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Janusz Warunkiewicz
February 17, 1910 - January 16, 2015
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<div itemprop="description">Janusz Patryciusz Wies&#322;aw Warunkiewicz was born February 17th, 1910 to Janina Warunkiewicz, n&eacute;e Szczepankiewicz and Jan Janusz Warunkiewicz in Warsaw, Poland. In 1902 his mother divorced his father and married Feliks Michalski, his beloved stepfather who treated him like he was his own, loved, son. When the First World War broke out in 1914 his family escaped to Tbilisi, Georgia where the lived out the war. In 1918 his family returns to&#8200;Warsaw, Poland and in 1921, at 11 years of age, he went to boarding school in Krakow. His Mother sent him alone on the train, gave him some money and told him to find lodgings on his own. In 1926 he ran away to Paris, France and Italy. He made his living by selling his drawings and paintings of tourist scenes. While living in Paris he met many of the artists of the era including Josephine Baker and Mistinguett.<br /><br />He went back to Poland in 1928 at age 18. He finished high school and goes to university to study architecture, urban planning and engineering. His university studies are interrupoted by the eruption of the Second World War when Germany invaded Poland on the 29th of September, 1939.<br /><br />In 1940 he was arrested with ten other Poles in the first terror roundup of the war. Imprisoned and tortured for months in the notorius Pawaiak prison in Warsaw, he was able to get out with help from a young unidentified Jewish girl and his parents. Once out, he successfully worked to ensure the release of the other ten people with whom he was arrested. All were released and he had visits after the war from many of them and their familes. After his release, he moved to southern Poland to recuperate. Along with a former teacher, he designed and built a hotel in Zakopane that still stands today. This was one of a few non-military building projects in war-time Poland.<br /><br />After the war ended, he went back to University and received two Masters Degrees, one in Architecture and the other in Engineering.<br /><br />In 1946 he was put in charge of the art and facades aspect in the rebuilding of the old part of Warsaw to original specifications. He got special permission to renovate a two-storey attic in old Warsaw at 30/32 Ulica Freta to create an apartment for himself and his small family, unheard of in that era. This apartment was a first of this kind in the old sector of Warsaw. He also had a telephone and two cars in an era when getting a phone entailed a multi-year wait.<br /><br />In 1950 he started a company called PSP which did special architectural and graphic design projects for the then-Communist Polish Government. He always refused to become a Party Member yet still managed to work for them.<br /><br />In 1951 he hired a young woman named Marianna Michalina Szmigrodzka as his office manager. She was previously a government official who put monetary values on works of art and other artistic projects commisioned by the government. For the next eight years he is one of the few people who are not high-ranking party members allowed to freely travel outside of Poland. He designed many local and international architectural projects for the Polish Government including a Pavilion in Johannesburg, South Africa.<br /><br />In 1953 he married Marianna Szmigrodzka and they had one child, a son, Marek in June of 1954. <br /><br />In 1959 he moved his family to Durban, South Africa where he became the chief architect and lead artist for the then-largest port in Africa, the Durban Ocean Terminal.<br /><br />In June of 1962 he maked the decision to leave South&#8200;Africa. Planned to emigrate to Brazil to work on the design of Brasilia but the architect who sponsored him dies abruptly. Is visited by a representative of the ANC and asked to stay and rebuild the country after democracy is brought in. He turns the offer down and a few days later is visited by Nelson Mandella. He is told that there is a book of &ldquo;good whites&rdquo; and that he will not be harmed. He declines, fearing a bloody revolution. Asks &ldquo;Will everyone have this book and look at it?&rdquo; Eleven months later is asked to come to Montr&eacute;al, Canada and works for the City and designs multiple Metro stations. In the late 1960s he become the guiding architect for the renovation of Place d'Youville in Old Montreal.<br /><br />In 1968 he opens his own architectural practice He and his firm work on a variety of projects ranging from hotels and condominiums in the Caribbean and housing projects in Canada and&#8200;England.<br /><br />In the mid 1970s he designs the first condominium on Nun's Island in Montreal, Pyramid 77. The building was his first design of an innovative idea in interior space planning that he continued to develop.<br /><br />In 1981 he retired from formal architectural practice and along with his wife, moved to Niagara Falls, Ontario to be closer to his son who had been living in Toronto since 1978. The two-storey house they bought in Niagara Falls was the second oldest house built in the 1880s there and he started renovating it on his own.<br /><br />In 1988 his first granddaughter, Anna Michalina Warunkiewicz is born on April 19th and in 1990 his second granddaughter, Maria Alexandra (Sasha) Warunkiewicz is born on May 22nd.<br /><br />In 1993 his deeply-beloved wife of 40 years, Marianna, passes away on Thanksgiving, just after her 70th birthday which was on September 23rd. <br /><br />1995 saw him move to&#8200;Toronto to the Manulife Centre and Bay and Bloor.<br /><br />In 1996 he started designing a new paradigm for building processes and urban planning. He continues to expand on the idea he came up with for Pyramid 77 and his work results in a design of both buildings and communities that would use 75 percent less energy and create 50 percent less pollution. It decreased cost and time-to-build and the proportion of green space to built space would be inverted.<br /><br />In 1998 he got a Mac Pro&#8200;Desktop with two monitors, a printer and a scanner. Within a couple of months, becomes proficient in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, Microsoft Word and how to browse the web and use email. Starts painting digitally, writing for a variety of Polish-language newspapers and designing items for the Polish community. Using these tools he continues to work on his architectural building processes and urban planning project. During this period he developed a building system using only 28 separate pre-built elements. <br /><br />Sadly, he fell ill on Labour Day in 2014 and passed away on January 16th, 2015. He will be missed by his family and extensive network of friends around the globe.<br /><br /></div>