Waves in Gdansk. This short film is a reminder of their value

·30 June 2025

“Meander” is a two-minute documentary whose protagonists are Gdansk’s famous wave houses and their inhabitants. The film was created by the directing duo of Aleksandra Korpysa and Michał Radoń – life partners and owners of the Visual Department. The idea for the production was born out of a joint walk in Gdańsk’s Przymorze district and a fascination with the unusual layout of the wave houses, as well as nostalgia on the part of Michał, who spent his childhood in the shadow of these buildings. The short film is intended as a tribute to these iconic modernist buildings.

The first wave houses were built in Gdansk in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an answer to the housing shortage. Seven of them were erected on the Przymorze housing estate and one on the New Port-Letnica border. The project envisaged quick and relatively cheap large-panel building, which, while maintaining a repeatable module, could accommodate thousands of families in a small area.

The most famous – the wave building on Obrońców Wybrzeża Street – measures as much as 860 m in length, reaches 11 storeys and conceals 1,792 flats housing almost 6,000 people. It is the longest residential building in Poland and the third longest in Europe

Realisation and work on set

The production of ‘Meander’ is an intimate project realised solely on the private initiative of the creators. On weekends, Aleksandra and Michał travelled through selected galleries, staircases and flats, documenting the details of the architecture. For Ola, it was the first such in-depth contact with the interiors of a wave building, so each successive turn of the cage or view of the courtyard grew into a discovery.

Involvement of the local community

To add a human factor to the film, Ola used her TikTok account (@ola.quepasa) to call for submissions for the project. The response exceeded expectations – selected flats hosted the authors and residents were eager to share stories and spaces.

Residents often approached us and asked what we were making a film about. Our fondest memory is of one elderly gentleman, about eighty years old, who came up and just said: “Show, show, let the world see, it’s worth it”, and disappeared around the corner. It is clear that there is a strong local patriotism in the wave houses. This architecture has its fans and supporters. It fascinates us not only from an aesthetic point of view, but also from a psychological and sociological point of view, the filmmakers admit.

Gdansk wave towers – architectural giants

Although the buildings of the title are sometimes seen through the prism of communist-era design and criticism, ‘Meander’ shows how much charm there is in them: from the length of the corridors, to the repetitiveness of the modules, to the community of thousands of residents sharing a common roof, yet often passing each other without a word. The film is a tribute to this structure – not just as architecture, but as a sociological phenomenon that arouses emotions and inspires artists.

source: Visual Department: https: //www.instagram.com/visual.department/