The Green Villa, standing at 34 Krasińskiego Street in Komorów, is one of the finest examples of the Polish inter-war avant-garde. Designed by Bohdan Lachert and Józef Szanajca, it was built in 1933 and for almost a century has delighted visitors with its simplicity of form and thoughtful functionality. The wooden construction, at a time when steel and concrete were gaining popularity, testified to the courage of the architects, who wanted to prove that economic construction could go hand in hand with aesthetics and the comfort of everyday life.
An icon of the inter-war avant-garde
The Green Villa, designed in 1933 by Bohdan Lachert and Józef Szanajca, is a quintessential example of Polish modernism. The wooden structure with boarded planks and a layer of “muroblock” on a brick plinth met strict thermal standards and was cheap to build and operate. The Grabowski family, co-founders of the Employees’ Cooperative of the State Agricultural Bank, made it a model house with a usable garden, proof that economical construction could be both elegant and functional.
From its construction to the present day, the Villa has retained almost all of its original interior details. The wooden ladder staircase survives, as does the door carpentry ensemble, which consists of single-leaf louvre doors and frame-and-panel doors with espagnolettes and brass handles. Herringbone parquet floors still lie on the floors, the bathrooms are tiled with white and yellow ceramic tiles called “gorse tiles”, and there are two antique tiled cookers in the living rooms. Also noteworthy are the ebonite light switches, rarely seen in buildings of that period.
New monument
The historical and artistic qualities of the Green Villa were officially recognised on 6 December 2016, when the Mazovian Provincial Conservator of Monuments entered the building in the register of immovable monuments of the Mazovian Voivodeship. The decision highlighted the building’s unique character and importance for researchers of modernist architecture.
In 2023, the municipality of Michałowice took over the ownership of the Green Villa and the adjacent plot of land from the Mazovia Province. The purchase was fully financed from the provincial budget, and the region’s residents supported the initiative by entering the Villa in the ‘Our Monument’ competition. The project for the Komorov pearl won the first stage and secured a grant for the restoration work.
A year later, in April 2024, the local community’s ideas for the building’s new functions were presented in the second stage of the competition. Among the concepts submitted, proposals for the organisation of cultural events, historic meetings and art workshops dominated, perfectly in keeping with the spirit of modernist openness to the needs of the inhabitants.
The Garden City Idea House
on 30 January 2025, the Michalowice Municipality Council unanimously adopted the local zoning plan for the plot on which the Green Villa stands. The resolution, passed by a vote of all 13 councillors, designates the Villa as the ‘Garden Cities Idea House’ – a social integration centre, educational and research centre dedicated to the concept of garden cities. This is the finale of a nine-year effort to acquire the monument for residents and another step towards restoring it to its former glory.
Komory saw its intensive development in the 1930s as a satellite Garden City. The 1929 parceling out plan by Tadeusz Szymański envisaged not only orderly avenues and quarters, but also public spaces: a school, a church and Paderewski Square.
source: Municipality of Michałowice
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