Square of shame

Plac Defilad (Parade Square) came into being in 1955, when the Palace of Culture was completed. At the time it was one of the largest projects of its kind in Central Europe, and during the era of the People's Republic of Poland the square was regularly thronged with parades and marches. Today it is just an empty, wind-swept space in the centre of the capital city, loomed over by the "palace" designed by Lev Rudnev. Since the end of the communist era, the city has struggled unsuccessfully to come up with an appropriate way of utilising the square.However, in the early days after democratisation the signs had been more promising. An international architectural competition was held in 1992, which was won by two architects: Bartłomiej Biełyszew and Andrzej Skopiński. The vision they conceived, in an attempt to erase the embarrassment of this "great gift from the Soviet nation", was to conceal the palace in a forest of high-rise buildings. But the plan remained just that - a plan. In 20