Built in the former Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk), the modernist post office building still exists today and serves the same function.

Architects of the Praesens Group
In 1926 the Praesens Group was founded in Warsaw - an association of avant-garde architects and visual artists preaching the idea of a radical break with traditional design. In the field of architecture, its founders promoted industrialisation and standardisation, following the example of the German Bauhaus, the Dutch De Stijl group and Moscow's Vkhutiemas (an art academy known as Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops). As a result, they were instrumental in spreading modern forms of functionalist architecture in Poland. Members of the Praesens Group carried out many projects which today are classics of Polish Modernism, to mention only the buildings of the Warsaw Housing Cooperative in Żoliborz, designed by Barbara and Stanisław Brukalski.

One of the founding members of Praesens was Bohdan Lachert (1900-1987), a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology, author of avant-garde architectural concepts in the spirit of the eminent architect of the modernism era, Le Corbusier. Most of these projects were created in collaboration with another member of Praesens, Lachert's long-time professional partner and friend, Józef Szanajca (1902-1939). In 1937, both architects were awarded the Grand Prix for the Polish Economic Pavilion at the Art and Technology World Exhibition in Paris. After the war, Lachert was active in the Office for the Reconstruction of the Capital, and in 1948 he became a professor at the Warsaw University of Technology, where he led the Department of Industrial Design.

Modernist post office building in the former Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk)
. One of the most important examples of Lachert's inter-war work is the post and telegraph office in Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine), built in 1937-1939 on what was then Sobieskiego Street (now Sichowych Strzelców 13a). He probably received the commission through his contacts with Szanajca, who was at that time head of the architectural studio of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs.

The building consisted of two clearly distinguishable parts - a wide, irregularly shaped rectangular ground floor with an internal courtyard, and an austere cuboid of the upper storeys, rising above one of the sides of the ground floor. In the main part of the ground floor, operating rooms were planned (parcel, letter and cash desk and telegraph and telephone rooms, with separate entrances), as well as dispatch and sorting rooms with parcel storage. The upper floors housed the internal work rooms. Some of the space on the second and third floors was used for staff housing. When designing the post office building, Bohdan Lachert took into account the current guidelines for the design of postal buildings.

In 1929, the magazine "Poczta" published an article by engineer Kazimierz Zajdler, which discussed the principles for designing first-class postal and telegraph buildings, i.e. buildings with the broadest functional programme. Zajdler was president of the Warsaw Postal and Telegraph Directorate at the time, so the postulates he expressed were, in a way, the department's official guidelines for the design of postal buildings. These postulates were fully utilised by Lachert.

Architecture of the historic post office in Stanislawow
The architectural form of the Stanislavov post office building conforms to the guidelines of functionalism. In this respect, it is worth noting the design drawings, about which the Warsaw architectural historian Katarzyna Uchowicz writes: "Already the manner in which the design was developed - with its bravura use of graphic effects and the introduction of authorial typography - distinguished the architect's concept. It is worth pausing for a moment on this aspect of the postal designs. The fonts used on the cover were a simplified version of the letters of an advertising neon, intended for the factory shop of the Żyrardów Plant Society in Warsaw (1929). Perhaps in the case of the post office, the Stanislawów inscription was also intended to serve as a signboard'.

As for the building itself, the strict dependence of form on function - one of the most important postulates of the direction - is based on the clear separation of parts with different functional purposes. In this case, the ground floor, which houses the client rooms and the rooms directly related to the service, was given the form of a stone plinth. The subsequent storeys, intended for the post office's internal functions, were resolved as a simple, cubic block with a flat roof, partly overhanging on the ground floor and interspersed with Corbusier-esque horizontal bands of window openings. The modernist plasticity is further expressed in the contrasting juxtaposition of materials: smooth plasterwork and a plinth of strips of hewn fieldstone and terracotta crowbar, alternating with bands of clinker.

The building still functions as a post office today. In 1967, it was extended with an automatic telephone station, consisting of an extension of the original part and an eight-storey high-rise building closing the composition of the whole complex. The author of the extension was Volodymyr Lukomski, a graduate of the Lviv Polytechnic.