Manhattan Estate (Sedesowce), Wrocław

Grabowska-Hawrylak drew this between 1967 and 1970 as an attempt to import a warmer climate into a rebuilt German city: white towers, balconies framed by rounded concrete openings, climbing plants spilling from them, grass roofs on the shops below and communal roof terraces with washrooms on top of every block, meant to make up for the absence of any real recreation ground. Then the project was handed from the city to a housing cooperative, costs were cut, and it was built in grey concrete with the formwork marks left showing, the stair halls stripped of their windows to squeeze in more small rooms, and the plants never planted. Wrocław named it the Bunkers and the Toilet Bowls, after the shape of the loggia frames, and it entered the literature as brutalism by accident. The roof terraces survived the cuts. A 2015 renovation finally painted the towers the white she had specified forty-five years earlier.