The impact of artistic circles on the way of using and arrangement apartments in multi-family residential buildings in Poland in the 1950s and 1960s

This article (part I) presents the activities of artistic circles - architects - and their impact on the ways of using and arrangement of the living area. The way of using apartment is understood as:

1. The way of arranging basic living functions by inhabitants (sleeping, resting, preparing and eating meals, receiving guests, studying, personal hygiene);
2. The relationships between inhabitants and an apartment dependent on education, occupational structure, origin, life style, inherited cultural patterns, fashion as well as a group of physical characteristics and apartment attributes);
3. The rights of family members to use the apartment space, including the right to intimacy and having own private space, as well as the representative needs.

The aim of this article is to show the evolution of design thinking in the field of functional and spatial layouts of apartments and indicating the main trends of these changes. The selected functional layouts of apartments (including the remarks of the author of the design), representative of the given period of time, have been analyzed with respect to social and political conditions. In summary, the most important tendencies, which may be observed in respect of discussed changes, have been indicated. These include:

• expanding the living-room area of the apartment by designing a kitchen closer to the living-room or even combining a kitchen with a living -room;
• the differentiated approach to the issues of creating sleeping areas due to the understanding of children’s individual needs to have their own living space;
• the concern to upgrade the quality of hygiene in an apartment - by creating separate restrooms and designing bathrooms with a space for a washing machine.