Again about the architecture of optimism….

meeting devoted to the book “Kowno. XX-XXI wiek. Przewodnik architektoniczny” (Kaunas. XX-XXI century. Architectural guide)

1.2.2019

The meeting will be attended by the editor of the Polish edition of the book – Grzegorz Piątek (Architecture Centre), and its special guest will be its co-author – Vaidas Petrulis, historian of 20th century architecture, researcher of modernist heritage of Kaunas, research worker of the Institute of Architecture and Construction of Kaunas University of Technology and initiator of the Lithuanian Digital Historical Architecture Archive. 

The architectural guide prepared by Lithuanian experts is the first such a broad presentation of Kaunas’ architectural heritage, which is famous for its interwar heritage. The architectural guide prepared by Lithuanian experts is the first such a broad presentation of Kaunas’ architectural heritage, which is famous for its interwar heritage.

After Poland had taken Vilnius in 1920, this provincial city had to take on the role of the temporary capital of Lithuania almost overnight. Dozens of public buildings, hundreds of tenement houses, and thousands of family houses designed by Lithuanian architects educated at universities all over Europe, were built outside the borders of the medieval Old Town. Kaunas became a place expressing of the ambitions of independent Lithuania, and today the city is the treasury of modernism in many of its shades.

The Polish edition of the book follows the Lithuanian, German and English versions. More than half of the 242 objects presented in the guide come from the inter-war period of the capital city, and the rest was created in the post-war period – under Soviet rule (socialist realism, late modernism) or in the contemporary Republic of Lithuania (postmodernism).

Collective study edited by Julija Reklaitė

Translation: Kamil Pecella

Graphic design: Biuro Szeryfy

Fundacja Centrum Architektury, 2018

The translation has been co-financed by the Lithuanian Institute of Culture

The book will be available in the bookstore of the Museum of Architecture at a promotional price of PLN 49.