space. The importance of these two frequented streets and their neighbouring quarters
varies according to a citizen’s interest of the city’s life —the greater the familiarity with the area, the
greater the feeling of its value represented in the description of its visual form. Continuous interchanges
of the area’s functional and architectural elements— streets, buildings, nodes, landmarks and edges—
compose a primary vision that brings in memory the whole of the core of the city image.

According to the latest master plan of Athens (2014) the centre is planned to emerge as an area of
culture, creativity and innovation of international renown with the improvement of environmental quality.
This space will be enhanced with high quality services with a wide range of options and utilization of the

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historical, cultural and distinct elements of its identity. It also defines the centre as a pole of attraction and
support for traditional staff and economic activities, with new offices, headquarters of processing, trade
and tourism enterprises (Article 10). It is noteworthy that this master plan does not refer at all to any urban
transformation in the area, but contradicts on the one hand by preserving the traditional architectural
structures (administration, trade, historical monuments) and on the other hand by strengthening the
structures of the services, without changes in the current building regulation (business and office
buildings).

Concerning this area’s urban future, a decision of the Council of State (2102/2019) provides for the
construction or extension of buildings only up to a height of 21 meters, in order to remain free to the
sighting and the presence of the Acropolis as a symbol and the reference pole of the image of the city of
Athens. Thus, the legal and urban framework of the urban transformation of the core mainly allows
changes of use in renovated or restored buildings and in addition to improving the accessibility of the
citizens through the central underground stations to the place’s commercial, financial and administrative
services. It also provides for the upgrading of services related to tourism and leisure activities in and
around the historic site of the ancient market and the monuments of the area. Besides, the image of the
core of the city maintains the existing skyline by selectively transforming only its terrestrial open and
closed spaces in order to serve the changes of use related to the strengthening of the area as a pole of
attraction and recognition of urban romantism and posthumous fame for its residents and visitors.

Another and most significant historically urban regeneration took place in the Polish capital, Warsaw.
After its complete destruction during World War II, its built areas were completely ruined and the city’s
image almost vanished. As a result, the losses to Warsaw's urban architecture at the beginning of 1945
were estimated at around 84%, with industrial infrastructure and historic monuments destroyed at 90%
and residential buildings at 72%. 21 For these reasons, the idea emerged to relocate the Polish capital to
the city of Łódź, which had been damaged to a much lesser extent. But from January 1945 people started
to return to the ashes of Warsaw, and therefore the post-war established Communist regime decided to
join them and initiate all efforts to rebuild the city as a capital of a socialist state. The reconstruction of
Warsaw was an attempt to rebuild not only the individual monuments, but also to restore the entire
historical image of the city. 22

On 3rd February 1945, the National Council passed a resolution that called for Warsaw's reconstruction.
On 14th February, the Biuro Odbudowy Stolicy (Office for the Reconstruction of the Capital) was formed.
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With the establishing of the BOS, one of the most ambitious projects in human history was initiated. No
one had ever attempted to reconstruct the monuments of a war-torn city on such a scale. Seeking to
persuade the political authorities, as well as conservators and architects, Professor Jan Zachwatowicz, who
was the head of the BOS’s Department of Monumental Architecture at that time, argued that in the case
of Polish monuments destroyed by the German troops during the war, and particularly those in the capital
city, full reconstruction was uniquely justified. Zachwatowicz’s motivation was indeed patriotic: a nation
and its cultural monuments are one entity, as he would have it. This stance, however, was not shared by
all members of the rebuilding team. 23

14. Aerial photographs of ruined Warsaw city centre (Srodmiescie) (Central Photographic Agency, War).

Over the whole period of reconstruction – which lasted until 1952 – the activities of BOS were marked
by a sharp conflict between the ‘monumentalists’, centred around Zachwatowicz, and the ‘modernisers’,
led by the Head of the BOS, Roman Piotrowski and his deputy Józef Sigalin. In fact, Zachwatowicz’s idea
often meant reconstructing whole buildings and monuments from scratch – based on documentation,
memory and whatever other sources there were, like the 18th century drawings of Warsaw city centre by
the Italian painter Canaletto. It also meant that a large part of the rebuilt city would essentially be a replica.
The initial range of the reconstruction proposed by Zachwatowicz was eventually drastically reduced. Still,
thanks to the determination of Zachwatowicz and his team, huge parts of Warsaw's Old Town and Royal
Route were meticulously reconstructed. The pioneering and unique effort of the city's revitalisation was
recognized by public opinion as early as 1980, when the Warsaw’s Old Town was selected as part of
UNESCO's World Cultural Heritage list.

