Rubble of Warsaw (2015-ongoing)
This project began as an MA dissertation, supervised by Michał Murawski and Peg Rawes, and was defended at the Bartlett, UCL, in 2016. Between 2018 and 2022, I developed the research during my PhD studies at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Łukasz Stanek and Kim Förster. Daniel Abramson and Matthew Wells examined the resulting doctoral thesis, and it passed without corrections, a distinction in the UK academic system. The thesis subsequently received two of the most prestigious dissertation awards in architectural history: the Theodor Fischer Prize, awarded by the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich (2024), and the SAH David B. Brownlee Dissertation Award (2025). The project became the basis for exhibitions, publications, and a variety of activities that can be consulted across this webpage. The selected academic publications concluding the project are listed below.
Selected publications
Circular Reconstruction: Rubble, Labor, and Rebuilding of Warsaw after 1945
Book manuscript under review at Minnesota University Press.
The history of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was fundamentally reshaped in the 20th century by the violence of imperialist and industrial warfare. During the German occupation (1939–1945), over half of the city’s population perished, and 85% of its buildings were destroyed. Once a major metropolis of Eastern Europe, Warsaw was transformed into an alien landscape of destruction, defined by thousands of irreparable buildings and 40 million tonnes of debris. The Circular Reconstruction explores how the materiality of this environment shaped Warsaw’s postwar history. Drawing on a wealth of hitherto unexplored archival sources, the book traces the metabolism that bound together society, ruins, and the socialist government during the reconstruction period. It demonstrates how, alongside the labour of inhabitants, architects, and economic planners, rubble influenced postwar property relations, industrial organisation, material expertise, and Warsaw’s architecture and landscape. At the same time, the study shows how the socialist government harnessed the planned economy to maximise rubble reuse, enabling Warsaw's rebuilding under conditions of extreme shortages and stagnation. The resulting analysis foregrounds the relationship between rubble and labour as a key conceptual and methodological framework for understanding the social, economic, and political life that emerged in built environments fundamentally reshaped by modern armed conflict. At the same time, by centring practices of maintenance, repair, and reuse, The Circular Reconstruction provides a vital historical context for contemporary urban and architectural development, which now faces a proliferation of rubble far exceeding that of past and present wars.
Przywara, Adam. 2026. “From ruins to resource: recycling rubble in the socialist reconstruction of Warsaw.” The Journal of Architecture, August, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2026.2706572.
This article examines how the recycling of rubble became a means of enacting the planned reconstruction of post-war Warsaw. In the wake of the Second World War, the city's ruins were transformed into a resource for the planned economy through new legislation, the reorganisation of demolition practices, the development of technical expertise, and the establishment of a recycling industry — all led by state institutions. Drawing on ‘grey literature’ produced by employees of these institutions — including technical drawings, material studies, conference proceedings, and internal reports — the article shows how rubble recycling was developed, codified, and industrialised, and how it was mobilised in the production of socialist architecture. The resulting account recovers the materiality of the post-war environment within the history of reconstruction, showing its formative role alongside architectural expertise and state power. Simultaneously, the article positions architecture and construction as pivotal economic sectors in the history of recycling, contributing to understanding the politics of waste in the twentieth century.
Przywara, Adam. 2024. “Mining for Embodied Coal: Building Material Reuse in the Postwar Reconstruction of Warsaw.” Ardeth 13: 141–59. https://doi.org/10.17454/ARDETH13.09.
The conditions prevailing in Warsaw in the aftermath of World War II were ones of urban and industrial ruination, material scarcity and resource depletion. This paper examines how these conditions led to the development of a distinct urban strategy of energy conservation during the reconstruction period. The presented investigation commences with the analysis of various types of calculation through which architects and engineers tried to grapple with rubble – a defining material feature of Warsaw’s ruined landscape. This then leads into a highlighting of the development of embodied-carbon calculations, with consideration given to their role in securing the support of the socialist government for the recycling of rubble in architecture. The resulting argument offers a new historical entry point for discussing the circular economy in architecture by embedding rubble recycling in the energy landscape of postwar reconstruction in Europe.