Housing, staff houses, infrastructure built for F-35 squadrons, and even urban planning concepts for entire military units. Pawel Kurtyka, President of {tag:pracownie} is interviewed by Przemysław Ciępka.
Przemysław Ciępka: AMW Invest is one of five companies belonging to the Military Property Agency group. What is the profile of your business and how did you come to be involved in designing for the army?
Pawel Kurtyka: In terms of the construction profile, there are two companies in the Military Property Agency group: AMW Sinevia and AMW Invest, which is the company we are talking about. AMW Sinevia is primarily a construction contractor, while AMW Invest, on the other hand, is a design office, and also provides investor supervision services.
In the past, back in the communist era, we had a network of Military Design Offices in Poland that specialized in designing for the military. They were located in many Polish cities, in Warsaw, Poznan, Wroclaw or Krakow. During the political transformation in the 1990s, they were either privatized, like the Military Construction Design Bureau of Wroclaw, which still operates today, or they ended their lives through bankruptcy or dissolution of the company. The exception was the Poznan Military Construction Design Bureau, which remained state-owned. Between 2013 and 2015, the bureau went through a crisis and eventually collapsed. At the time, it was decided that a small development company Dom Invest, then part of the Military Property Agency group, would take over this bankrupt Poznań design bureau and change its business profile - to provide services to the Polish armed forces. In practice, the takeover consisted mainly of acquiring certain rights to the history and name, as virtually all employees left the office due to the bankruptcy process. A vestige of the whole process is the year 1968 in the AMW Invest logo, which is the date the Poznan office was established. In turn, one member of the company's current name was left after the developer Dom Invest.
Przemyslaw Ciępka: How did it happen that you took up designing for the military? What was the path to the position the company currently occupies?
Pawel Kurtyka: I am an architect, so for me a design office is a natural place to work. For many years I have been very much interested in issues of technical modernization of the Polish army - the fusion of these two factors drew me closer and closer to tasks in the area of construction projects for the Ministry of Defense. At the time I moved to the board of AMW Invest in 2019, it was, half-jokingly, half-seriously, such a Treasury startup. We have a picture of how we set up our first 3 desks in a dirty, cluttered room, and the company had a total of 7 employees at the time. You could say that it was a "garage" company, built from scratch. The first years were very demanding in terms of finances, it took a long time to bring the company to a state where we have 8 million zlotys of profit for 2023 and a close-knit team of about 100 people. Unlike other large SOEs, we built our team from scratch, pulling people mainly from the Warsaw market, where we are based.
Reconstruction of a building for WOT in Cieszyn
© AMW Invest
Przemyslaw Ciępka: You have fifty-five completed projects to your credit - what kind of architecture does AMW Invest do? Are they residential buildings, administrative buildings or something more?
Pawel Kurtyka: We dealt with two types of buildings. The first was residential or collective residence buildings designed for the Military Property Agency, which needs these types of buildings to meet the statutory needs of soldiers. From an engineering point of view, these are ordinary housing in ordinary multi-family or collective residence buildings. The second type of structure is strictly military, erected in closed areas. Here we have more than a dozen functional types, these are, for example, garages for equipment along with service and workshop areas. We have buildings that in civilian conditions would be classified as public facilities - these are various staff houses, or office buildings serving the military. They differ from their civilian counterparts by the presence of complex systems, security installations or access control. Often these are hybrid buildings, with offices on two or three floors and a communal housing function above. We also have facilities that I would call special buildings. These are simulator buildings, maintenance hangars or aircraft parking. We have several specialized airport facilities in our portfolio, which have no analogues in civil construction. These are very complex structures, taking into account such issues as protection against electromagnetic fugacity, protective atmospheres in the premises, or a very strict temperature and humidity control regime. AMW Invest is a full-service office, so the design service includes roads, networks, installations, teletechnology. Along with buildings, we design their entire surroundings, often with greenery management. Due to the special requirements of investors, we deal with a whole spectrum of unusual projects.
Sports center for use by Polish and American troops
© AMW Invest
Przemyslaw Ciępka: And bunkers or shelters - do they fall within the scope of AMW Invest's design services?
