The Zakopane Style (Polish: Styl zakopiański ) or Witkiewicz Style is an art style primarily expressed through architecture that originated from the regional art and culture of the Polish Highlands, specifically the Podhale region. It draws upon motifs and building traditions of the Carpathian Mountains and the culture of the Goral people. It is named after Zakopane, the region's main town, which emerged as a major tourist destination in the 19th century.

Stanisław Witkiewicz, born in Pašiaušė, present-day Lithuania, created this synthesis and is recognized as the founder of the Zakopane Style. The style emerged around 1890, as Witkiewicz aimed to establish a foundation for modern Polish national architecture rooted in Podhale art, connected to the Young Poland art movement. Promoters of this style included W. Matlakowski, W. Eljasz-Radzikowski, and J. Wojciechowski, with the " Przegląd Zakopiański " journal, published from 1899 to 1906, serving as a platform for its popularization.

The style predominantly gained traction in the construction of guesthouses. Zakopane Style design also extends to furniture, household items, clothing, porcelain products, musical instruments, and souvenirs. Elements of Goral culture permeated the works of Polish composers and writers. In its broader sense, the term "Zakopane Style" can also encompass all manifestations of Podhale folk art's influence on national culture.

The Zakopane Style, conceived by Stanisław Witkiewicz in the late 19th century, was a pioneering Polish national style inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement and the vernacular architecture of the Podhale region. Witkiewicz, who settled in Zakopane in 1890, sought to create a modern Polish architectural style rooted in the traditions of the Goral people. His vision extended beyond theory, leading to the construction of numerous buildings, primarily guesthouses, in Zakopane and other parts of Poland under Austrian and Russian partition.

Around the turn of the century, numerous architectural styles competed for recognition as the "national style" ( styl narodowy ). Architectural historians and architects dedicated significant effort to analyzing native architectural traditions during the final two decades of Polish partitions. Szymon Szyller, the architect of Warsaw's Poniatowski Bridge (1905), published a comprehensive study of Polish architectural forms, Tradycja budownictwa ludowego w architekturze polskiej (Native Building Traditions in Polish Architecture, 1917), based on years of architectural "archeology." Szyller favored a Renaissance style derived from 16th and 17th-century buildings in central Poland. He was responsible for the restoration of the Płock Cathedral in 1902-1903, which incorporated both Romanesque and Renaissance elements. Others, like Józef Pius Dziekoński, favored a pointed variant of Gothic known as Vistula-Baltic Gothic ( Gotyk Nadwiślański ). He designed Warsaw's St. Florian's Church, built between 1888 and 1901, in this style. Despite being influenced by English and French Gothicists, Polish proponents of this style believed they had identified national characteristics in the Gothic architecture found in towns along the Vistula River in northern Poland.

As the Podhale region developed as a tourist area in the mid-19th century, the population of Zakopane began to increase. New buildings to accommodate these residents were constructed in the style of Swiss and later Austro-Hungarian chalets. Witkiewicz found inspiration in the Ruthenian Style he encountered during his studies in St. Petersburg, recognizing the potential of adapting folk architecture to modern needs. The first Zakopane Style home, Koliba Villa, built in 1892-1894, exemplified this approach. Witkiewicz collaborated with local carpenters and woodcarvers, viewing them as co-creators in his architectural endeavors.

At the end of the century, Stanisław Witkiewicz, an architect, painter, novelist, journalist, and art critic, was commissioned to design a villa for Zygmunt Gnatowski. In his project, Witkiewicz decided not to use these foreign architectural styles and instead used the local traditions of the native Gorals of Podhale. Based on the vernacular architecture of the Carpathians, Witkiewicz used as a model the modest but richly decorated houses of the Goral villages such as Chochołów, which he enriched by incorporating some elements of the Art Nouveau style, reflecting the increasing population of Zakopane in the 19th century. This building, known as Villa Koliba, was built between 1892 and 1894, and is currently preserved on Koscieliska Street in Zakopane.

The Podhale hut served as the model for Zakopane Style villas. Witkiewicz aimed to create a national style by "artistically employing" the characteristic features of folk furnishings and expanding the traditional repertoire of geometric and plant motifs with elements from the Tatra Mountains flora.

Early attempts to incorporate Podhale ornament into artistic crafts involved carving motifs on wooden furniture. However, Witkiewicz criticized these efforts for neglecting the original forms of highlander pieces. He subsequently designed villa furnishings, harmonizing them with the architecture and incorporating Goral elements.

Witkiewicz also designed interiors and furnishings for a new parish church in Zakopane, but his plans for the grand altar faced opposition due to concerns about the style's suitability for sacred art. Despite this, the Zakopane Style continued to influence furniture design, with other artists like Wojciech Brzega and Stanisław Barabasz contributing their interpretations.

