"Mr Anthony, tell me honestly, what do they say about me in Warsaw? - Shall I answer honestly? Nothing. - And indeed. After all, we really don't talk about Korngold in Warsaw at all "*, wrote Antoni Slonimski in "First Need Articles. Notes and remarks1951-1958". This is a pity, because Lucjan Korngold is the creator of dozens of buildings that have permanently blended into the skyline of Warsaw and São Paulo. They also appeared in Polish architectural magazines, in the French "L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui" and the Italian "Architettura". The variety of formal solutions and the quality of his architectural designs deserve recognition. On the new continent, he was faced with working in new matter, skyscraper designs as an affirmation of the style of the future, and a new form to meet the needs of the tropical climate.

A short biography of Lucjan Korngold
The Warsaw architect was born on 1 July 1897. He lived, studied and worked here. He interrupted his studies at the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology in 1918 to join the Polish Military Organisation and then the Polish Army. He obtained his architect's diploma in 1923 under the direction of Rudolf Świerczyński. At this time in Poland, the artistic search for a national style was coming to an end and there was growing interest in avant-garde solutions and ideas from Le Corbusier, the German Bauhaus and the Russian Constructivists. Korngold's Warsaw concepts sit on the borderline between the academic classicism of his studies and the modernist idea of functionalism. From the early 1930s Lucjan Korngold ran his own studio. He was happy to work in ensembles. His output from the interwar period includes more than 50 projects.

Korngold's first architectural projects
. Many of them can still be seen in Warsaw today. In the dynamically developing city there was a growing demand for office buildings, income houses, company headquarters and modern urban villas. Lucjan Korngold also designed interiors and furniture for his architectural creations. The realisations created at the time are regarded as flagship examples of Polish architecture of the period, such as the villa on Chocimska Street in Warsaw, designed with Henryk Blum. It is a house composed of simple blocks, plastered in white, with a high ground floor on pillars and a terrace on the roof of the side wing. The author, like Le Corbusier, gave the significant elements pure geometric forms.

Lucjan Korngold's fate in exile The outbreak of war interrupted a thriving career. He participated in the September campaign. In December 1939, the architect and his family fled occupied Poland, first to Rome and then to Brazil. In 1940, he settled in the rapidly developing São Paulo.

Modernist currents had been present in Brazilian architecture since the 1920s, thanks to artists emigrating from Europe and native architects educated at European universities. The symbol of modern architecture in Brazil became the building of the Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro, completed in 1943, designed by Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer and consulted by Le Corbusier himself. "I did not suppose that there could be modern architecture of such a high level in the world, of which we in Poland knew as little as nothing. "* - Korngold wrote from Brazil in a letter to the architect Jeremi Strachocki.

The economic boom after the end of the war contributed to Brazil's rapid development. In São Paulo, an important economic and industrial centre, the population more than doubled in two decades. The newly constructed buildings were intended to respond to the needs of the growing metropolis and to be a manifestation of the future and modernity. Simple, functional, extended upwards.

Lucjan Korngold's architectural activity in Brazil
. Lucjan Korngold, an experienced designer, created his first works on the new continent in the architectural office of Francisco Matarazzo Neto. He was only able to obtain the right to practise his profession independently when he was granted Brazilian citizenship.

In 1944. The Pole opened his own studio and collaborated with the architect Francisco Beck, the most famous result of which is the Edifício Thomas Edison office building, on Bráulio Gomes. Korngold himself noted that "Brazil's mild climate contributed to the easier realisation of Corbusier's boldest theories "*, impossible in Europe due to the climatic conditions.

The skyscraper of the São Paulo business centre
In 1946, the Edifício CBI Esplanada office building project was conceived to stand in one of the city's main squares, Ramos de Azevado, near Formosa Street and Parque do Anhangabaú. The investor was an entrepreneur, Henryk Spitzman Jordana (1906-1967), who, like Korngold, was a wartime refugee from occupied Poland.

Work began at the beginning of 1947 and lasted until 1950. The project involved the construction of two independent buildings: the ground floor was for retail and services, and the upper floors were for offices and a club. Korngold proposed a façade independent of the structure, enclosing the whole in a coherent external form with a modern architectural language, representing a new element in the landscape of Vale do Anhangabaú among buildings of classical style.

Architecture of the Edifício CBI Esplanada skyscraper
Lucjan Korngold designed the building with a reinforced concrete structure, departing from the steel skeleton used for such tall projects. He also used two communication and installation shafts to stiffen the 100-metre-high building based on a shafted structural system. The lifts were made in Brazil under a US licence. The foundation on a plot of land with a difference in level of over nine metres required special solutions in the foundation section.

The free plan of the subsequent storeys allowed for free shaping of the office spaces by means of partition walls. The simple, compact body of the building retained the classic division into base, main body and finial. The top zone, thanks to its monumental porticoes, does not disrupt the uniformity of the cuboid form, while at the same time fulfilling the provision for the top three floors to have a smaller outline than the others.

The building gained optical lightness thanks to the facades in the form of reinforced concrete razor walls with windows set back to the interior. A novelty was the use of window ironwork in the form of steel profiles ordered from Volta Retonda, Brazil's first steelworks, which had opened two years earlier. The retractable windows provided excellent protection from the sun and tropical rain in summer and from violent winds in winter, especially as the building had no air conditioning or heating. The 50 cm deep window "covers" form a grid of brise-soleil (light breakers), with a plastic effect of light and shadow dynamising the rhythmic structure of the façade. The sparse, geometric, bright volume still stands out among the high-rise buildings in São Paulo. The realization shows a concern for proportion and order to guarantee harmony and for the sculptural quality of the whole, characteristic of Korngold as an architect.

The project was awarded a gold medal at the Pan-American Architecture Exhibition in Lima in 1948. In the year of its completion (1950), the CBI Esplanada was the tallest building in the world with a reinforced concrete structure. The building became an important reference for other developments in downtown São Paulo in the following years.

Lucjan Korngold's work in Brazil
This was Lucjan Korngold's first independent project (naturalised in Brazil in 1949), although he obtained his official architect's licence in August 1953. During his more than 20 years of activity in Brazil, he designed or co-designed more than 30 office and service buildings, single- and multi-family houses, industrial buildings and edifices for institutions and individual investors in São Paulo and Rio de Janerio.

Stylistically diverse projects range from the Palácio do Comércio, with its pioneering composite construction solution in Brazil, to the modernist villa of Henrik Landsberg in Rio de Janeiro. When explaining trends in contemporary architecture, the architect himself used the category of 'technical beauty', which would replace its classical understanding as a result of the development of new techniques.

Officially, already a Brazilian architect, he ran his own studio. He gathered around him a group of young designers, an informal 'school'. He helped fresh newcomers find their way in their new environment and was active in the Institute of Brazilian Architects. He took an active part in the cultural life of the city and collaborated with the trade press. He remained professionally active until the end of his life. He died on 6 February 1963 at the age of 65 and was buried in the Cemitério do Araçá cemetery in São Paulo, a resting place for people of merit in Brazil.

In 1992, the CBI Esplanada skyscraper was included in the list of monuments by a decision of the City Council for the Preservation of the Historical, Cultural and Environmental Heritage of the City of São Paulo (CONPRESP).

*quotes for: Grzegorz Rytel, Lucjan Korngold. Warsaw-São Paulo 1897-1963, Warsaw, 2014 and Architecture.