Pawel Kurtyka: I know it's a fashionable topic, but there are very few orders for such facilities. Equipment needs are huge, for the construction of shelters is no longer enough. We have additional components in the form of hiding places or ad hoc shelters, but when it comes to shelters sensu stricto, with filtration and other necessary systems, we do not prepare many of them.
Przemysław Ciępka: Do you think that more of them should be built?
Pawel Kurtyka: Here we are dealing with the issue of civil protection, we are very interested in this topic. We cooperate with various organizations, for example, the Association of Security Buildings, we participate in conferences. Inspiring examples appear at them, including from Finland, where thinking about civil protection has advanced to the point where commercial use facilities are being built, such as underground swimming pools that, after draining the basin, can serve as a large shelter. I believe that the design of dual-purpose facilities is the best way to solve the problem of civil protection in cities, otherwise the increasing cost of maintaining such a shelter will eventually lead to its degradation. This is the way to build underground garages with no buildings above them. For example, if thought of in advance, in Krakow it could be a garage at the Plac na Groblach, as there is a football field above it. However, such facilities need to be designed from the beginning with the idea that they will serve a dual function.
Sports center for use by Polish and American troops
© AMW Invest
Przemysław Ciępka: In the 21st century, does the concept of defense architecture include something more than just these shelters?
Pawel Kurtyka: In our design practice, we have encountered very different facets of civil protection. In the simplest sense, it is physical protection against bullets and shrapnel. However, there is also protection against biological-chemical or radioactive weapons, that is, something that is invisible and non-kinetic in nature. We have designed such buildings equipped with filtering and decontamination systems. In my opinion, however, it is about something more - rethinking the entire system of civil protection. We need to think about what happens to the population when dangerous events occur. How to stop panic, where to direct these populations. All this needs to be thought through very systemically, built from strategy to investment goals. More lives will be saved by having, for example, population evacuation plans that are rehearsed by services that are in sync with each other than by spending big money on structures that are not part of the system.
Sports hall in Wesola
© AMW Invest
Przemysław Ciępka: Discussions around these topics have been sharpening recently. Is the geopolitical situation relevant to the office's operations or the nature of orders placed by the armed forces?
Pawel Kurtyka: Yes, in recent years we have seen a marked increase in programs that aim to expand defense infrastructure in the broadest sense. This growth can be seen primarily through plans to build new divisions or purchase new equipment. Any new military equipment that we read about in the newspapers needs an infrastructure in which to be housed and operated. The one currently in operation is often very degraded. We have a very difficult task ahead of us to bring the army to a state where it is not only very well trained and equipped with the latest equipment, but also its infrastructure is up to the 21st century.
Przemysław Ciępka: So there is a great deal to do. Did you design only for the Polish military, or did other ordering entities also appear?
Pawel Kurtyka: From the side of the army, we have enough orders that we do not look around in other markets. Only from the side of the Polish Armed Forces we have around ten or even twenty ordering entities. We have worked for most of them. However, when it comes to civilian construction, we have not participated in such orders due to the number of orders from the Ministry of Defense and our capacity. It should be remembered that this office was built from scratch, meaning that it essentially had to balance its staff over the course of its history, so that it was adequate to the challenges. This balancing, in short, boiled down to the fact that all the time this staff was too few.
Design of a residential development for soldiers in Leszno
© AMW Invest
Przemyslaw Ciępka: How did you manage to assemble such an extensive and specialized cadre?
Pawel Kurtyka: First of all, we strongly rely on our permanent team - with us, all designers are employed on an employment contract. We try to be competitive with what the market offers. We also relied on an organizational culture that was open to innovation and to mistakes, because those were unavoidable. But also on building a learning organization, so that those who gained more knowledge over the years would pass it on to the next person. The problem was getting people who have experience working in large teams. We have a company of practically a hundred people - these are completely different challenges when it comes to internal work organization. In a small office, you can manage in a directive way, where the proverbial boss tells what a person is supposed to do. Because of the size of the team at our place, management by procedure is present. For many of our designers, the transition to procedural management was and often continues to be a difficult experience and challenge.
Przemyslaw Ciępka: Let's talk for a moment more about AMW Invest's realizations. Which project are you most proud of?
