He doesn't frequent, doesn't shine, doesn't flaunt himself in the media. He designs. He claims that buildings are more important than he is. Szymon Januszewski and his Insomia studio have to their credit some of the best residential houses in Poznan. The differentiator? Not only the development of the massing, elevations and finishes, but also the optimal and flexible floor plans of the apartments. Fifty square meters from Januszewski's studio have similar functionality to seventy meters from less trying designers. Insomia, which has been in operation for 16 years, also produces original office buildings and unique solutions: balconies with greenhouses or a unique residential development in a birch grove. Januszewski himself (born in 1976) still has many ideas, and he tests problematic solutions not on users, but on himself.
Jakub Glaz:You are over forty years old, have very good houses to your credit, have been running a studio for a dozen years, and live on fifteen square meters.
Szymon Januszewski: With my partner and our dog. We have been living for three years in a small house.
Jakub: What came to your mind to test such a metric on yourself?
Szymon: I like and design small but well used spaces. I test how you can have very little stuff and be happy. This space is not optimal, by the way, it's really fifteen meters plus ten on the mezzanine. Well, and the plot is large: several thousand meters. It gives you a breather.
Jacob: What do you have in this bungalow?
Simon: A living room with a kitchen and a bathroom, there is a mezzanine and a dressing room. The house is made of wood. I didn't have time to design it for myself, so I bought it from a factory that makes such structures from window waste. The hut is made of pine, has a gabled roof, not much insulation. I got rid of a lot of stuff in the process. To transport everything, all you need is an ordinary passenger car and a couple of cardboard boxes.
James: Don't you keep books either?
Simon: I have books, they are my conscience. After reading, a book should be given to someone. Or not to buy, but to borrow. But I like them as objects. They introduce color and improve acoustics.
Jacob: This cottage is forever?
Simon: No. She is fine, but I never planned for it to be a permanent dwelling. Anyway, the pandemic put the cottage to the test. During the lockdown, my girlfriend and I worked in it together. In the squeeze, our dog learned to walk backwards. Of course, it's possible to live like that, but it's hard.
Evergreen 365 residential building at the intersection of Bukowska and Grochowska streets (realized 2016)
Photo: Agnieszka Liguz Kończak, © Insomia
Jacob: Your house is not optimal. What is?
Szymon: Sixty-five-seventy square meters is completely enough for me. In a slightly larger house. Similar to the ones we are now putting up in Poznan's Strzeszyn. There we combine the advantages of an apartment and a single-family house. To this square meter I would add maybe some attic and a shed, and under it a bicycle. That's all.
Jacob: Now minimalism is fashionable.
Simon: There is great pleasure in not having objects. But the ones I do have should be of good quality. If tools, they're ones for life. When you don't have things, you don't burden your head with them. I know there is a fashion now, but I never had great needs.
Jakub: This optimistic approach is very evident in you. The apartments from your studio have almost no empty meters, they are well-lit, often double-sided, and the rooms can be furnished. In less than sixty meters you have a very comfortable three rooms. A thirty-meter studio can have two completely separate rooms, a bright kitchenette that can be separated, and double-sided lighting. It's hard to believe, but there are very few such well-designed new apartments.
Simon: Before we got to this point, I made a lot of mistakes. The list is long. First of all, bad zoning: bedrooms scattered all over the apartment, or entering the bedroom through the living room. Next: inadequate proportions, and mixing of zones. Another mistake: the inability to separate the kitchen with a window. Plus, too much unnecessary communication. And another mistake: vertical windows, narrow portfenets.
Sample projections of small apartments from a project currently under construction in Debienek near Poznan
from left: 3-room apartment, 46.82 sq m, 3-room apartment, 49.34 sq m
Fig: © Insomia
Jakub: Most apartments now have this.
Simon: It comes from designing with an elevation. You can play with rhythm, play with form. Only that a horizontal window is the most effective. I'm doing mostly those now. Vertical ones don't work. I know, because we also designed them. The reception of such a room is poor: a mass of walls and little contact with what's outside. Another issue: fatal positioning. Finally, the light that comes in through a narrow gap. A horizontal window makes the same interior seem much better.
Jakub: Have you noticed this yourself?
Simon: There were comments coming in from the sales department that there was a problem with positioning. I seemingly pushed it out, but I had to agree. Now that I see the mistakes I'm aware of, I agonize until it's right. Sometimes, when one placement doesn't want to go, the whole building has to be changed. It's agonizing for us, but we try to design each apartment so that we ourselves want to live in it. I am completely business irrational. We could say "enough", but we don't do that. The investor is satisfied, we are not. This is often due to the fact that even large investments are the work of family businesses. They don't have much experience, they trust that you know what you're doing. They say "great," but you know there's that one place that disrupts everything for you. Well, and you screw up the whole project.
Jakub: Do investors put up with it?
Simon: They get annoyed. They really do. It does involve delays, after all. But there's something sitting inside me that I don't let go.
Jakub: How do you convince them of these improvements?
Szymon: I don't know. Maybe they see that it makes sense. They see that what we are doing is selling well.
