Bohdan (Biś) Lisowski, President of the Association of Polish Architects, is interviewed by Katarzyna Jagodzinska.
Bohdan (Biś) Lisowski - President of the Association of Polish Architects since 2019. Involved in SARP since 1999, previously President of SARP Krakow Branch (2012-2019) and Secretary of SARP Governing Council (2015-2019), among others. He organized the International Architecture Biennale Krakow 2015 "Human Dimension of Urban Space", MBA Krakow 2017 "Courtyard - Field of Imagination" and MBA Krakow 2019 "Connections - City and River". In 2013-2019, he co-organized more than a dozen architectural competitions, including the Malopolska Science Center, the "Planet Lem" Language and Literature Center, the Music Center in Krakow and the Stanislaw Wyspianski Museum. Graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Cracow University of Technology (1994), diploma in Usability Engineering in Software Development PG and ETH Zurich, academic lecturer since 1996 (Cracow University of Technology, Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Cracow Academy. Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Academy of Technology), owner of Biś Computers (Autodesk ATC, AAP, ACC, VAR) providing training in CAD and BIM architectural design software and ECDL and Autodesk certification.
Katarzyna Jagodzinska: One of the goals of the Association of Polish Architects is the high quality of architecture, space and the environment, and the means of implementation - promoting, organizing and participating in the preparation of architectural competitions. Let's start the conversation with the competition formula developed by SARP.
Bohdan (Biś) Lisowski: The first demand for the organization of a competition by the architectural community in Cracow was formulated in 1878, a year after the founding of the Cracow Technical Society - from which SARP originated - and concerned the building of the Savings Bank, while the ongoing competition for the Cracow Music Center is numbered SARP 996. Competitions co-organized by SARP are numbered, thus receiving a kind of association guarantee. Probably the other number is made up of unnumbered competitions - organized locally with the support of the association's branches, which often, for various reasons, have not advanced to the level of being able to receive a number. SARP, therefore, has always been in the business of organizing competitions.
The association is the only architectural organization in Poland with human resources, primarily SARP competition judges. The election is the highest environmental ennoblement and at the same time the most democratic of all possible solutions - the judges are elected by secret ballot. Here it is impossible to appoint anyone without a public mandate. There have been attempts to move to a system of lifetime appointments for competitive judges, but this I consider a far unwise decision, because it would concretize our judicial structures. For the time being, we elect judges for consecutive terms of four years. To the procurers who approach us to co-organize competitions, we offer as part of the composition of the jury this very human resource.
Of course, SARP does not have a monopoly on the organization of competitions. There are competitions organized by the ordering party without cooperation with the association. A private investor can organize competitions as he wishes. If he asks us for help, we are happy to step in. However, if he asks our judges for help, outside the association, then we have a dilemma, especially if the rules and regulations in such a competition do not meet our association rules. Most often, however, we work with public procurers implementing competition tasks based on the public procurement law.
Whenever someone asks us for a meeting, we start the conversation from the end - we ask when they expect the result of the competition. This is usually the moment when an awkward silence ensues, because the ordering party thinks he can have the result in a month, two at the most. When he learns that the competition procedure takes six to nine months, he suddenly begins to understand that this is something different from what he assumed in terms of time, budget, investment... Based on the public procurement law, taking into account all the administrative deadlines, we are not able to radically reduce this time.
During such a conversation, we usually collide with two deadlines. One is "at the end of the year," so that we can settle everything administratively and accounting, that is, October, November at the latest, while we start the conversation itself in June and it is already tight. The second is the end of the term. It is not only in Poland that local governments or authorities at the national level live with terms of office - the parliamentary calendar is four years, the local government calendar is now five years. We have the biggest rash of contests in the last year of a term, because one thinks not in the long term, not in decades, but in terms of terms. An authority that would like to be re-elected has to show off something. Therefore, the result has to be before the elections.
We most often postulate two-stage contests. Such a competition, unfortunately, prolongs the whole procedure and is organizationally more costly, but the gain from it is a chance for the contracting authority and the jury to reflect after the first stage. Then a certain randomness of selection is avoided, and above all, the second stage gives the opportunity to give specific guidelines or recommendations from the ordering party so that the result better meets expectations. A one-stage competition is a huge drain on architectural studios. A minimum of four boards must be prepared, although more are often required - six, eight, ten. Sometimes a physical mock-up must be prepared. This makes the cost of participation extremely high. If we do a two-stage competition, in the first stage we want to get a sketch idea of the concept and then the jury qualifies for the second stage those works that have aroused the interest and appreciation of the jury members. In the second stage we have reimbursement, that is, if the team invited to the second stage, submits a work, in accordance with the regulations, it is guaranteed reimbursement up to a certain amount. Reimbursement is a contractual term, because he never reimburses them in full, nevertheless some compensation for the work done is thus guaranteed.
