The town of Elbląg in northern Poland is an unusual example of postmodern urban design. At the end of the Second World War, the famous Old Town with its over 600 late medieval and early modern houses was reduced to rubble, and left largely ruined for more than three decades. From 1983 onwards it re-emerged as was referred to as retrowersja (“retroversion”): a house-by-house reconstruction on the historical block plan (master plan by Wiesław Anders, Szczepan Baum and Ryszard Semka, modified under the influence of local Head Conservationist Maria Lubocka-Hoffmann). The new buildings were executed using postmodern forms with historic quotations that were only loosely inspired by the buildings destroyed in 1945, but today form a consistently designed ensemble that is legible as “old town” and popular among both locals and visitors.

The rebuilding of Elbląg’s Old Town shows how postmodern urban design was successfully used to reconcile contradictory desires and address contemporary challenges. These include a contested past in a town that had been a part of Germany until 1945, a longing for local identity and visible historicity despite historical ruptures, and the establishment of traditional planning principles such as small scale and mixed use in a modern environment. The paper will also point to the influence of the Polish school of historic conservation on an urban design practice that extends beyond the traditional concerns with historic buildings.

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