Poland switches on to the value of contemporary architecture

In the last couple of years there has been a significant surge of interest in high-class contemporary architecture among investors in Poland, say Bartlomiej Sosna and Anna Bedkowska.

“€ 2.9 billion... Amount allocated to bring world-class architecture to life in Poland to 2012”

To the end of 2012, over €2.9 billion will be allocated in Poland to bring the designs of world-famous architects to life. A number of factors have influenced the present situation. A key factor is the availability and rising attractiveness of the Polish market to foreign investors who, unlike Polish companies, are familiar with investing in high-class architecture.

Until recently, Poland was home to only a few designs developed in the studios of world-class architects, such as the Metropolitan office building in Pilsudski Square in Warsaw, designed by Norman Foster, and the Centre of Japanese Art and Technology by Arata Isozaki in Krakow. In recent times, however, the situation has changed considerably. In Warsaw and Poznan, new apartment buildings by Daniel Libeskind are being erected; a high-rise building by Zaha Hadid will be built in the immediate vicinity of the capital’s Marriott Hotel; Frank O. Gehry is to design Lodz’s congress centre; and Tadao Ando, commissioned by Grazyna Kulczyk, is working on a concept for an underground gallery of contemporary art.

Not only does the name of a well-known architect guarantee unconventional solutions, high quality and prestige, it is also an ingenious marketing tactic. Evidence of the efficiency of such an approach is the construction of the Guggenheim Museum affiliate in Bilbao by Frank O. Gehry, which has contributed to the development of the whole city (the so-called ‘Bilbao effect’). The Frankfurt headquarters of Commerzbank, designed by Norman Foster, can serve as another example. Since Commerzbank Tower was the tallest high-rise building in Europe for a long time, its name has appeared in the media, publications and discussions far more frequently than the seats of tens of other banks also located in Frankfurt.

The fact that today architects are regarded as professionals is also important. Although the death of Andy Warhol marked the passing of an era in which accomplished creators of the fine arts enjoyed the status of stars, the world’s top architects today are media personalities, sometimes with political influence as well. Inundated with offers of cooperation, the designers decide to take on merely a few percent of their potential commissions. Hence, the investors whose projects have been accepted by the most famous architects feel deeply honoured. So it pays to bear the enormous costs of such endeavours, since the name of the architect is a brand in itself. Buildings start being famous long before they are erected; their attractiveness along with the price rise for future customers and users. This phenomenon can be clearly observed on the basis of the abovementioned Warsaw and Poznan-based projects by Hadid and Libeskind.

A luxury apartment building designed by an Iranian architect, commissioned by Lilium, is to rise by the year 2012 vis-a-vis Warsaw’s Central Railway Station. With its height (250m) and its characteristic blue glass oval mass, the building is supposed to outshine not only the neighbouring Marriott Hotel, but also the Palace of Culture and Science. The building plot alone cost Lilium €12 million; the construction works will eat up another €200 million.

On the other side of the future Lilium Tower, the construction of a 45-storey apartment building created by Daniel Libeskind, Zlota 44, is to begin immediately. More than a half of the 251 luxury apartments, priced up to €10,000/m2, have been already sold. The investor, Luxembourg-based Orco Property Group, paid an additional €10 million to incorporate into the design such energy efficient and ecological solutions as heat-recovery ventilation and rainwater toilet-flush systems. The building is to be built primarily with recycled materials. This, as well as the name of the designer, is meant to attract environmentally aware customers.

Libeskind’s second project, the Korona Tower – currently awaiting the final building permit – will have a slightly smaller scale (31 floors, 105m height); its overall cost has been assessed at €105 million. Thanks to the name of its architect and its deconstructive structure, the building is bound to become Poznan’s great attraction and, as a consequence, an advertisement for the investor, Wechta.

