|
Polish architecture of 2008 - strengths and weaknesses in just one click.
Sztuka-architektury.pl invites you to vote
The idea of the organisers of the "Polish architecture 2008” poll is to “develop Poles’ spatial sensitivity”. Just how urgent this need is you can read between the verses of the poll itself.
In nine categories, the editors of the www.sztuka-architektury.pl thematic portal collected the most important works of architecture and artistic campaigns of last year, documenting each one with photographs and a text explaining design assumptions. There are approx. 50 structures available in just a few clicks.
However, it is easy to notice that the formally adopted time limits (2008) were extended so that more good candidates could be included. Apart from existing, commissioned buildings, there are also some incomplete, like the single-story cube designed by MooMoo Architects with a facade of wooden slats, and some completed already in 2007 like the Symfonia Centre of Music Learning and Education in Katowice (Konior Studio), which the Polish Architects’ Association awarded its 2007 Annual Prize, or a splendid semidetached house from the Wilanów district of Warsaw (Dom KL designed by Jednacz Architekci), also commissioned in 2007.
A very cultural barn
A click on the "culture and art” category will show you, apart from the recognised Symfonia, also the administrative building of the Opole Countryside Museum made inconspicuous by its resemblance to a rural barn. Its form, alluding to traditional rural buildings, with a subtle play of wood textures on the facade (design: Iwona Wilczek, Mariusz Tenczyński, db2 Architekci), was recently voted by web surfers the winner of the title of the Shape of the Year 2008 awarded by the Bryla architectural portal. This building also got a mention in the last issue of A10, a renowned Dutch architectural monthly.
Another great example of how to combine the old with the new is the minimalist pavilion erected in the Warsaw Hoover Square adjoining the Krakowskie Przedmieście St. and surrounded by old tenements (JEMS Architekci). The elongated building clad in sandstone slabs houses a gallery and a cafe. Sliding glass walls of the facade allow the pavilion to open onto the space outside, a small square.
Add to this the recently opened National Museum of the Przemyśl Region, with its irregular, angular shape and inside curves inspired by Przemyśl backstreets, and the competition becomes really riveting.
Benches of garbage
“Culture and Art” as well as “Flat and House” are the strongest categories with the most representatives and the highest standard. Other categories come out poorly, sometimes depressingly so. The designs in the “Public Space” category are dominated by artistic campaigns (the Wilhelm Sasnal mural in Mysłowice) and humble interventions by designers (15 recycled benches installed in Szczecin as envisaged by Monika Szpener). Only one is a comprehensive change on a large scale. This is the upgrade of the aforementioned Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw, a street along the Royal Route, which may become vibrant someday
(Warsaw volunteers had a great idea of organising street stalls with old books in it near the university), but right now it can make you shiver, and not just because of the gloomy time of the year.
The “Environment” category was a fiasco as only ... one (!) building was enrolled in it.
As in any poll, the selection of candidates is to some extent subjective and incomplete. In the “Offices” category I did not find the site of the Medusa Group architectural firm, which recently relocated into the middle of nowhere, namely warehouses in a deserted district of the depopulating Bytom. The interior of their new offices is presented in the last issue of “Architektura-Murator”. It is a bare loft with a concrete floor painted white and rough, crooked, heavy planks for a ceiling.
Concrete monstrosities
The organisers emphasise that their project is doubly democratic as it employs “collective, web wisdom”. Readers can not only vote for their favourites (until the end of April), but they joined the experts in selecting candidates. Just as in any democracy, exceptional buildings compete with ones that are monstrous (example: Sea Towers, a skyscraper over 140 m tall, arrogantly outshining the low, modernist development of downtown Gdynia) or at best mediocre (Terminal 2 of the Warsaw Okęcie Airport, in the notorious tender for whose construction, the appearance was assigned the astronomical weight of just 5%).
The final result of the poll, open to anyone, will be announced in early May. If grassroots work was added to its nine categories, a good candidate would be its organiser: sztuka-architektury.pl.
You can vote until the end of April at www.sztuka-architektury.pl
|
