Against the background of the buildings of the former Sickness Funds in the Second Republic, the building of this institution in Brest-on-Bug is architecturally unique. The architect incorporated most of Le Corbusier's so-called principles of modern architecture, using a horizontal layout.

Sickness Funds and their headquarters in the Second Republic
Among the various types of public utility architecture of the Second Republic, the buildings of the Sickness Funds are quite numerously represented.

After independence was regained, a project was undertaken to create an insurance institution providing medical assistance in case of illness and allowances in case of inability to work. On 11 January 1919, compulsory health insurance was introduced, covering all employed persons. This was followed by the organisation of district health insurance funds. This action was completed in 1927.

Health insurance consisted of compulsory membership of a Health Fund operating in the area inhabited by the employee. The funds provided health care by contracting with hospitals and doctors to treat their members, but they often created and ran their own medical facilities in the nature of clinics or even hospitals. The importance of this institution was immense, as qualified medical assistance was made available to a population that had hitherto largely relied on quacks, grandmothers midwives and feldspersons.

During the inter-war years, at least a dozen new buildings were constructed for the health insurance funds. To this day, many of them still house outpatient clinics or hospitals. In the 1920s, the predominant architecture was austere and monumental, in the convention of academic or modernised classicism, which is why these buildings were often referred to as 'health palaces'.

The Brest building of the Kasa Chorych and its creator
. Against the background of these buildings, the building of the Kasa Chorych (Health Fund) in Brest-on-Bug is architecturally unique, considered to be the work of one of the leading representatives of the Polish avant-garde in architecture - Szymon Syrkus (1893-1964). In the early 1920s, he travelled to the main centres of the European avant-garde - Weimar, Berlin and Paris, among others, where he had the opportunity to become acquainted with the modern, modernist ideas of the Bauhaus and the De Stijl group. In 1929, together with other progressive designers - Barbara and Stanisław Brukalski, Bohdan Lachert, Józef Szanajca and Helena Niemirowska, his later wife - he founded the Praesens group, which two years later formed the Polish section of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM). In his design work, Syrkus concentrated on residential architecture, especially housing estates for the Warsaw Housing Cooperative and the Social Insurance Institution. In designing these buildings, he completely rejected historical inspiration in favour of new forms in the spirit of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The Brzeska Kasa Chorych, built on the then representative Unia Lubelska (now Lenina) Street, is one of the few public buildings designed by Syrkus (together with his wife, he also designed the headquarters of the Kutno, Drohobycz and Częstochowa Health Insurance Funds, but they were not realised).

The composition of the building is an asymmetrical arrangement of cubic volumes of different sizes and proportions, devoid of detail and any styling. The architect took into account most of Le Corbusier's so-called principles of modern architecture - flat roof, free plan and elevations, as well as the principle of strip windows. However, he replaced these with an imitation of the horizontal layout - using darker material in the parts between the windows.

The dominant feature of the overall composition is the vertical (tower) massing. Its dominant character is emphasised by its strong architectural form - the architect introduced different coloured material here. Above all, he glazed this part of the building to its full height and highlighted the staircase. The rounded, glazed risers betray an affinity with the work of German architect Erich Mendelsohn, in particular with the Petersdorff department store (now the DH Kameleon) in Wrocław.

Syrkus used a similar solution in the pavilion of the Herse company for the Poznan National Exhibition in Poznan: there he designed the rounded glazing of the ground and first floors as a ship design motif. He combined them with a terrace fenced off by a metal railing like a railing, over which the ropes supporting the core of the building were fastened.

The building of the Brest Health Insurance Fund now
. The Brest Health Insurance Institution's building still performs a similar function - it houses the Brest City Hospital, but post-war expansion (extension of the front body and superstructure of the side wing) contributed to the distortion of the original proportions. It is also a perfect illustration of how delicate a matter modernist architecture is.

Seemingly minor changes have completely altered the composition of the three volumes of different sizes: one has been aligned with the other, resulting in an impoverished layout. By extending one of the wings, the corner door, typical of Modernism, was placed in the façade axis. This created a classical layout, atypical of modern architecture.

The architectural value was also reduced by painting the clinker cladding brick-coloured. The aim was to refresh the façade, but the result was that the authentic colour of the clinker was replaced by a dull paint effect.