Academic Architecture Studio SSP "ŻACZEK"

27 of December '19

Academic Architecture Studio SSP "ŻACZEK"

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Between 1980 and 1990, the Academic Architecture Studio operated in Cracow. This small institution, headed by Stanislaw Deńko, was established within the framework of the Student Labor Cooperative "Żaczek", and became a kind of incubator of entrepreneurship, from which a number of Krakow architectural firms originated.

Authors of designs for buildings designed as part of the Debniki-Zakrzówek coordination plan, photograph taken in front of the APA studio, on Matejki Square in Cracow, circa 1987. Standing from left: Stanisław Niemczyk, Marek Kuszewski, Maria Misiągiewicz, Wacław Stefański, Anna Mróz, Bogusław Piechnik, Małgorzata Gruszka, Wojciech Chmielewski, Zofia Nowakowska, Janusz Duliński, Wacław Seruga, Iwona Zuziak, Andrzej Lorenc, Piotr Kałuża, Janusz Ingarden, Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, Andrzej Wyżykowski, Aleksander Böhm, Zbigniew Zuziak, Wojciech Miecznikowski, Krzysztof Bojanowski. Below: Witold Gawłowski, Krzysztof Lenartowicz, Dariusz Gruszka, Józef Skoczyński, Stanisław Deńko, Robert Kuzianik, Wojciech Kosiński. Hovering: Jan Rączy, Barbara Setkowicz, Trojanowski.

Polish architectural practice
in the 1980s

The 1980s were a difficult period for Polish architects. Public investment collapsed, and the private market was virtually nonexistent. Architects were incapacitated, for the execution of an individual project they had to obtain written permission from their employer each time. The hope for systemic change, triggered by the August events, gave way over time to a wave of general apathy and discouragement following the imposition of martial law. Many architects, especially of the younger generation, were leaving Poland at the time, seeking their opportunities in exile.

However, initiatives were already being born to rebuild the private practice and professional position of architects. Architectural Service Laboratories were established at the local SARPBranches in the early 1980s, and a special bank account, the so-called Incaso, was created. Thanks to these instruments, the Association was able to mediate between individual architects and the institutions that commissioned projects from them, thus becoming a platform for practicing the profession independently of state institutions. In 1982, in Warsaw, through the efforts of a group of prominent artists, the Authorial Pracownie Architektury - State Enterprise was established. Within this company operated - under the state banner, but on a quasi-market basis - 14 architectural studios, employing more than 175 workers at their peak. After the change of the political and economicsystem, at the end of the 1980s, the Author's Laboratories were transformed into private companies, some of which achieved great professional success in the new market reality, while usually retaining the traditional name APA in front of the name of the head of the studio (e.g. APA Kurylowicz, APA Markowski, APA Wojciechowski).

In the 1980s, the only organizational form that allowed the architectural profession to practice on the basis of market principles, without direct state tutelage, was the labor cooperative. On September 9, 1982, the ZAPA Group of Authorial Architectural Laboratories, operating under the wing of the then Cepelia, was registered in Gdansk. Gdansk ZAPA has been operating continuously to this day, its architects have several hundred completed projects to their credit. In Cracow two years earlier, on identical, cooperative principles, the Akademicka Pracownia Architektury began operating outside the state structures.

APA's first period of activity:
1980-1985

The creation of the Academic Studio of Architecture is accompanied by a colorful story, which began with an expedition of students of the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology around the Mediterranean Sea, organized in 1979. At the end of the expedition, which lasted five months, the students visited Pope John Paul II in Rome, which was presented in a broadcast of Radio Free Europe as their collective request for asylum(!). As a result, the expedition participants were expelled from the university. It was then that the three would-be graduates: Marek Lakomski, Jozef Skoczynski and Wieslaw Socha decided to take matters into their own hands and create their own workplace. To this end, they came up with a student architectural services studio. Soon, thanks to the support of Professor Przemysław Szefer and the kindness of the then dean, Professor Andrzej Skoczek, a branch of the Student Cooperative of Work "Żaczek" was opened in April 1980 in a room lent by the Faculty of Architecture, located on the first floor of the building at 25 Filipa Street: Service Establishment No. 16 - Student Studio of Contemporary Architecture. A great success of its first head - Jozef Skoczynski - was to obtain permission to conduct business in the field of design, including the right to invoice all business entities of the then communist Poland. However, in order to open a market for commissions, it was necessary to have someone known in the community, who had the right knowledge, skills and authority, who would be able to win clients and manage design work, and therefore the founders turned to Stanislaw Deńko, an assistant to Professor Witold Cęckiewicz, who took over as head of the studio in January 1981.