Pawel Kurtyka: It is definitely the infrastructure built for the F-35. It was a complex of many buildings, a complete infrastructure for the entire squadron: starting with the most difficult simulator building, including the command center, and ending with the garage and hangar buildings. Plus, of course, the external infrastructure, i.e. taxiways, access roads, networks, transformer stations, power supply and so on. Why am I very proud of this? First, because we had dual certification and acceptance - from both the Polish and American sides. Secondly, it was a bilingual project, working in an international environment, according to American requirements, which at the same time had to be adapted to Polish regulations. Thirdly, we managed to accomplish all this in a very short time - we had just over a year to do it. But the team managed to do it, and I'm very proud of it.
Project of a residential development for soldiers in Legionowo
© AMW Invest
Przemyslaw Ciępka: In the case of such bases we are dealing with very large facilities, perhaps we are already entering the area of urban design here. Does it differ from what we encounter in cities?
Pawel Kurtyka: In Poland there are no projects like the ones we encountered, because here we have urban design on the raw root. Certainly, this is urban planning on a large scale - we develop concepts for facilities of 200, 300, and even 1,600 hectares, where we create workplaces and accommodation for several thousand soldiers and personnel. Such design has its own peculiarities, repetition - we have, for example, a finite number of building types and the functions they offer. In comparison, in the case of cities, we are dealing with the creation of a certain urban framework with the possible filling of new functions with, for example, post-industrial areas, so that people with very different needs can fit into it.
Przemyslaw Ciępka: So far we have been talking about the functional sphere. Does military architecture also have a face? In other words - when designing objects for the Polish Armed Forces, do formal and aesthetic issues arise, or are we dealing with pure utilitarianism?
Pawel Kurtyka: There are always two sides - there is the designer and the investor. As far as the investor is concerned, pure utilitarianism prevails here. As for our efforts as designers, we always try to give the designed buildings a good aesthetic dimension. Sometimes these are more representative buildings, such as our Sports Center for the Polish and American Forces in Powidz. Some of the military areas are under the protection of the conservator of historical monuments, so there we have to adapt to the existing buildings, relate to them. We also like this very much. For us, this is an opportunity to do something aesthetically pleasing. We are trying to make this compromise between price and aesthetics, and I think we are succeeding quite well.
Construction of a multifunctional building in Warsaw
© AMW Invest
Przemyslaw Ciępka: Let me ask you a little more about your development plans - both short-term and more far-reaching.
Pawel Kurtyka: In terms of the company's development strategy, we are planning to expand our investor supervision team in order to be able to offer a turnkey building commissioning service. That is, we will design on the one hand and supervise the building contractor on the other. We are also developing in terms of internal organization - these are activities that boil down to improving working conditions and organizational culture. We are trying to introduce standards modeled on large business organizations. Above all, however, we are concerned with continually meeting the investments that the Ministry of Defense is planning. We don't have control over this, but it's fair to say that with our experience there is nothing we can't do.
Przemysław Ciępka: What gives you the greatest satisfaction in working for the military?
Pawel Kurtyka: Three things. Building a company from scratch - for me this is in a sense a life's work. It is also a patriotic motivation. In the activities of AMW Invest, we have an area that works for the common good, for the security of all Poles. As a result, we have a Polish company that is able to perform very difficult project tasks, we employ graduates of Polish universities. Our business is an example of national technical thought in the engineering field. The third thing is working with people, managing a large team, the issue of interpersonal relations - this makes this work extremely interesting.
Przemysław Ciępka: Thank you for the interview.
Pawel Kurtyka, president of AMW Invest
© AMW Invest
Pawel Marek Kurtyka - architect and manager.
Since 2022 he has served as President of the Management Board of AMW Invest sp. z o.o., having previously served as Vice President of the Company's Management Board from 2019 to 2022.He specializes in urban design and special design for defense, state security and the needs of the Polish Armed Forces. As a general designer, he co-authored dozens of projects, including, among others, the modernization of airports in the territory of the Republic of Poland to accommodate F-35 aircraft, architectural and urban planning concepts for the development of military complexes and a number of facilities serving soldiers of the Polish army and allied forces in Poland