Kulczyk Holding intends to follow in the footsteps of Commerzbank and will reside in Europe’s tallest building. Designed by the MWH Architekci studio, the building is to be erected at the corner of Chmielna and Miedziana streets in Warsaw by the year 2012. The cost of the building has been initially estimated at €285 million. Another high-rise office building, which is bound to stand out thanks to its eyebrow-rising look, is Pro Urba‘s investment in the Kaleidoscope, located at the junction of Prosta and Towarowa streets in Warsaw. The oval shape building will stand 170m tall; its glass façades will be covered with special cladding, thanks to which it will sparkle with a multitude of colours from the outside.

One of the most talented young Polish architectural studios, Medusa Group Architects, have agreed to design four 11-storey office buildings in the emergent Silesia Business Park on the border of Katowice and Chorzow. The high-rise buildings will be covered with irregular slabs of coloured concrete, to evoke the pattern of geological strata.

An interesting idea that stands a good chance of being realised in Krakow – if it can overcome the resistance of Krakow’s conservators – is the completion of the high-rise building known as ‘Skeletor’. The renowned German architect and constructor of the characteristic buildings in Potsdam Square in Berlin, Hans Kollhoff, put a proposition to the present owners of the building (GD&K Group and Verity Development) to transform it into a tower by means of stone slab facing and a copper cupola, to make the structure resemble Krakow’s other Gothic basilica towers.

A number of public investments, primarily ones to house cultural institutions and entertainment facilities, have been made possible thanks to EU funding. Every single design competition for a new museum brings hope for a Bilbao mini-effect, although the designers may not yet be stars of world architecture. Buildings like the Parisian Pompidou Centre (Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, 1977) and the Jewish Museum in Berlin (Daniel Libeskind, 1999) – nowadays considered most important to their cities – made their creators stars of the global architecture scene. It seems it pays to invest in pioneering, even if sometimes slightly bizarre and controversial, buildings.

The most eagerly awaited investment of this kind in the last few years in Poland has been the Museum of Modern Art. After year-long negotiations, the city authorities finally signed a contract with Swiss architect Christian Kerez on 12 April 2008. The results of the competition, with Kerez’s minimalist design as the winner, aroused controversy from the very start. The Swiss project was criticised for being too modest; commentators had hoped for  something spectacular to counterbalance the dominating Palace of Culture and Science in Plac Defilad (Parade Square). Moreover, the two lowest storeys of the building, making up to 10,000 of the 35,000 m2 of the available floor space, will be allotted for commercial purposes, whereas the exhibition space will be confined to two merging concrete cuboids above. Kerez has agreed to prepare the final design of the building as well as the planning application and the tender materials. The construction will commence in 2010, at the earliest, after the department store in Parade Square has been removed and an underground segment of the second line of the Warsaw Metro, located under the future museum, has been completed. The cost of the venture has been estimated at €77 million, although due to the rising prices of building materials and services, it is likely to increase.

Another of Warsaw’s cultural investments with a huge budget, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma, had its foundation stone laid down in June 2007. The building, which symbolically evokes the biblical parting of the Red Sea, is to be constructed with less typical building materials, such as limestone and lithium. Unfortunately, the construction of the building had to be stopped owing to recalculation of costs, which four years ago were estimated at €29 million and were to be covered by the city, the Ministry of Culture and the Jewish Historical Institute. Today, the completion of the edifice (including the fittings) is estimated at €77m. However, the city has reassured skeptics that the construction of the museum remains a priority. The governments of France, the US and Germany as well as private sponsors have offered financial support. A tender notice will be released in the summer of 2008, settled in the autumn and, in line with the most optimistic scenario, the construction works could resume at the beginning of October.

Also in the capital, the second stage of the public tender for the construction of the Copernicus Science Centre in the Powisle district is underway. The first stage of investment is to be ready in two years; the second, seven months later. In its long-term financial plan, the city has earmarked €43 million for the development of the centre, while the permanent exhibition and the multimedia planetarium are to be financed by the Ministry of Science. The building, designed by Laboratorium Architektury Gilner & Kubec from Ruda Slaska, the winners of the architectural competition in 2005, will predictably be built using fiberglass reinforced concrete. The dome of the planetarium, 16m in diameter, will be covered with halftone rust-coloured glass plates. The building will be adapted to meet the needs of the handicapped. Moreover, thanks to such ecological solutions as light courts and self-cleaning water tanks, the building is to promulgate the idea of sustainable development.