The studio, conveniently located on the route between the headquarters of the Architecture Department and the Old Town, soon became a popular meeting place for the young generation of architecture students. Stanislaw Deńko gathered talented young people around him, and several major international architectural competitions were developed under his guidance. The charisma of the leader and the whiff of the great architectural world made working on these projects an unforgettable experience for all involved. The studio's logo - a simple block resembling a stool inscribed in a cube - took its name from a 1982 competition entry, for a building set at the end of the great Paris axis, on La Defense square. It was then that the name was changed: the Student Studio of Contemporary Architecture (SPAW) was replaced by the more dignified-sounding Academic Architecture Studio (APA).

APA studio's trademark.

In 1983, the studio's premises were remodeled. The single spacious room it occupied was divided lengthwise by a glass wall and crosswise by a mezzanine. This created a comfortable and original interior, maintained in a distinctive light green color scheme, capable of accommodating more than a dozen workstations.

In the first period of activity, in addition to competition works, APA created numerous interior designs, including the Auditorium Hall in Aleppo, Syria (R. Loegler and his team), as well as implementation architectural projects, such as. The revalorization of the Marfi palace with simultaneous adaptation to the Crafts Cooperative Bank (1982, R. Aleksandrowicz, A. Fedak and B. Podhalanski), infill buildings: at ul. Czarnowiejska 17 (1983/84, A. Jasinski and J. Pencakowski) and at the corner of Jakub and Warszauer streets, in Kazimierz (1984/85, A. Jasinski and W. Oktawiec). It is worth mentioning that this building, referring in form and detail to the traditional buildings that existed here in the 19th century, became the beginning of the cultural and spatial revitalization of a ruined part of the city, which was then the Jewish Kazimierz.

Plomb building on the corner of 9 Jakub and Warszaurea Streets, designed by A. Jasinski, W. Oktawiec. Project 1984/85, realization 1986/87.

The culmination of this period of the studio's activity was the Main Prize awarded in the competition of the 1st Architecture Biennale in Cracow, in December 1985, to the APA team for the project to rehabilitate the Old Gasworks in Kazimierz. It was a work characteristic of the period of the early 1980s: heavily contoured, visually rich and full of historical references.

etatization of design activity:
1986-1990

In 1986, the studio embarked on a new path of development: full-time teams were created to carry out design tasks. The first of these was headed by Artur Jasinski. Soon, the studio was supplied by more architects, resigning from design offices or full-time positions at the university, in favor of building an independent design practice. These were Jacek Czech (from 1987), Marek Kaminski (1987), Janusz Dulinski (1987) and Piotr Wróbel (1988). Projects from this period include the design of the Igloopol company's commercialand service pavilion on the Jugowice estate, a community center and school in Lubomierz, and the design of the adaptation of the 19th-centuryZucker synagogue on Węgierska Street into the Studio Television Theater.

APA's first full-time design team, from left: Stanisław Deńko, Jacek Czech, Robert Kuzianik, Dariusz Gruszka and Artur Jasiński, 1987.

In 1986-88, projects for the Debniki-Zakrzówekarea were also developed at APA. The authors of the coordination plan were Krzysztof Bojanowski, Stanisław Deńko, Marek Dunikowski and Wojciech Miecznikowski. Their intention was to recreate the process of spontaneous growth of the city by differentiating the character of individual buildings, and therefore, following the example of Berlin's IBA, a number of well-known architects, primarily associated with the Faculty of Architecture at the Cracow University of Technology, were invited to participate in the development of individual projects.

