The site triumphed over 297 projects submitted from 35 countries.
In their final assessment on Tuesday evening, the jury panel justified their decision, saying: “This park is a clear testimony to the post-war reconstruction of Warsaw and also anticipates modern circular economic criteria.”
They continued: “On the one hand, the project has strengthened the local population’s sense of belonging to the site, as they now better understand its history and can aesthetically appreciate the use of the rubble that formed the mound.
“On the other hand, the project has provided the city with a new green space that is resilient to climate change, thanks to landscape management strategies and the spontaneous nature that has grown on the mound, which has also reduced maintenance costs.”
Background brief
Warsaw’s wartime destruction saw Poland’s capital buried under 22 million cubic meters of rubble, and this left post-war town planners facing a perplexing challenge—just what should happen to the shattered fragments of the city?
Initially considered waste matter that needed to be hastily removed to enable the rebuilding of Warsaw, attitudes evolved, and this sea of rubble later found itself being recycled to be used as construction material.
However, one suggestion provided another solution. As early as 1945, Stanisław Gruszczyński, an engineer working for the Office for the Reconstruction of the Capital, authored a concept that envisaged the creation of a giant mound of rubble that would serve as a symbolic ‘commemorative tomb.’
Explaining his idea further, Gruszczyński wrote: “If we tried to look at rubble in a different way, not as ordinary rubble but as the remains of a dead city, then we would recognize that these remains bear the traces of our ancestors’ work.
“Millions of hands have touched this rubble over the years, and thousands of Poles once lived between these bricks—these remains should be treated as relics.”
As bold and convincing as Gruszczyński’s words were, they were originally treated with skepticism; it was only after his death in 1958 that the project was pushed through thanks to the unwavering determination of a team of Krakow-based artists and architects.
First taking shape in the 1960s, the mound of rubble was, however, a far cry from the poignant ceremonial memorial that Gruszczyński must have foreseen. Used also as a ditching ground for rubbish, it soon earned the inauspicious nickname of Górą Śmieci (Garbage Hill). In fact, such was its state of dishevelment, this moniker stuck and was later repeated on official city maps.
By the 1970s, visitors to the mound were largely limited to university students who used its steep inclines for civil defense exercises. To all intents and purposes, this somber link to Warsaw’s past stood abused and ignored.
A second life?
A corner of sorts was turned in 1994 when, at the behest of the architect and former Warsaw Uprising veteran Eugeniusz Ajewski, a giant Kotwica (the anchor-like emblem that was adopted as the symbol of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising) was placed on the hill’s peak.
Ten years later, City Hall ordered a clean-up of the surroundings and also carved a stairwell into the mound leading to the Kotwica that crowned it.
The initiative was immediately seized upon, and the Kotwica became a key gathering point for annual commemorations of the 63-day Uprising. Even so, public perceptions remained entrenched, and the mound found itself generally viewed as a degraded, overgrown site. This, though, was soon to change.
The rebirth
Prompted by complaints from the dwindling band of Uprising veterans, the city intervened a few years ago and launched an architectural competition to transform the eight-hectare space.
Won by topoScape and Archigrest, the joint vision reimagined the area not just as a place of remembrance but also as a recreational area with an emphasis on nature.
Reopened last year following a 20 million złoty (€ 4.61 million) restoration, the results have proved spectacular. Featuring a small open-air exhibition at the base of the mound, it is here that visitors can walk amid maze-like corridors of rubble that have been mounted with informational boards detailing the story behind Warsaw’s reconstruction.
Ahead, a 350-step stairwell flanked by broken masonry leads visitors to the top of the 150-meter-tall mound before depositing them at a circular viewing platform topped by Ajewski’s epic Kotwica.
But alternative access routes also exist, and these include ribboning woodland trails bound by walls that vaguely resemble sandbag barricades; every bit as striking, snaking metal walkways twist and turn above gullies and forest down below.
Using the latest technology to turn the unearthed rubble into concrete, the project has been hailed for intelligently integrating history with modern innovation. Likewise, by combining aspects of memory with recreation and ecology, it is little wonder that the new-look Uprising mound has been awarded for its pioneering approach to public space.
