Maciej Nowicki Polish Architecture and Design Endowment
The Polish-American Club of the Triangle is partnering with North Carolina State University’s College of Design to create an endowment to honor the late Maciej Nowicki. Funds generated from the Maciej Nowicki Polish Architecture and Design Endowment will support faculty and students to study Polish architecture, design, graphic design and landscape architecture in Poland and America. April 22, 2023 will be named Maciej Nowicki Day at North Carolina State, in conjunction with the 75th anniversary of NC State’s College of Design.
Maciej Nowicki: Global Architectural Visionary & NC State Legend
1910-1950
Maciej Nowicki was a Polish architect who fought for his country during the German Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. During the occupation, he taught underground classes in architecture and town planning under the guise a bricklaying course. Post-War, Nowicki designed the urban plan for the reconstruction of Central Warsaw. In 1946, he joined the design team for the new United Nations Headquarters in New York City, working alongside Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Oscar Niemeyer. Nowicki was recruited in 1948 to become the first chairman of Architecture Department at the then School of Design at NC State, a position he held until his tragic death in 1950. Among his many achievements was the design of the J.S. Dorton Arena in Raleigh, an international landmark. He worked with Eero Saarinen, Albert Mayer and William Deitrick. His tremendously talented architect and designer wife Stanislawa Sandecka-Nowicki partnered with him on numerous projects, later becoming the first woman to be tenured as a full professor of architecture in America at University of Pennsylvania in 1958. She died in 2017 at age 105.Nowicki wrote ‘’Man and his way of life become the main source of inspiration for a modern architect...[one of the aspects] deals with the constant change of human life... Now this change is rapid and conspicuous, and it demands constant changes in architectural forms.”
Please join us in honoring and building the legacy of this remarkable global architectural visionary.
Dorton Arena
J. S. Dorton Arena is a property of exceptional historical and architectural significance to the State of North Carolina. Designed by Polish-born architect and educator Maciej “Matthew” Nowicki (1910–1950) in collaboration with North Carolina architect William Henley Deitrick, the arena represents one of the most important contributions made in North Carolina to the development of modern architecture and structural engineering in the twentieth century.
Completed in Raleigh in 1952, Dorton Arena immediately attracted international attention for its innovative structural concept. Its roof is suspended between two intersecting reinforced-concrete parabolic arches, with a network of steel suspension cables forming a structural grid. The resulting saddle-shaped roof is a hyperbolic-paraboloid structure in which the materials perform according to their inherent structural properties: reinforced concrete carries compression while steel cables carry tension. The apparent simplicity of the design conceals an exceptionally sophisticated structural system and constituted a pioneering achievement in modern architecture.
The importance of Dorton Arena extends well beyond Raleigh. The building became an internationally influential example of long-span, cable-supported architecture, and its structural concept influenced subsequent generations of architects and engineers. Its legacy can be seen in significant works including Kenzo Tange’s Olympic Hall for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Eero Saarinen’s Ingalls Ice Rink at Yale University, and the Berlin Congress Hall (Haus der Kulturen der Welt). Dorton Arena therefore occupies an important place not only in North Carolina's architectural history but also in the broader history of twentieth-century modernism.
The arena is particularly significant because of its connection to the North Carolina State University School of Design and to the development of North Carolina as a center for innovative modern architecture. Nowicki served as an architecture professor and acting head of the Department of Architecture at North Carolina State University from 1948 until his death in 1950. His presence at NC State contributed to the intellectual and architectural environment that helped establish the university's School of Design as an important center of modern architectural education. Dorton Arena stands as one of the most tangible and internationally recognized manifestations of that legacy.
Nowicki's contribution to North Carolina must also be understood within the context of his extraordinary international career. Born in Chita, Siberia, in 1910, he was educated in Poland and graduated from the Warsaw Polytechnic in 1936. Before coming to North Carolina, he had already established an international reputation through his architectural work, including the prize-winning Polish Pavilion at the 1939–40 New York World's Fair. During and immediately after World War II, he participated in the reconstruction and planning of Warsaw and subsequently became involved in the development of the new United Nations complex in New York. His professional associations included such internationally recognized architects as Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Wallace Harrison, and Eero Saarinen.
Nowicki's relationship with North Carolina was therefore not that of an architect working in isolation. Raleigh became an important chapter in the career of an architect whose ideas were already part of the international development of modern architecture. His work at NC State and his design of Dorton Arena brought these international architectural ideas directly into North Carolina.
Nowicki's career was tragically cut short in 1950 when he died in the crash of TWA Flight 903 in Egypt while traveling in connection with his architectural work in India. His work in Chandigarh was subsequently continued under the direction of Le Corbusier. Despite his early death at only forty years of age, Nowicki left an architectural legacy far greater than the relatively small number of buildings he completed.
Dorton Arena consequently represents an exceptional convergence of North Carolina history, higher education, the history of the State Fair, modern architecture, structural engineering, and international cultural exchange. Its significance is statewide because it embodies a period in which North Carolina was emerging as a center of architectural innovation and because the building itself became one of the state's most important contributions to twentieth-century architectural history.
The arena received an American Institute of Architects Honor Award in 1953 and was subsequently recognized by architectural scholars and publications as a landmark of twentieth-century architecture. Its national and international recognition reinforces, rather than diminishes, its statewide importance: Dorton Arena demonstrates how a building constructed for the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh could influence architectural thinking far beyond the borders of the state.
Dorton Arena should therefore be regarded as an irreplaceable component of North Carolina's architectural heritage and a structure of statewide and international historical significance. Its preservation is essential not only because of its association with Raleigh and the North Carolina State Fair, but because it represents North Carolina's contribution to the history of modern architecture and the state's connection to a remarkable international network of architects, educators, engineers, and cultural institutions.
Donate to Maciej Nowicki Endowment
Online:
Send check:
Please make your tax-deductible check payable to: NC State Foundation In the memo line, write: “Maciej Nowicki Polish Architecture & Design Endowment” and mail it to: ATTN: Alli Mosco; NC State College of Design; Campus Box 7701; Raleigh, NC 27695.
Links
Polish Diplomat Tours ISE, Celebrates Design Endowment
https://www.ise.ncsu.edu/blog/2023/05/04/polish-diplomat-tours-ise/
Maciej Nowicki: Life and Legacy - slides
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wb4e_vp2WWKMoLMk0qt00RJIrOUJMJo1/view?usp=share_link
North Carolina Architects & Builders - NCSU
https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000044
Matthew Nowicki Drawings and Other Material 1944-2011 - NCSU
https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/findingaids/mc00190/contents
Pencil Sketches Full of Promise - Alumni Magazine
https://magazine.alumni.ncsu.edu/2014/pencil-sketches-full-of-promise/
Dorton Arena's Incomplete Legacies - Southern Cultures
https://www.southerncultures.org/article/a-symbolic-project/
Maciej Nowicki Pionier Architektury Światowej - Wydawnictwo IPN
https://ksiegarniaipn.pl/pdf/549000/549501_Maciej_Nowicki_broszura_PL.pdf
Stanisława Nowicki - wife - University of Pennsylvania
https://almanac.upenn.edu/articles/stanislawa-nowicki-architecture