As far as cultural institutions are concerned, interesting projects are planned in other cities as well. In April 2008, Krakow saw the beginning of work on the building of the Polish Aviation Museum, which will rise in the northern end of the Polish Airmen’s Park. The aerodynamic structure, reminiscent of a propeller, was designed by renowned Berlin-based architects Justus Pysall and Peter Ruge, in cooperation with Polish architect Bartlomiej Kisielewski. Arup Polska will oversee construction and installation works, while the Berlin-based ST Raum studio is to take care of landscaping. The main building material will be architectural concrete (structural), which until now has rarely been used in Poland. The construction work is to continue until 2010. The investment, worth as much as €13 million, is primarily financed by the EU (€8.5 million) and from the coffers of the Malopolskie Voivodship.

In Gdansk, where the European Solidarity Centre is to stand, the public tender for the construction of the building ignited a conflict. The rules of the competition, which was resolved in December 2007 in favour of the Gdansk-based Fort studio, stipulated that the first and second prize winners would be invited to join in further negotiations and to produce a detailed design. The second prize winner, Warsaw-based Grey architecture studio, estimated their offer at €0.9 million, whereas Fort was ready to carry out the same project for €4.6 million. Although neither of the offers exceeds the eight percent value of the whole investment (estimated at €68.6 million) as specified in the regulations, Gdansk officials were dismayed at the huge disparity, and may seek the opinion of an external expert. The Centre is to be built by 2010 to honour the 30th anniversary of the Gdansk August Accord. The simple body of the building with corten steel façades complemented by smoked glass relates to the industrial character of the shipyard. The rawness of materials will be softened by rich greenery around and inside the building.

Another design contest for a unique building on a global scale – the Africarium in the Wroclaw Zoo – was resolved in Wroclaw at the beginning of April. The winning project came from the ARC-2 architectural studio. A black cubicoid with 12,000m2 floor space will house the exhibition “The life-giving waters of Africa”, which will comprise artificial rivers, lakes, coral reefs, a large aquarium with sharks as well as a restaurant installed in a shipwreck. The city is prepared to bear the costs of the investment estimated at €29 million, but still hopes to receive a subsidy from the EU. The Africarium is to be completed by 2012.

Another example of an architecturally interesting public investment is the Silesian Museum. On 13 April 2008, after a few months’ talks, the museum’s management signed a contract for the construction of the building with Austria’s Riegler & Riewe Architekten. The new building will be erected on the site of the Katowice coalmine and will be entirely hidden underground. The only visible feature will be two towers illuminating the interior. Thanks to such a discreet solution, the monumental structure of the former coalmine will be exposed. Comprehensive project documentation is to be prepared by June 2009. Construction work will commence in the spring of 2010 and will take two years. The whole investment, estimated at €68.6 million, will also entail land development and building of infrastructure. Around 85 percent of the necessary funding will come from the EU.

An additional factor that has fuelled new architectural projects is Euro 2012, which requires the completion a number of investments in sports facilities, hotels and infrastructure. The most architecturally interesting of all the planned stadiums seems to be the project of the Baltic Arena for Gdansk, which was created in Germany’s Rhode Kellermann Wawrowsky studio. The golden colour of the outer layer of the stadium is evocative of the colour and texture of amber. The investment, worth an estimated €143 million, is to be completed by the autumn of 2011. Currently the building plot is being cleaned; the construction work is set to commence in December 2008.

The biggest investment, worth €343 million, will certainly be the National Stadium, designed by the experienced German studio JSK Architekten. The new stadium will rise in place of the former Stadion Dziesieciolecia. Since the ground is swampy, it has to be reinforced with 20,000 concrete stakes before the proper construction work can commence. The bid for the staking will be announced in the summer of 2008.

