EN
Poland is at present the scene of work on ammendments to the Law on construction and the Decree of the Minister of Spatial Economy and Construction concerning technical conditions for buildings and their location. These regulations will be also binding for historical buildings subjected to construction work. The author draws attention to the fundamental contradiction contained in the formulation of the Law on construction which mentions the observation of the law on the protection of cultural property and the obligation to apply contemporary construction norms and regulations. Owing to the obligatory employment of those regulations, historical monuments which were created in different conditions will become the victim of devastation and deformation. Alongside these basic contradictions in the proposed Law on construction, there exists a whole series of faults such as the exclusion of the mandatory supervision performed by the author of the project, or the absence of the State Conservation Service in specialist supervision (as regards historical buildings). Subsequently, the author demonstrates that in the majority of instances it is impossible to apply the regulations of the decree in question without the destruction of certain historical elements. This holds true i.a. for outer doors, windows, ceilings and, predominantly for stairs which due to the implementation of the decree will be doomed to total disappearance although they do not constitute a value in themselves but comprise an essential element of the spatial configuration of the given historical building. The closing part of the article proposes statements which should be included in the Decree in order to avoid the destruction of historical monuments as a consequence of its appliance.