@ARTICLE{Urbańska_Marta_A._Maciej_2014, author={Urbańska, Marta A.}, number={vol. XLII}, journal={Teka Komisji Urbanistyki i Architektury Oddziału Polskiej Akademii Nauk w Krakowie}, pages={133-155}, howpublished={online}, year={2014}, publisher={Oddział PAN w Krakowie}, abstract={The 26th of June 2010 saw the passing of the 100th anniver sary of the birth of Maciej Nowicki, an outstanding Polish architect and humanist. Nowicki was born in the classic example of a family "cast out of the saddle" - members of the intelligentsia and the gentry left landless - in Chita, Siberia, in the Zabaykalsky Krai. On the 31st of August of that same year, sixty years have passed since the tragic, untimely death of Nowicki in an airplane crash - which also happened far away from his homeland, above the Nile river delta, on his way from India to America. These two anniversaries have raised interest in the phenomenon that is Nowicki's oeuvre; a number of publications have been published and November 2010 saw the organizing of an academic conference in Warsaw (Warsaw branch of the SARP, Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology, RAM). However, due to the dispersal of his legacy, a decade of forced silence regarding his work after his departure from the country in 1945 and the previously difficult communication with the US and India, which were the sites of the last of his activity - Maciej (also known to some as Matthew) Nowicki, a phenomenally talented "architect for architects", as he was once aptly called by Frei Otto himself due to the refinement and ingenuity of his designs - still remains largely a mystery. The authoress of this essay has devoted her doctoral dissertation and several publications, published in both Polish and English, to Nowicki (doctorate, Kraków University of Technology, 2000). Here - she illustrates the course of the development of Nowicki's body of work - in the fields of both theory and design. Another topic, which is briefly discussed, is the concept of the reconstruction of the city center of Warsaw, developed in 1945, as well as the design of the first suspended roof (in the shape of a parabolic hyperboloid) for the Arena in Raleigh, South Carolina (1949). Finally, a wider discussion regarding the "architect's dream" is presented: that of the master plan and the architectural and urban concept of Chandigarh, the new capital of Punjab (India, 1950), developed by Nowicki (with the cooperation of Albert Mayer). After the tragic death of the Polish architect, the commission was taken over by a design team headed by Le Corbusier, who is, alas! considered by the general population as the only author of Chandigarh...}, type={Artykuły / Articles}, title={Maciej Nowicki: an architect, urbanist, visionary and his Chandigarh}, URL={http://www.czasopisma.pan.pl/Content/93371/mainfile.pdf}, keywords={Maciej Nowicki, Polish architect, Raleigh Arena, Chandigarh}, }