Historical reconstruction was naturally only a part of the rebuilding effort. The city needed new urban
planning, new streets and new buildings in order to accommodate the growing numbers of new
Varsovians. To facilitate the reconstruction effort, the Communist regime introduced Dekret Bieruta
(Bierut’s law). Declared on November 1945, it stated that all land within the pre-war borders of Warsaw

11
was to be nationalised, or made public property. (Although this did not pertain to buildings, in practice,
they were also subject to nationalisation). 25 The immediate post-war years saw the launch and completion
of several huge projects which designated a modern centre in the city not far from the rebuilt old town
(Stare Miasto).

The first construction after World War II to designate the new core of the Warsaw city was the Palace
of Culture and Science (built 1951–1953) – a towered high building (231 meters) that dominated the
central square of Place Defilad. The building was located parallel to the vertical intersecting avenues (Aleje
Jerozolimskie and Marszałkowska) that formed the axes of the urban map of the post-war city. The
architecture of the building is closely related to several similar skyscrapers built in the Soviet Union of the
same era, most notably the Moscow State University. However, the main architect Lev Rudnev and his
partners incorporated some Polish architectural details into the project by travelling around Poland and
seeing the traditional architecture. The building’s monumental walls are headed with pieces of masonry
copied from Renaissance houses and palaces of Kraków and Zamość.26

15. The construction of the Palace of Culture and Sciences in the core of Warsaw city (picture dating from 1950).
16. The Palace of Culture and Sciences as symbolical pole of the post-war Warsaw city image erected on Place
Defilad (a corner plot in the intersection of the city’s main avenues Marzsalkowska and Al.Jerozolimskie)
(picture dating from 1960, Central Photographic Agency).

In 1959, the city held an urban design competition for the redevelopment of the East side of
Marszalkowska Street. The finally selected project composed two units of a different scale: the horizontal
block of shopping malls with a length of 800 meters, rising behind three modernistic apartment towers of
80-meter height facing the Palace of Culture. At the end of the complex’s commercial passage was built a
circular glass pavilion housing the State Savings Bank. The more spectacular changes in downtown’s
landscape were related to the development of the area located west of the Palace of Culture and Science.
The area was supposed to be a multi-functional city centre, with shops, cinemas, theaters, and galleries,
as well as with the best transport accessibility: central station, parking lots, and multi-level streets. 27

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 On the other side of Marszalkowska street was built the main social investment of Warsaw, realized in
the years 1949-1955 (Marszałkowska Dzielnica Mieszkaniowa- MDM project). The axis of the MDM urban
plan was the Marszałkowska Street, which was to be almost three times wider than before the war. The
centre of the district was to be a rectangular square (there were nearly 50 tenement houses in its place
before the war), surrounded by high blocks of flats with arcades on the ground floor, where service
premises were located. Its construction in the core of the city required the demolition of many surviving,
after WWII, tenement houses. And so, by the end of 1954, almost all of the buildings from the interwar
period, between the Union of Lublin Square and Aleje Jerozolimskie street in Warsaw, have disappeared.

17. Marszałkowska avenue: the main street of parades across the Palace of Culture and Sciences (1964?) (Narodowe Archiwum
Cifrowe).
18. A view of Marszałkowska ΜDΜ building blocks from plac Konstytucji (Constitution square) in the direction of the Palace of
Culture and Sciences.