Jakub: Other apartments are also going down in droves. Much worse ones.
Szymon: Investors, however, stay with us. Sometimes it's the comparison with the competition that decides. When the question of location is dropped and the customer compares two developments next to each other, they start paying attention to details. Buyers of apartments for rent are very sensitive to them. Every meter is expected to pay them back as quickly as possible. Four meters of corridor means a year or more of loan repayment. Besides, I'm lucky that the investors I know trust architects and don't go deep into the project. It's up to us to make it right or wrong.
Segments of "Nowy Strzeszyn" from Malewska Street; on the left you can see the pedestrian passageway that leads deep into the estate to the integration space
Photo: Tomasz Hejna Lagomfoto, © Insomia
Jakub: This is how we get to the slogan "responsibility and ethics of the architect". How is it with that in Poland?
Szymon: It is difficult to make a judgment. Many mistakes don't necessarily come from calculating or poor experience. The important thing is not to make the same mistakes a second time. It is important to notice them. Is it unethical when you don't notice your stumbles? I don't know the answer. However, I don't think that bad projects are created out of calculating or desire for profit, because architecture is a hard job, financially unrewarding. What I do know is that I myself do not know how to act hastily and worse for less money. Regardless of how much money I manage to negotiate, I sit and agonize over these projections.
Jakub: How do you make these optimal apartments?
Simon: The key is to have a lot of elevation and to enter from the corridor into the middle of the premises. If you start from a corner, what you don't do is wrong. If you set up the communication in the building so that it hits where it needs to go, then a couple of tried-and-true schemes take care of it. The most important thing is not to create a resultant projection. I'm also not a fan of rooms that are too big. Thirteen meters of bedrooms is too much. Why so much when you can have a larger living area?
Jakub: A little breathing while you sleep won't hurt.
Simon: If you're looking for an apartment that has forty-something meters and three rooms with a separate kitchen, you have to give up some amenities.
Jakub: The mistakes you enumerated earlier should be eliminated at the level of education.
Simon: I had good lecturers, but they didn't tell us many things, everything can't be done. Meanwhile, you could easily write ten commandments of designing a good apartment. To say clearly: don't do it this way, because it can't be done. That would simplify a lot.
Botaniczna estate on Nałkowska and St. Lawrence streets in Poznań (development: 2014-2018)
Photo: Agnieszka Liguz Kończak, © Insomia
James: And the regulations? Maybe we should go back to the norms that regulate the ratio between different functions?
Szymon: I believe more in education. You can't save a good apartment with regulations. Immediately combinations will start: too large a hallway will become a formal dressing room and so on. I will say more: I am against the provision that twenty-five meters is the minimum apartment. I believe that it can be smaller and very functional, if you plan it precisely.
James: The specter of the "micro-apartment" comes before our eyes.
Simon: This is not evil incarnate. I consider such small apartments as an alternative to living with my parents. Although in fact, their prices are sometimes inflated. They also need to be properly furnished. It is common to see presentations of small apartments with multifunctional smart furniture. But these appliances cost so much that it's already better to buy more meters and put in something from IKEA.
Jakub: Some people chisel projects because they know they will be identified with their name. You rather don't pay attention to recognition and promotion.
Simon: But it's nice when someone appreciates our project. There are sometimes emails in which someone thanks us for shaping a good space. Maybe not often, a few times a year, but still.
Jakub: When I throw around the slogan "Szymon Januszewski" in Poznań, hardly anyone associates it. Even in the architectural community.
Szymon: You can take care to be more recognizable, but after all, what you do is important, not who you are. I even prefer to be transparent. It's the buildings that are supposed to speak, not me. Architecture is a craft for me, so I always wanted to have an architectural workshop, not an office. I would like to be able to test different solutions. To take wood, a milling machine, to test. There is absolutely no market for this - especially in residential. So maybe I can succeed on another level. I'm increasingly attracted to the social aspect of architecture: how we are able to influence other people with it.
Botaniczna estate - in the middle of the establishment there is a spacious playground with separate colorful enclaves; each is intended for a different type of play or sport. The colors refer to the entrance areas of the buildings
Photo: Agnieszka Liguz Kończak, © Insomia
James: The return of architecture with a mission?
Szymon: Yes, you have to be ahead of the times and expectations, to take risks, to experiment. That's why I try to avoid doing projects that contribute nothing - both to architecture and to my practice. Every project is how many years of life. When I realize how many more houses I will do, I try to look for something different in each task. Now I'm interested in density, compact single-family housing.
Jakub: And that's how you're designing now in Poznan's Strzeszyn. Exceptional, meticulously detailed houses with the size of an apartment. Next to them a garden, a storage room, a parking space. Facades in custom-made ceramics. The whole is an irregular composition of terraced houses inserted in a birch grove, which has hardly been cut. Will this new quality in Strzeszyn compete with single-family houses?
Szymon: No, because New Strzeszyn costs money, it's not a budget project. It's more of a substitute for multi-family housing than a house in the suburbs. When you build such a small house, you have to equip it with the same things as a larger building. A meter must cost more, especially since the standard of finishes is high. The cost of preserving all those trees is also powerful, although clients sometimes think the opposite. That the developer wanted to save money by planting new ones.