In 1986, a separate Opera House Design Team was created within the APA, tasked with developing a design for a complex of Krakow's opera house, located at the Grunwaldzki Roundabout. In addition to Professor Witold Korski, its members included his colleagues, serving as general designers: Marek Kozien and Jan Rączy, while the formaland legal services of the project were handled by APA's full-time employee Ryszard Aleksandrowicz.

Undoubtedly, the studio's greatest success from the period in question was winning the closed architectural competition for the building of the new terminal of the Balice airport (S. Deńko, D. Gruszka, J. Duliński and P. Wróbel, 1988). This project became the beginning of a whole series of airport terminals and facilities, realized in 1988-2012 by architects originating from APA.

organizational and ownership transformations
after 1990

In 1990, significant events in the history of APA took place: Stanislaw Deńko left for a contract at the University of Knoxville, USA, and Marek Dunikowski took his place as head of the studio. In light of the political and economicreforms, the cooperative formula of the studio was quickly losing its raison d'être. Although inflation was raging around and the market was in a state of deep collapse, but in the architectural community there was a conviction that this was only a temporary state. At the time, they invested in the future, with a firm belief that the marketization of economic processes would result in a revival and work for newly created private architectural practices. Many of the market's most prominent design firms were established at that time, including JEMS (1988), APA Kurylowicz (1989), Bulanda-Mucha(1991), Budzyński-Badowski(1991), JET - Atelier Ingarden-Ewy(1991).

Also Academic Architecture Studio was transformed into a private company: On November 16, 1990, another APA was registered: the Agencja Projektowa "Architektura" Sp. z o. o., which, under an agreement with the "Żaczek" cooperative, took over the trademark, rights and liabilities, as well as part of the movable property of the Academic Studio of Architecture. In the new ownership structure, each shareholder had one vote and an equal share. However, the democratic formula of equal votes and different opinions, aggravated by the clash of disparate personalities, did not stand the test of time, and soon, in the fall of 1991, the first split took place. Stanislaw Deńko, Marek Dunikowski and Artur Jasinski left the newly formed company and, together with Wojciech Miecznikowski, founded DDJM Biuro Architektoniczne. In time, there were further divisions: Dariusz Gruszka (1992) and Robert Kuzianik (1996) left APA. Also from DDJM departed its founding partners: in 1994 Stanislaw Deńko, and in 2002 Artur Jasinski.

One can quarrel over who was the first pioneer of the free market of architectural services in Poland, but regardless of the point of view and the criteria chosen, it should be stated that Akademicka Pracownia Architektury was a very efficient incubator of architectural entrepreneurship, from which came a number of well-known, Krakow-based offices and a group of equally distinguished colleagues, running their private practices both in Poland and abroad. These include: APA Czech_Duliński_Wróbel; Wizja by Stanisław Deńka, DDJM by Marek Dunikowski, Biuro Architektoniczne Artur Jasiński i Wspólnicy, KKM by Marek Kozień, Q-Archby Robert Kuzianik and Wiesław Socha, Agencja Architektoniczna Alex-Usby Ryszard Aleksandrowicz, Ab-Archby Dariusz Gruszka, Archipraxis by Marek Kamiński and the American firm Path Architecture PC by Wojciech Oktawca.

To this day, in some of Krakow's studios one still encounters the characteristic light green stained furniture with which APA's first premises were decorated, and its distinctive trademark is still used by the APA Czech_Duliński_Wróbel company. These familiar forms arouse a reflex of nostalgic fondness in many Krakow architects, recalling the times of youth, martial law, food ration cards, Fiat 126P cars and the first, strongest professional emotions and emotions.

Artur JASIÑSKI

Artur Jasinski is an architect, director of the architectural firm Artur Jasinski i Wspólnicy and an academic teacher - adjunct professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Arts at the Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow Academy in Krakow. He has won prizes and awards in more than twenty architectural competitions and is the author of many public buildings, including the District Courts in Olkusz and Świdnik, the Lubicz Office Center and the Bonarka 4 Business office park in Cracow.