Due to the great importance of the project, it was commissioned to the team that had already worked
together on the construction of the East-West route in Warsaw, enthusiastically received by the
authorities of the regime and considered to be a model of modern urban solutions. The MDM was to be
the residence of approximately 45,000 inhabitants of Warsaw. The investment involved the construction
of approximately 6,000 new flats, most of which were designed as 2- and 3-room apartments of a high
standard and larger area than in other housing estates in Warsaw. The Marszałkowska Residential District
was designed comprehensively, providing residents with comfort and access to various services. The
MDM's functional program included: kindergartens, primary schools, health care facilities, indoor
swimming pool and sports fields, district community centre, cinemas, theatres, petrol stations,
underground car parks, catering infrastructure and other service outlets. Taking care of the high aesthetics

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of the MDM housing estate, all small service units, kiosks and street booths have been designed according
to a uniform pattern and integrated into the body of residential buildings. 28

The second building that changed the image of the core of the city was the Central Railway Station
(1972–1975), a great example of functionalist architecture, which supported a “floating” roof. Soon after
it, two high-rise buildings were completed – they were the Warsaw Twin Towers, headquarters of the
Commercial Bank and Foreign Trade Head Offices (1975–1979) and LIM Center, including a Marriott Hotel
(1980–1989). Ultimately the towers were built on a 40 x 40 meter site and reduced to 140 meters in height.
Their form and layout considerably changed the scenery around the Palace of Culture and Science.

19. The construction of the Central railway Station in Warsaw (1972-75).(Narodowe Archiwum Cifrowe).
20. The new mall and cultural centre of Warsaw Zlote Tarasy (left) opposing the Palace of Culture and Sciences (author’s
photo).

In the past two decades, the area of the Palace of Culture and Science has undergone an intensive
change and become a tourist attraction and a symbolic landmark. Simultaneously, an escalating building
boom caused an increase in the value of land around the Palace. In 2011, the city accepted a local plan for
the development of the place around the Palace of Culture, featuring a planned concentration of
skyscrapers higher than the palace of culture and Sciences. Furthermore, a big multi-mall, the Złote Tarasy
(Golden Terraces), a commercial, office, and entertainment complex located next to the city’s central
railway station (Warszawa Centralna), that opened on 7 February 2007, came to be the new meeting place
in the core of the city. This new central core has been not only a massive meeting indoor place, but a point
also of reference for the rest of the skyscrapers neighbouring the Palace of Culture and Sciences. As central
area, it became extensively built-up, with a very good transportation system and service facilities.

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 Due to the implementation of many impressive commercial projects, Warsaw skyline has been changing
rapidly. This is especially true concerning the core of the city, where several very high office towers
emerged, re-shaping the downtown landscape. The image of this area is significantly influenced by
recently completed high rise buildings (among others Cosmopolitan tower and Rondo1), which have
already gained the status of nodes, as well as the Złota 44 skyscraper, which apart from the Palace of
Culture and Science has become a new icon of the capital. 29

According to polish city planning specialists, the tallest Warsaw buildings will soon be dominated by
Varso tower which is currently under construction nearby the Central Railway Station. The building is to
be commissioned by the end of 2021. The facility will be the tallest building, not only in Poland, but also in
the European Union. The unprecedented height of the building will reach 310 meters with the spire, and
its main attraction will be a restaurant and an observation deck situated at the top. The complex, with a
tower and two lower office buildings will offer a total of over 144 thousand sq m of commercial space,
including 110 thousand sq m of offices. 30

21. The rising skyscraper Varso tower (left) aiming to overshadow the Palace of Culture in Warsaw city centre..
22. A panoramic view of the array of skyscrapers in the city centre (author’s photos).

The ‘verticalization’ of the Warsaw’s cityscape can be described as an urban process that presents a
distortion for the post-war imageability of the core of the city. There is a non-narrative future for the city’s
image due to the high-rise building development. That is rooted in visual deformations produced by
erecting skyscrapers around the core of the city. Some skyscrapers are constructed in random locations
out of the western high-rise zone or well outside the downtown area. This has resulted in the creation of
isolated dominances that deform the centrum’s cityscape in both small and large scales. The clear and
detailed principles behind the original concept of the western high-rise district have transformed over the

15
last 20 years, due to the economic pressure of new investments, frequent changes in the spatial planning
system and individual decisions of the city government. In a new high-rise investment, one can observe
the growing intensity of development through the increase of buildings’ height and the dimensions of the
floor area, the diversification of tall buildings and the escalating ignorance of the existing architectural
context. 31

This diversity and quantity of vertical changes in the core of Warsaw allow for the definition of some
critical observations and conclusions that can be relevant and helpful for other expanding historical cities.
The city’s transformation has occurred in two different epochs related to two opposite political and
economic systems (the centrally-planned and free-market economies) and following two divergent
architectural styles (socialist modernism and postmodernism). Additional conditions, existing only in
Warsaw, that enrich the vertical cityscape include the coexistence of the symbolic landmark of the Palace
of Culture and Science in the city centre, the strong visibility of the left-bank panorama of Warsaw divided
into historical and modern zones, and the partly preserved original urban concept of the city’s Western
District.

