Warsaw University Library
Marek Budzyński + Zbigniew Badowski · Warsaw, Poland · 1999
Warsaw University Library combines a large academic collection with an unusually public roof garden and planted façades. Marek Budzyński and Zbigniew Badowski organize reading rooms beneath a broad roofscape while a ceremonial entrance wall uses monumental copper panels and inscriptions as a contemporary civic façade. Ramps and landscape extend onto the roof, turning the building into both library and elevated urban park. Opened in 1999, it is a major work of post-socialist Polish architecture and an influential example of educational infrastructure integrated with public landscape.