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Architectural lessons in secondary school

In the background, the rear of the stage set from the film The Pianist, in the foreground, the students.

At the First Communal High School in Warsaw (Poland), every student has to attend the elective courses he or she has chosen. The school organises courses if there are more than eight students interested in them. One of these was the architectural course I had been leading for some years. There were three kinds of lesson. Every third lesson was a walk around part of Warsaw to show the students the architecture. That meant telling them how buildings are built, how they stay together and giving them information about the architects and the period of construction.

Showing architecture to the students did not meant just pointing out interesting things and explaining them, but also asking them questions which led the students to think about what they saw.

Lesson in the Praga district of Warsaw; the district does not house the best addresses in the city but, because of its architecture, it has its own special character. On the streets of the Praga district you have the feeling that they really belong to the people who live there.

The walks were in parts of the city that are rich in interesting architecture. We have seen architectural monuments and parts of the city that have an interesting social life influenced by architecture. We also visited the area where the film 'The Pianist' by Roman PolaÒski was shot. It was an interesting example of how part of the city can become an actor. The district, which was only partly destroyed during the Second World War, played the role of the completely destroyed area of the Warsaw Ghetto. This walk also gave us a chance to see the set-designs for the film.

Every third lesson there was a slide show linked with drawing on the blackboard. These lessons were about the architecture of different places in Poland and Europe. Every lesson focused on the architecture of one particular city or region. Every third lesson was architectural drawing. These lessons were led by two other people, Eryk Nowak and Jan Topczewski.

Hubert Trammer

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