Comparing the historical background and the typological evolution of the nuclei of these two European
capitals, some important and useful similarities and differences are found in the history of urban planning.
The basis of their urban composition is the sequence of standards of spatial organization, ideological and
political-economic visions, which determined the content of the constructed urban space (shapes,
arrangements, proportions, rhythms, boundaries, etc.) with the awareness of their specific expediency, ie
the adaptation of the structured whole and cohesion of the city.

With a critical approach, the mentioned adaptation was a result of rational manipulation of the
synthetic means of the organization of the urban space, with the prevailing standards and examples of the
time, during which the two mentioned cities were rebuilt. Any variables in the initial design of their urban
core were related to ideal concepts of space organization and political benchmarks (monarchy-
communism) with the aim of regulating normalization and institutional rationalization of the political,
social and economic activity of the city as a whole.

The cores of these two cities are connected topologically with their cradles, where in the case of Athens
is the ancient market and the Acropolis area, while in the case of Warsaw is the rebuilt old town centred

16
on its medieval square (Rynek Starego Miasta). However, despite the common starting point of the initial
construction, the nuclei of the two cities after their development show equally important differences.

Modern Athens was rebuilt as a romantic European city under the auspices of the Parthenon and the
Acropolis, utilizing its typology, its shapes, its layouts, and its construction techniques. Post-war Warsaw
embraced the most historically advanced typology of politico-economic vision, with techniques for the
production of building structures and spaces that fit into a grid of representative and functional
rationalism.

The heterogeneity between them is a product of the ideology of the proposals from the authoritative
institutions of urban planning that elaborated the street plans, building regulations and building
conditions, the decrees of building height, and the exploitation of the land etc. Apart from the teleological
and rational handling of the organization of space in these two cities, the prevailing standards also
contributed to different versions of the evolution of the image of the core of the city. In Athens the
downtown area is still part of the Acropolis's field of vision, while in Warsaw the modern construction of
the post-communist era aims to degrade the Palace of Culture as a symbol of the image of the city's core
with the proximity of a series of skyscrapers and the vigour of capitalist development in the country. Both
of these historical models of urban design, in their historical course, faced differently the oppositions to
the dogmatism of the organization and management of space based on the awareness of economic,
environmental and socio-political changes that have transformed and are transforming the image of the
core city.

The methods of approaching and investigating the transformation of the landscape of the core of the
city, are inextricably linked to the elements of architectural symbolism of the whole city. 32 The cultural
image of a core city incorporates the memory of its community as a whole, as well as its constituent
elements, including all the features and aspects that are recognized and valued by its citizens - not just the
experts who are usually foreign. Thus, the transformation of a cultural image of the core of the city is
recognized as a mixture of values, for which the protection and preservation of the structured heritage
must embrace a much wider range of stakeholders than what economic agents represent today: that is, a
transformation that fulfils vital economic, social and environmental goals in the context of the
preservation and development of cultural heritage.

The cultural image at the core of Athens and Warsaw is expressed by the convergences between
concentrations of economic and social activities. It is recognized through the observable central node of
the core of the city, which as Lynch proved to us, signals the visual beam of urban interest, ie as a reference
17
point where every visitor has the opportunity to realize that it is in relation to prehistory and the cause of
the existence of the city with all its characteristics and natural elements.

For this reason, the main interest of the transformation of the core of the city is connected with the
architectural interventions and the change of use of its buildings, neighbourhoods and open spaces. In
both Warsaw and Athens, there have been individual architectural interventions in their centres that
attract the interest of citizens due to their aesthetics and importance in the cultural and economic life of
the city in combination with the historically existing symbolic poles of the city's core. Such interventions
function as modern 'poles of attraction' and 'reference', which upgrade and strengthen the historically
renowned character of the landscape of the core of the city. At the same time, they serve as strategic
pillars for the promotion of sustainable mobility, environmental upgrading, and the appropriation of the
historic stock, which depicts the image of the city as a whole, despite its height and width extensions.

