Central Department Store (Warsaw) architectural style modern architecture
The  Cedet, originally Central Department Store (Polish: Centralny Dom Towarowy, CDT) is a Modernist building, originally department store, currently office building, in Warsaw, Poland. It was designed by architects Zbigniew Ihnatowicz and Jerzy Romański and build between 1948 and 1952. Distinct from socialist realism architecture build at the time and proclaimed as aesthetic doctrine in 1949 by communist rule in Poland CDT building aroused controversy. Between 2014 and 2018 it underwent major rebuild by private investor who bought it in 2013, which received unfavourable opinions from architecture community, but was widely acclaimed by the public.Architecture
The building was designed in the popular pre-war 1920s style of modernism. Built as a detached structure formed from three separate blocks, the first, main, block forms the core of the store itself, with the main façade of the building fronting Aleje Jerozolimskie, the second construction operates as a food hall, whilst the third became a small office building attached to the rear of the main store via the restaurant section at ground floor. The main store was previously famous for its high-modernist windows, which were constructed using Polish oak frames and glass panes with an anti-reflective coating - a first for post-war era Polish architecture. The south elevation's main façade was specially designed to carry advertising and for most of its history was adorned with the store's trademark neon lights, arranged in the shape of spirals and supplemented with the vertically stacked letters "CDT", which stood for the store's original name 'Centralny Dom Towarowy' Central Department Store.
Inside the building, communication between floors was ensured with the construction of 6 main escalators and 4 elevators within a central stairwell, these were further supplemented by a multitude of other minor escalators and stairways; this made CDT the second building in Warsaw to use moving-stairway technology. The building has two major emergency exits which lead directly down to Bracka and Krucza streets.
The lobby of the store was originally decorated with terracotta wall tiling and oak flooring whilst the basement floor utilised reinforced concrete with glass and steel fittings; the use of these materials was then expanded to outfit the whole store. In addition to the standard fittings, a number of special pieces of art were commissioned for the interiors of the store, these included both sculpture and paintings, although they were usually of a distinctly modernist or post-modernist style.
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