Palace Complex

An exploration of the history and significance of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Poland.The Palace of Culture and Science is a massive Stalinist skyscraper that was "e;gifted"e; to Warsaw by the Soviet Union in 1955. Framing the Palace's visual, symbolic, and functional prominence in the everyday life of the Polish capital as a sort of obsession, locals joke that their city suffers from a "e;Palace of Culture complex."e; Despite attempts to privatize it, the Palace remains municipally owned, and continues to play host to a variety of public institutions and services. The Parade Square, which surrounds the building, has resisted attempts to convert it into a money-making commercial center. Author Michal Murawski traces the skyscraper's powerful impact on twenty-first century Warsaw; on its architectural and urban landscape; on its political, ideological, and cultural lives; and on the bodies and minds of its inhabitants. The Palace Complex explores the many factors that allow Warsaw's Palace to endure as a still-socialist building in a post-socialist city."e;The most brilliant book on a building in many years, making a case for Warsaw's once-loathed Palace of Culture and Science as the most enduring and successful legacy of Polish state socialism."e; -Owen Hatherley, The New Statesman's"e;Books of the Year"e; list (UK)"e;An ambitious anthropological biography of Poland's tallest and most infamous building, the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. . . . It is a truly fascinating story that challenges a tenacious stereotype, and Murawski tells it brilliantly, judiciously layering literatures from multiple disciplines, his own ethnographic work, and personal anecdotes."e; -Patryk Babiracki, H-Net History