Storytelling

Background story

The tenement house was designed by Waclaw Krzyzanowski (an architect who also designed, among other things, the Jagiellonian Library and the AGH building) for Kazimierz Danek, who was a confectioner and owner of the Europejska confectionery in the Market Square. The 1923 building was built as a "profit house," which referred to the grandiose, most elegant townhouses built in prestigious locations. It is a neoclassical, five-story corner tenement, heavily decorated with architectural detail. After World War II, the building was the headquarters of the Security Office.

Modernism

Modern architects of the 1920s were inspired by modern art, taking on its abstractness. Some of them, however, rejected the connection between architecture and artistic activity altogether, considering architecture's task to fulfill material social needs. Others, like Le Corbusier, believed that architecture becomes art when the most formally beautiful of the possible fully functional solutions is chosen. In the circles of modern architects, it was widely believed that architecture should follow modernity and cultivate a new culture.

art deco details in cracow hotel near old market

Art déco

Art déco was a reaction to Art Nouveau, an expression of opposition to the lack of spatial discipline. As early as Art Nouveau, there was a trend toward designing mass industrial products, but it was not until the Art Déco period that a more modern design was undertaken, with an eye toward function and impact on people's physical and social surroundings. This was a conscious act, an attempt to create a style along the lines of those of the past, but forward-looking and optimistically seeking to express the modernity of the world and the emerging mass media. The contradiction was that the creators of art déco also paid great attention to the perfect execution of the utilitarian object - so they could not be cheap or available to a wide clientele.