EN
The article deals with the problems of monuments of vernacular architecture, and the Polish term suggested to describe it is architektura rodzima. A point of departure for the author are specific features of vernacular architecture as formulated by Adrian Gheorghiu, Georgeta Stoica and Haluk Sezgin (see: annotations 5—7). In Poland we may include into vernacular architecture the structures that should be qualified rather as monuments of material culture than as art monuments. Their origin is associated not only with particular social classes and strata. The resources of monuments of vernacular architecture comprise: 1. all rural buildings 2. buildings of the inhabitants of small towns and suburbs of medium-sized and big towns 3. buildings of indigent strata of the nobility and the gentry 4. buildings of village parish clergymen 5. buildings of social utility in the countryside and small towns that are the outcome of the activity of self-governments, organizations, denominational communes, formal and informal social unions, tutelar units (e.g. land owners) 6. buildings of rich strata of privileged groups and propertied classes in their utilitary part. The following kinds of structures may be regarded as monuments of vernacular architecture: a. cottages with farm buildings b. houses in small towns and in the suburbs, often with farm buildings c. rural and small town administration offices, buildings of social utility and servicing such as town-halls, seats of commune offices, forester’s lodges, schools, alms-houses, firestations, inns, public houses et.c. d. worship places: churches, Orthodox Uniate churches, chapels, belfries, wayside shrines et.c. e. vicarage buildings: presbyteries, organist's dwellings, presbytery farm yards f. manorial buildings: manor houses, administration houses, forester's lodges, houses of farm workers, granaries, lumber rooms and other farm buildings g. buildings of industrial and craftsmanship nature: water mills, wind mills, sawmills, forges et.c. The interest in vernacular architecture in Poland developed at the end of the 19th century, i.e. still in the period of the country’s partition (rural buildings were studied by ethnographers even earlier). Architects who aimed at the creation of ” a national style” were looking in traditional buildings in villages and small towns for forms that could be recognized as typically Polish and that could be ascribed a Polish genesis. The recapitulation of the search was the Exhibition of the Polish Architecture in 1919 and an album "Wieś i miateczko” (i.e. The Village and Small Town) published in 1916. The album contains 315 illustrations depicting 25 kinds of wooden and brick buildings, cult and secular ones, buildings of private and public utility, the erection of which was the result of the work of all classes, strata and denominations of the Polish society from the Middle Ages to the partitions. Attention was also paid to industrial buildings. All buildings shown in the album correspond to today’s characteristics of vernacular architecture. The author discusses three trends in interest taken in vernacular architecture since the publication of the album "Wieś i miasteczko” : "rationalistic” architectural creativeness, scientific and conservatory. A characteristic feature of the interest in Polish vernacular architecture is the concentration of the attention on wooden structures, although all kinds and types of such monuments (except for one type of a wind-mill) may be either wooden or brick. Though conservation records cover — on the basis of the criterion of the time of building — also brick buildings from vernacular architecture, they are not the subject of studies and no work is done on the problem of their protection. An artificial division of monuments according to the criterion of the material affects adversely research and conservation practice. Structures of vernacular architecture have been evaluated according to the system of the values adopted during studies on exclusive architecture. They come off unfavourably against this comparative scale, just as they give the impression of a primitive margin of architectural creativity. Wooden structures are also treated in this way, despite a national sentiment for this building material. The adoption of the notion of vernacular architecture by the Polish art history and monuments expertness would allow to evaluate its monuments according to an adequate system of values.