Facing West

After fighting in the anti-Nazi underground in Warsaw, being captured by the Germans in the wake of the 1944 uprising, and being liberated by General Patton's U.S. Third Army, big, blond Witold von Henneberg and his brother Jacek made their way to the West, determined to become architects in the free world. Their father Wilhelm, vice president of the Polish Architectural Society, stayed behind, and in the period of increasing Russian influence on Polish artistic life was ordered to conform to backward Moscow-style architecture or not work at all.

The boys studied in Italy and England, finally came to the U.S., where Jacek completed his architectural studies and later taught at Harvard. The youthful Von Hennebergs, 34 and 30, set up shop in Cambridge, Mass. Last January, with their associate, another Polish refugee, Bohdan Hryniewicz, 27, they entered an international competition, sponsored by Poland's Committee for the Reconstruction of Warsaw, to design a multistory apartment building for low-income families. Said Witold: "The competition was a plebiscite in which architects together with technical and economic specialists would freely decide how to build multistory apartment buildings under Polish conditions." That meant with relatively low costs for labor and high for material.

The young firm sent off to Warsaw a design for a five-story apartment building resting on concrete columns with balcony access for every apartment. Planned to such detail as the radiant-heating system, plumbing and size of bolts needed to fasten parts, it has a special appeal for the penury-plagued Poles. It is completely prefabricated, with every wall, except those for bathrooms, made before installation so that the building's outer shell can be erected before it is even decided how many apartments are needed on the inside. In April the young refugees were informed that their design had won the first prize of 60,000 zlotys, or $15,000 (before a recent devaluation shrank it). Last week, as part of the prize, Witold was waiting for free tickets to fly to Poland and visit his architect father. Said he: "The significant thing about this isn't a prize. The Poles are returning to Western-style architecture."

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