bloków

Bloków is the genitive plural form of the Polish noun blok, a word with several related meanings. In everyday language, bloków most often appears in phrases describing groups or types of blocks, especially blocks of flats. It is used after numerals five and above (for example, pięć bloków) and in various genitive constructions such as bloków mieszkalnych or bloków betonowych.

In the housing and urban planning sense, blok refers to a multi-storey residential building or a cluster of such buildings, commonly called a block of flats. This sense is particularly prevalent in Poland, where the 20th century saw rapid construction of large housing estates. Many blocks were built with concrete panels in standardized designs, a method known as the Wielkopłytowy system, especially from the 1950s to the 1980s. Characteristics of these blocks typically include uniform façades, repetitive floor plans, and inner courtyards. The term bloków mieszkalnych is frequently used to describe entire estates or subgroups within a city’s fabric, and discussions about urban renewal or modernization often consider the condition and energy efficiency of these blocks.

Beyond housing, blok and its genitive form bloków appear in other contexts as well. As a generic term, a blok can denote a solid piece of material or a building component, such as a concrete block. In computing and information technology, similar terminology is used to describe blocks of data or memory, giving rise to phrases like bloków danych or bloków pamięci, where bloków remains the genitive plural form.

Etymologically, blok is a loanword from Germanic languages, adopted into Polish with meanings centered on a solid piece or a structural unit, and later extended to architectural blocks.