(b Warsaw, 6 Dec 1930). Polish architect, writer and teacher. He studied (1949–54) at the departments of architecture of the universities of Kraków and Warsaw, receiving his doctorate in 1968 and qualifying as an assistant professor in 1979. At the same time he was an outstanding sportsman, winning four world and five Polish fencing championships. He is noted for the numerous large-span sports buildings and complexes that he designed. Architectural expression is concentrated in the roofs, which may be free-hanging from cables, as at the Olympic Training Centre (1962), Warsaw; arched, as at the swimming pool (1975), Zgorzelec; connected by counterbalanced cantilevers; or of intermittent arches linked transversely by free-hanging coverings, for example a design (1977) for a sports centre in Leszno. Another variant in his approach to the design of sports halls is a multi-faceted mass suspended on a trapezial frame, as in his design for an auditorium and sports hall (1973) in Bydgoszcz. The latter has a frog-like form, reflecting Zablocki’s metaphorical use of the shapes of animals, crystals and other natural phenomena. He also used allusions to regional forms, for example in a sports centre (1988) in Czestochowa and in the sports hall (1990) in Zakopane. In Syria in 1982–7 he designed, with a large team, a complex for the Mediterranean Games, Latakia. He also built an extensive presidential residence (1985) near Damascus. His highly personal approach to the origin of a design created difficulties for collaborators and had the effect of discouraging patrons once political circumstances had changed in Poland in the 1980s.