James: You watered some of the trees yourself on the site. In the project there is a balcony through which the trunk of a preserved birch tree passes.
Simon: Trees have a great value for me. They create a unique mood and microclimate, in Strzeszyn I subordinated the layout of the houses to them. I can also see that clients are beginning to appreciate them - a mature tree close to the house makes them feel special.
Jakub: In designing Strzeszyn, you were inspired, among other things, by designs from the book "Small Residential Complexes" published in Poland almost forty years ago.
Szymon: These are very interesting examples, mostly from Germany and the UK. They haven't gotten old. What we are doing in Strzeszyn is something fresh in Poland, although we are not discovering anything new. This is the 1970s in the world. So it's cramped in "our" Strzeszyn, but we try to make sure everything is well thought out. Despite the density, we have positioned the houses so that there are good views from the windows, and the residents do not look into each other's apartments. There is also a gradation of space: from public, to semi-private, to private.
There are common areas and narrow passages between buildings, but also gardens separated by a full fence, which give a sense of intimacy. What didn't work for us was to move the parking lots back to the periphery of the complex. Poles need to see the car under the house. Of course, it's possible not to make this compromise, they would praise the estate in the newspapers and so on, but it's not about erecting monuments to ourselves. The developer would fall for lack of buyers and I would have one less customer.
New Strzeszyn, floor plans of a 4-bedroom house, 67.88 sqm.
pic: © Insomia
Jakub: In Strzeszyn, this is the first time you have tackled an urban theme.
Szymon: I found out how great the power of urban planning is, although I felt a foretaste when designing a complex of tall buildings on Botaniczna Street. The houses in Nowy Strzeszyn have a high standard of finish, but if they were covered with ordinary plaster, they would defend themselves just as well. Architecture will not make a city space. For it to be good, a good urban layout and such houses are enough. So I would like to get a commission to design a budget but carefully thought-out housing development for a public investor. Unfortunately, so far local governments or the state are not screwing up standards in this regard, although they should. Unless their offerings compete with private developments, developers will not voluntarily raise the bar.
Jakub: What should characterize these public investments?
Szymon: First of all, diversity involving a mix of building functions and housing quality. But vuzetts and local plans often make this impossible. Anyway, maybe we are not ready for that. In Strzeszyn we have a building we call "grandfathered." Downstairs a small apartment, and above it - a two-story apartment. We assumed that they could be combined: family upstairs, grandparents downstairs. But this is just our wishful thinking. After all, the developer won't tell the customer that he will sell it only in such an arrangement. The second desirable feature: flexibility. For example: a house with a superstructure project that you make yourself later. Just imagine applying for permission to expand, and everyone around you will be a party to the proceedings. Nightmare. And the vision is: a crane arrives and puts an extra prefabricated room on your roof. Aravena's concept is also great. Half a house built and the rest to be completed on your own. In our country, almost unfeasible by regulations and the reluctance of authorities to get creative.
Jet Office building on Piatkowska Street in Poznań - the dynamic, stubby form of the northern corner is a result of the shape of the narrow triangular plot; although the building's form may seem a strong accent, it blends in perfectly with the surroundings
Photo: Fotoarchitektura.pl, © Insomia
James: What after Strzeszyn? Office buildings? You have several successful projects of this type.
Szymon: I don't have such an assignment right now, but I'd love to, because offices are easier to do. Free throw and focus on form. Residential is more difficult. But more work, it's also more fun. So we are doing another enclave: closer to the center of Poznań. For now, I'll reveal only that it's again small scale and even higher density.
Jakub: You don't like large scale. After the large-scale estate project on Botaniczna Street, you felt tired and slimmed down the studio, and you also parted ways with your partner.
Szymon: We decided together that a large studio economically doesn't make sense. It's more hassle, dealing mainly with business. I feel the need to be in the project. I'm not an architect who throws a subject to employees and goes to sign contracts. I employ five people now, in the past - at most - twenty-four. Today I know for sure that I don't want a large studio. Work consumes everything and life passes. And I also plan to play around a bit more, to get away.
Jakub: After working on Botaniczna, you walked to Santiago de Compostela.
Simon: Well, and now there are rumors that I'm a Buddhist and can go to a monastery for four months overnight. Meanwhile, it was a caesura between one stage of professional work and another. No religious motives. Anyway, I didn't disappear, I stayed in touch, I didn't leave suddenly. Wandering gave distance and energy to continue working. I really like this profession, but I do not want to fall from my desk straight into the coffin.
Jacob: Maybe it's time to share the experience? Don't you want to lecture at the university?
Simon: I have had offers, but for now I lack the time. Someday I would love to return to this subject. Right now I still want to get satisfaction from designing. Because, if we accept that there is no great money from architecture, or even worse: that in relation to earnings the risk in this profession is so great that it should not be practiced, then satisfaction remains. To have it, I have to try something new all the time. That's my tried-and-true way to keep from going crazy.
