The building of the Faculty of Architecture of Wroclaw University of Science and Technology  was erected in the years 1902-1904 to house the (former) School of Building Craft and the College of Machine Construction. The building was designed by Wroclaw’s municipal architect Karl Klimm based on the concept by the city architect Richard Plüddemann.
The school building, erected under the banner of “durability without splendor”, functioned as a useful educational tool for future master builders and building technicians. Its structure used a variety of the then contemporary building industry’s innovative and traditional materials: walls, roofings, vaults, ceilings, pillars and columns, stairs and finishing materials. Despite the large diversity, the designers managed to preserve the uniform character of this “medieval” building form with Romanesque interiors and Art Nouveau sculpted decorations.
The themes in these decorations were the state, city, crafts and the subjects taught at the college. Ornaments inspired by wildlife, authored by Wroclaw’s sculptors Wilhelm Künzel and Carl Hiller and Hans Rumsch the painter and decorator, were full of moral symbolism related to the educational role of the building. The decorations on the front facade pertained to the academic discipline and mutual location of the two schools in the building and depicted the symbols of crafts related to machine construction and civil engineering. Over the west entrance leading to the civil engineering school, an inscription was sculpted to motivate students to exert themselves (Ohne Fleiss Kein Preis). A woodpecker was sculpted on the keystone of the portal resembling a pine tree trunk, and a nestling amidst pine branches was sculpted on other decorated stone blocks. Inside the building, on the capitals of the Romanesque and Art Nouveau stone pillars and columns, there are stylized motifs of the local wildlife: common thistles and long-eared owls, leaves and nuts of horse-chestnuts, ravens and dog roses, stemless carline thistles, pine needles and cones. Similarly to other contemporary German schools, the symbolism of decorations served an educational purpose – it represented noble causes, virtues and vices of students, “flowers and thorns” of school life.
Due to the richness of forms and symbolism of decorations, the building of the School of Building Crafts and College of Machine Construction is one of the outstanding examples of Wroclaw’s Art Nouveau architecture, and also an exceptional building in contrast to the simple and functional communal architecture. After 1945 the building was used by the Botanical Institute of Wroclaw University, and two years later it was handed over by the city of Wroclaw administration to then combined Wroclaw University and Wroclaw University of Technology . In the years 1968-1970 the Faculty of Architecture of Wroclaw University of Technology  was moved here.
(Written by Agnieszka Gryglewska, PhD)