Witkiewicz designed several other original buildings in Zakopane, including Villa "Pod Jedlami" in the Koziniec district, the chapel in the Jaszczurowka district, Villa Oksza on Zamojski Street, the Tatra Museum building, the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the parish of the Holy Family church on Krupówki Street, and the Korniłowicz family chapel in the Bystre district. Witkiewicz expressed his vision for the Zakopane Style as aiming to build " a house that would dispel all existing doubts about the possibility of adapting vernacular architecture to the requirements arising from the most sophisticated needs of comfort and beauty... a house that would demonstrate that one can have a house in the dominant style of Zakopane and at the same time have confidence that this house will not disintegrate, that it will protect one from storms, gales and cold, that it will possess a full range of comforts and simultaneously that it will be beautiful in a fundamentally Polish way. " The Zakopane style soon found supporters among other prominent architects, such as Jan Witkiewicz-Koszyc, Władysław Matlakowski, and Walery Eljasz-Radzikowski.

Although these advocates of historicism had pretensions to architectural "archeology," they were largely motivated by aesthetic preferences. The claims made for the vernacular architecture and design from the Podhale region, then under Habsburg rule, while certainly no less exaggerated than those for the Gothic, held greater significance for the history of design in Poland.

Podhale culture captured the imagination of many architects and designers, as well as Polish society across all three partitions. In the 19th century, the town of Zakopane was the regional center of the Podhale area, the northern foothills below the Tatra Mountains. It was largely populated by the Gorale (Highlanders), an ethnically and linguistically distinct people. Podhale was one of the poorest and most isolated areas, claimed as Polish by nationalists, in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Untouched by industry, its population survived as farmers and shepherds on the forested slopes and valleys of the Tatras.

A key figure in the region was Tytus Chalubinski, a doctor, botanist, national activist, and mountaineer, who had been a professor at the Warsaw Academy of Surgical Medicine until 1871. He first came to Zakopane in 1873 to combat a cholera epidemic. This experience led him to become one of the founders of the Tatra Society ( Towarzystwo Tatrzanskie ) that year. As an institution established to promote and preserve Gorale ways of life, the Tatra Society was a classic example of the nationalist/Positivist strategy of institutionalizing and maintaining Polish culture. The Society sought to improve the social conditions of the local population and was a major force behind the establishment of a technical school in the town to harness the skills of local carpenters and wood craftsmen in 1876. It was also a major promoter of the region as a health resort, and Chalubinski, in particular, has been credited as the "discoverer of Zakopane" ( odkrywca Zakopanego ) for encouraging the bourgeoisie and intellectuals to come to the area to rest and recuperate in the pure mountain air. Under the influence of figures like Chalubinski, Zakopane became a major health resort attracting wealthy Poles from across all the partitions. While the wealthiest built Alpine-style villas as summer retreats, the less affluent stayed in the town's many sanatoria.

The Podhale region symbolized a freedom unavailable in the rest of the partitions. Its isolation made it a place where Polish life was unhindered by the oppressions of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Furthermore, the untouched natural beauty of this mountainous region seemed to be evidence of an intact and "pure" Poland. The local Gorale people, their lives, dress, traditions, and possessions, were also seen as embodying this perceived uncontaminated Polishness.

In 1886, Stanisław Witkiewicz, an artist and art critic from Warsaw, visited the Tatra Mountains for the first time. As both a nationalist and a fervent opponent of historicism in the arts, he found in the architectural and decorative traditions of the Gorale what he later argued to be the essence of Polish culture in form. This material culture seemed unsullied by the partitions and free of all foreign traces, like a living fossil from a time when the characteristics of the national genius were consolidated and fixed.

Witkiewicz was impressed by the vernacular Gorale homes: long, low wooden cabins constructed from logs and insulated with straw, topped with a wooden-slatted, half-gable roof with deep overhanging eaves. They were characteristically decorated with simple geometric patterns or plant forms on the door frame or across the main structural beams inside the house. At the same time, Witkiewicz and his supporters were concerned about the spread of 'Alpine' chalets built by wealthy Poles from outside the region. His friend, Stanisław Eljasz-Radzikowski, recalling the 1880s, wrote in 1901: 'Zakopane was already covered with the homes of the squirearchy and drab cosmopolitan homes in a Swiss-style. It seemed that the native Gorale cabin would disappear because many built homes quickly, and in speculation, in the style of the gentry.'

Witkiewicz claimed the 'discovery' of the roots of a Polish national style in the wooden vernacular architecture of the region. He differed from supporters of historicist models who sought to restore particular architectural languages to revive the values of a specific historical epoch. In contrast, the promotion of the Zakopane Style can be seen as an example of what Adam Miłobędzki identified in central Europe as 'the Romantic idealization of the peasantry, and the unwavering belief that authentic and unchanging traits of national tradition have been preserved in peasant culture.' Witkiewicz argued that the peasant material culture of the Podhale region held the last vestiges of a style that had once been found throughout Poland but now only remained in the near-inaccessible foothills of the Tatras.