33
According to K. Norberg-Schulz’s Genius loci theory there has been a strong relationship between
urban regeneration and identity. Moreover, upgrading the built environment, social fabric and urban
spaces within the historic urban core all contribute towards increasing their adoption as places for public
gatherings and exchange. This consequently increases social interaction and cohesion between citizens.
As a result, regeneration of historic city centres strives to re-affirm and foster residents’ feelings of identity
and sense of belonging within the spirit of the past. Therefore an urban regeneration as a comprehensive
and integrated vision and action, leads both to preserving and reviving the past historical city image and
to the resolution of new urban problems, by bringing about a lasting improvement in the city’s economic,
social and environmental condition.

The understanding of such aspects, aims, and elements, usually differs among the parties involved in
urban transformations, resulting in the prioritizing of qualities and values against each other as they
seldomly can be treated as equally important. This calls for reassessment of qualities, values, and, in most
cases, for negotiation and compromise, all of which influence the result of the transformation project.
Such valuation and compromise have been methodologically and theoretically discussed and developed
mainly within the field of architectural heritage preservation. However, the assessment of qualities and
sought-after values is implicit in all architectural transformations and is done in a more or less reflected
way and by the choice of a particular theoretical stance or method. 34

The concept of urban transformation, encapsulates the issues of urban conservation, regeneration,
development and change. The issues of urban development and change in the urbanization processes are
ignored without considering their content and are taken for granted under a general term of urban
18
transformation. The definition of the concept of urban transformation in planning theory changes in each
period and the approach to urban transformation in planning practice differs from each other with
reference to the paradigm shifts in planning history.

Therefore, an in-depth reconsideration for urban transformation in urbanization processes is required

in order to resolve the change in its conceptual definitions in planning theory, and the difference of
approaches that have emerged in planning practice. A holistic framework could be set up by resolving the
changes in the theory and practice of urban transformation in order to formulate strategic approaches
which integrate the theory, practice and method used for urban transformation as a paradigmatic model
in the planning system. Paradigm shifts in urban planning both persistently reform the content of theory
and practice and reconfigure the context of the concept of urban transformation.

This is exactly what Urban Planning should be offering cities today: indications on how to build bridges
to the core of the city that will allow new forms of relationships between individuals to emerge and so link
different identities that all too often in the past have remained irremediably separated. What we need is
to link social experience and city plan visions while respecting the specific identities of all. It is now clear
that cities are no longer the result of a draft plan developed at the drawing board. They are the outcome
of uncontrolled growth where man’s input has had very little impact because it was aimed at the wrong
thing: the creation of space and not the creation of relationships. 35

A utilization of similarities and differences in city planning can help us to reformulate the transformation
terms that are aroused and the answers that can be given by the historical research of urban design
concerned with how the concept and materialization possibilities became to the unique situation: to
transform the core of a city by transcending the ways of its past urban morphology to a focus of interest
in the city’s economic and cultural life in general. For it is in times marked by the absence of utopian
doctrines that realizable social ideas become even more precious as a new and innovative urban
experience.

19
Notes

1. H.H. Mogens, ‘Polis and City-state. An ancient concept and its modern equivalent’, in Acts of the
Copenhagen Polis Centre, Vol. 5 (1998), 20.

2. Plato, Critias, paragraphs 114-121.

3. Aristotle, Politics, ΙΙΙ, 1280 a.

4. G. Sarigiannis, The concept of the city in Plato and Aristotle, (Lampedon Vol. 2, 2003), 696-700.

5. N. Cahill, ‘Household and City’ in The Greek City Planning in Theory and Practice (Yale Un. Press, 2003),3.

6. A. Kouzelis, Från Andronitis till Gymnasion, (CTH-Projekteringsmetodik, 1985), 79-82.

7. J. Slodczyk,“In search of an ideal city: the influence of utopian ideas on urban planning, Studia Miejskie,
tom 24, Univ. of Opole, (2016), 146-147.

8. R. Eaton, Ideal Cities: Utopianism and the (Un) Built Environment, (Thames & Hudson, 2002), 11.

9. J.G. Pounds Norman, The Medieval City, (Greenwood Press,2005), 101-105.

10. E. Cornell, Bygge av stad och land, (PAN/Norstedt,1977), 112.

11. A. Kouzelis, Hanseatic league. History and civilization, (Kulturland,2020), 73, 145.

12. J. Slodczyk, In search of an ideal city: the influence of utopian ideas on urban planning, Studia Miejskie,
tom 24, Univ. of Opole, (2016), 150-151.