In Krakow, the design competitions for a sports and entertainment arena and for a congress centre have been resolved. The designer of the first, whose shape is reminiscent of a flying saucer, is the Krakow-based Perbo Project studio supported by Poznan’s Modern Construction Systems. The whole exterior façade of the arena is to be an enormous screen, which is a very interesting solution, both for aesthetic and commercial reasons. The investment, estimated at €86 million, is to rise by the end of 2012, on the western end of the Academy of Physical Education Park. The second building, designed by Ingarden & Ewy, assisted in interior design by Arata Isozaki, will be erected in the next three to four years near to the Grunwaldzki roundabout. This seven-storey edifice, which will house a congress hall with a 2100-person capacity, is to cost the city €71 million. Apart from glass and light marble, Krakow-specific building materials such as limestone and brick will also be used.

 In the immediate vicinity of the future congress centre, construction work on a new hotel with the working-name Stepped on Frog is in full swing. The project was designed by German architect Jurgen Meyer, with the assistance of Ovotz Design Lab and Joi Design. Not only will the body itself be eye-catching, the structure of the façade is also set to be stunning, made from aluminium intertwined with dark glass. The building was initially to serve as office space but, considering its location, the investor SOF Debniki Development, a member of the UBM Polska and GD&K Group, decided that it will also hold a three-and-a-half-star Park Inn hotel. The investment, worth €26 million, is to be completed in 2009.

A hospitality facility that will certainly stand out as original is the Hilton Wroclaw Hotel, which was awarded a prize at this year’s Cannes International Real Estate Fair. Thanks to the application of the extraordinarily durable Corian material, many construction limitations were successfully overcome. As a result, the build will take the form of an organic structure, one wholly devoid of right angles. The author of the project is the Parisian Gottesman-Szmelcman Architecture studio. Presently, earthworks are underway on the plot on the edge of Dominikanski Square. The investment, worth €86 million, is scheduled to open in 2010.

This revival of the Polish market has been fostered by the favourable economic conditions and by a shift in the aesthetic approach towards architecture. Today’s 20 and 30-year-olds have already had the chance to take advantage of open borders; they travel easily and enjoy almost unlimited access to the solutions offered by the world’s architectural milieu. Nowadays, thanks to inter-university agreements, scholarships and placement programmes, young Polish architects can study and work all over the world, drawing on the experience and skills of world-famous designers. All these factors mean that gradually there will be more and more architectural studios emerging that, following good international examples, will create architectural space in Poland in a conscious and original way, bringing it closer to global standards.

Reshaping Warsaw

The 20th century wasn’t a great time for Poland’s capital. Smashed to bits in the two world wars of the first half of the 20th century, it was then patched up with blocs of crumbling communist concrete in the second. Now, backed by a resurgent economy, Warsaw is shaking off its socialist architectural hangover and putting forward a bold new face of glistening skyscrapers designed by some of the world’s top architects.

Around 85 percent of Warsaw was reduced to rubble during World War II, with most of the damage coming in the pitched street battles of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and a year later between Polish insurgents and the Nazi occupiers in the Warsaw Uprising. After crushing the 1944 revolt, the Germans systematically dynamited most of the remaining buildings and shipped the surviving residents to concentration camps. That episode now allows Warsaw to develop its urban areas in ways Paris, Vienna, Austria and Prague cannot.

“Other cities weren’t destroyed, and that is their advantage, but also their limitation,” said Tomasz Zemla, Warsaw’s Deputy Director of Architecture and Planning. “We have a different, dramatic history, but that allows us to have a whole lot more freedom in building.”

Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, who took office in 2006, is leading the skyscraper charge in Warsaw, and has said she wants the city to be a place where architects from across the world and Poland compete. “The city has great potential, and a lot of land to build on in the centre,” she said. “Warsaw must grow up if it wants to compete with other big European cities."