In the 1890s, Witkiewicz, then a resident of Zakopane, along with his colleagues, architects Julian Orchowicz, Stanisław Porczyński, Teodor Burze, Eugeniusz Wesołowski, Stanisław Barabasz, and literary proponents like Stanisław Eljasz-Radzikowski, collectively and consciously set about transforming the raw materials they found in Zakopane into an intellectually complex decorative and architectural language. Witkiewicz wrote in a letter to his sister in 1898: " We build more. One home is completed, two more are underway. Zakopane is developing well, in its own style. "

The Zakopane style later spread throughout the Polish mountains. However, it also spread nationally and internationally. In the Warsaw area, several attempts were made to adapt this style to brick construction. Examples include a series of railway stations designed by Czeslaw Domaniewski and a petit hôtel located at 30 Chmielna Street in central Warsaw. In 1900, the young Kraków architect Franciszek Mączyński won an international architecture competition organized by the Parisian magazine Moniteur des Architectes with a design for a villa in the Zakopane style. Also noteworthy is the Chata built for the writer Stefan Żeromski in Nałęczów, a series of villas in Wisła, Konstancin and Anin, and a brick apartment building in Lodz designed by Jan Starowicz and nicknamed "under the Gorals," as well as the Saldutiškis railway station (Lithuania).

Furthermore, the Goral diaspora has incorporated the norms and designs of the Zakopane style in the houses, chapels, and other buildings that serve their community, such as the headquarters of the Polish Highlanders Alliance of North America in Chicago or the chapel of the Polish National Alliance youth camp in Yorkville, Illinois. In the city of Oberá (Misiones Province, Argentina), the Parque de las Naciones (home of the National Immigrant Festival) is located, where the Polish community built its typical house in the Zakopane style.

While the Zakopane Style never became the dominant architectural style in Poland as Witkiewicz envisioned, it initiated the development of regional architecture and applied arts inspired by folk traditions. The Zakopane style dominated the architecture of the Podhale region for many years. Although the generally accepted end date for Zakopane-style buildings is 1914, new pensions, villas, and highland homes have continued to be built following Witkiewicz's architectural model to this day. The Museum of the Zakopane Style, located in Villa Koliba, provides visitors with information about this style.

The Zakopane Style draws heavy inspiration from the traditional building practices of the Podhale region while incorporating elements of Art Nouveau . Buildings in this style feature wooden walls constructed from halved logs, often adorned with floral motifs. Stone foundations and steeply sloped roofs are characteristic elements, with porches commonly built beneath the roof overhang. Thin slats around windows, reminiscent of sun rays, are another distinctive feature. Roofs are often highly decorative, with ornate ledges, arched windows, and vertical wooden ornaments placed on the roof ridge.

Witkiewicz aimed to create a Polish national style that combined the Goral traditions of the Polish Highlands with modern aesthetics. While the style's widespread adoption was limited, its influence is still visible in contemporary buildings in the Podhale region, which often incorporate elements like stone foundations, wooden walls, and sloped roofs as nods to the Zakopane Style.

The Zakopane Style was initially used in wooden architecture, but soon it was also developed in brick architecture. The most important examples in Podhale are the Tatra Museum, Dworzec Tatrzański and Grand Hotel Stamary in Zakopane and the Military Sanatorium in Kościelisko.

The Zakopane Style's emphasis on handcrafted design extended beyond architecture to encompass a wide range of applied and decorative arts. Stanisław Witkiewicz championed a holistic approach, believing that the artistic vision should permeate every aspect of a home, from furniture to the smallest decorative details. The furnishings of traditional Goral cottages served as inspiration for Zakopane Style furniture and decorative objects. Witkiewicz advocated for using local materials and adapting traditional forms to the needs of contemporary living.

The basic furniture found in Goral homes, such as tables, chairs, and shelves, provided a foundation for Zakopane Style designs. These pieces were characterized by their functional forms, logical construction, and decorative lines that followed the edges and contours of the objects. To create furniture for rooms not typically found in Goral cottages, such as living rooms and offices, designers combined elements from different traditional pieces. For example, a cupboard might be created by combining a chest with table legs and a shelf-like top, while a chair back could be inspired by the design of a sleigh.

Zakopane Style ornamentation drew heavily from the region's carving tradition. Geometric motifs like zigzags, cones, and crosses were common, along with plant motifs such as lilies, thistles, and the distinctive "sunrise" pattern. Openwork and intricate carving techniques were also frequently employed. While drawing inspiration from traditional forms, Zakopane Style designers also catered to the individual preferences of their clients. This resulted in variations in style and execution, contributing to the diversity of Zakopane Style objects.

The demand for Zakopane Style furniture and decorative items grew alongside the style's popularity. Designers like Wojciech Brzega and Stanisław Barabasz, alongside local craftsmen, created a wide range of objects, from furniture and textiles to lamps and ceramics. Witkiewicz himself designed interiors and furnishings for Villa "Pod Jedlami" and the library in the palace at Kluczkowice. Wojciech Brzega was particularly prolific, operating his own workshop from 1903.