13. M. Wolfe, ‘Urban Design traditions and innovations in France,1200-1600’ in Histoire & Mesure,
(éditions ehess, 2009), 109-156.

14. D. Martos D., ‘Athens, Capital of the new Greek State. Politics, Ideology & Space’, Univ. of Thessaloniki,
Ph.D. Thesis, 2005, 131-132.

15. G.L. von Mauer, De l’etat actuel de la Grece V2- Et des moyens d’arriver a sa restauration, vol ΙΙ, (1834)
96-97.

16. D. Monioudi-Gavala, The Greek City from Hippodamos to Cleanthes, (SEAB, 2015), 106.

17. D. Martos, Athens, Capital of the new Greek State. Politics, Ideology & Space, Univ. of Thessaloniki, PhD
Thesis, 2005, 256-260.

20
18. K. Biris, The first plans of Athens. History and analysis of, (NTUA 1933), 16-21.

19. A. Papageorgiou-Venetos, ‘Friedrich von Gaertner and the erection of the Royal Palace of Athens’,
Archaeologia, 07 (2011), 35-53.

20. J. Fotopoulou-Lagopoulou, ‘Urban development of Athens centrum’, Univ. of Thessaloniki, PhD Thesis,
45.

21. L. Dabròwka, ’Before the Old Town in Warsaw was built’ in M. Marcinkowska, K. Zalasińska, ‘The
challenges of world heritage recovery’, (National Heritage Board of Poland, 2019), 131-133.

22. M. Głinski, ‘How Warsaw came close to never being rebuilt’, Culture.pl, 03(2015), 5-10.

23. L. Dabròwka, ’Before the Old Town in Warsaw was built’ in M. Marcinkowska, K. Zalasińska, ‘The
challenges of world heritage recovery’, (National Heritage Board of Poland, 2019), 139.

24. P. Bieganski, ‘The Reconstruction of Old Town’, in B. Wierzbicka B. and M. Lotyszowa (ed.), ‘The Old
Town and the Royal Castle in Warsaw’, (Arkady, 1988), 20-30.

25. L. Dabròwka, ’Before the Old Town in Warsaw was built’ in M. Marcinkowska, K. Zalasińska, ‘The
challenges of world heritage recovery’, (National Heritage Board of Poland, 2019), 141.

26. N. Drosos, ‘Modernism with a human face: Synthesis of Art and Architecture in Eastern Europe, 1954-
1958’, CUNY Acad. Works, no2,( 2016), 77-79.

27. R.Kowalczyk, J. Skrzypczak, W.Olenski, ‘Politics, History, and Height in Warsaw’, CTBUH Journal, (2013),
34.

28. Z. Napieralska, E. Przesmycka, ‘Residential Districts of the Socialist Realism Period in Poland
(1949-1956)’ in International Congress on Engineering — Engineering for Evolution, (KnE Engineering,
2020), 682-683.

29. J.Szolomicki, H. Golasz-Szolomicka, ‘Architectural and Structural Analysis of Selected Tall Buildings in
Warsaw, Poland’, International Journal of Architectural and Environmental Engineering, WASET,Vol:12,
No:4 (2020), 448-449.

30. M. Hayes, ‘Varso tower: the challenges of high-rise’, Construction Europe, No 03, (2018), 38-40.

31. R. Kowalczyk, J. Skrzypczak, W. Olenski, ‘Politics, History, and Height in Warsaw’, CTBUH Journal,
(2013), 35-37.

21
32. J. & J. Stefanou, ‘The description of the image of the city’, NTUA University Press, (1999), 478-480.

33. Norberg-Schulz K., Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of Architecture, (Rizzoli, 1980) 17, 63.

34. W. van der Toorn Vrijthoff, ‘History integrated urban transformation’, WIT Transactions on Ecology
and the Environment, WIT Press, Vol 93 (2006), 66.

35. C. Sachs-Jeantet , ‘Managing social transformations in cities’, UNESCO-MOST (1995), 14.

22
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25