SARP most often deals with the preparation of the rules of the competition, the schedule, suggests the amount of prizes, so that they are not disproportionate to the competition task. From the point of view of procurers or lawyers, the very start of a prestigious competition is a prize for architects to add to their portfolio. We know of competitions, implemented without the participation of the association, which ended in disaster, in which the prizes were underestimated. We believe that a competition should always end with a prize. Signing a contract is not a prize, it is part of the investment process.
We try to help in all aspects of promoting the competition. We organize post-competition discussions, never during the announcement of the results, when emotions are completely different, but a week or two later, when there is time for reflection. We invite the winners to give an authoritative presentation of the competition concept, and we do a discussion with the jury and residents. We also try to make sure that there is a post-competition publication, in which the awarded works are presented. This is a material summary of the competition.
Katarzyna: It's a situation in which an investor approaches SARP. And does the SARP also lobby the investor to make the cooperation happen?
Biś: In the case of private investors, this happens occasionally. In Krakow, there were two competitions we organized for a private investor building a residential development. The developer decided not to collect design concepts for free - this is a reprehensible practice that we often encounter - but just to hold competitions. One of them was held for the Ozon housing development in Gorka Naroda. In the case of public investments, the local government plans them and they are often talked about in the public space. Then we have a chance to offer our disposition early enough. If we are involved from the beginning, the chance of success increases. When we are involved at the very end, often from the point of view of our internal regulations and competition rules, the documents that the contracting authority already has prepared, usually by a law firm, require huge changes. Law firms tend to be overzealous in safeguarding the interests of the contracting authority. This is, of course, an act for the benefit of the client, but the public procurer is not aware that individual provisions in the contract at the moment of crisis are not really a threat to the designers, but to the procurer. We explain where the screw should not be tightened too much. Let me give you an example: if the contractual penalties are asymmetrical, i.e. the designers have draconian penalties for delays, and the ordering party does not, it may come to a situation where it would be more beneficial for the designer to withdraw from the contract than to wade into penalties. Then the ordering party is left with nothing. So you have to balance how much the penalties should be part of disciplining the designers, and how much is a means of protecting the ordering party, but in such a way that success is shared.
Mieczyslaw Karlowicz Philharmonic Hall in Szczecin, design: Barozzi Veiga
Photo: Milenya Villalba Montoya
Catherine: Given the ferment that is growing around architectural competitions, doubts are multiplying as to whether a competition is the best formula for selecting a project, or in any case a competition held under the current rules. Because indeed, they do not always bring the expected results.
Biś: The competition may not be successful. There are many aspects that make a competition less likely to succeed. If we have a very complicated object to design, then throwing it into the formula of a one-stage competition increases the risk of failure. It is also not a peculiarity of architectural competitions in Poland that they end in nothing, that is, no contract is signed and no investment is made. This is common around the world. The museum on the Acropolis in Athens, which was eventually won by Bernard Tschumi, was the result of the third consecutive competition.
It may turn out that the competition is successful and selects a work that is good from an architectural and functional point of view, but is not implemented because priorities change. We know of examples when investments are postponed "for later". The distaste remains, however, we can do nothing about it.
The competition can be protested by its participants. There is a National Board of Appeals, a body empowered within the Public Procurement Office, and anyone who believes they have been harmed has the right to appeal. We also have experience of such situations, when the settlement was in favor of the contracting authority. This process prolongs the competition procedure, because if someone legitimately appeals to the NAC after the results are announced, the competition remains unfinished until the verdict is announced.
The trouble with competitions is finding the golden mean between the entry threshold and the accessibility of the competition. I define the entry threshold as the qualifications that participants should meet in order to submit entries. Mostly it is related to design experience. The provisions of the regulations clearly specify that a given participant, in order to get an invitation to submit a work, must submit a statement on the realization of, for example, a public facility with a usable area of not less than x. We have often had a dilemma in discussions with the contracting authority - overly exaggerating this condition, stewarding the metric area is not in favor of the contracting authority. The question arises, what do we really want to check: whether a given participant has passed the investment procedure ending with the realization of a public facility, or that he has realized certain square meters? From the point of view of passing this investment procedure, it doesn't matter at all whether the facility is two thousand square meters or fifteen. An awkward situation may arise in which a very worthy project team that lacks a thousand meters, and has realizations that are widely recognized and awarded, will not be able to take off. There is also a second school, that since architectural licenses are unlimited, there should be no entry threshold of any kind, that is, that any architect with a license can take off, regardless of experience or lack thereof. Contracting authorities most often do not want to run such a risk. We have a misinterpreted EU stipulation that the contractor demonstrate similar assignments completed in the last three years, which in the investment and construction process is absurd. This was the subject of jokes on the occasion of the competition for the Polish embassy in Berlin - it was said that a stipulation had to be applied that the participants have to demonstrate the realization of at least one embassy in the last three years. It's just that the Foreign Ministry was not holding such a competition at the time.
The competition for the Pantheon - Mausoleum at Powązki in Warsaw had no restrictions. It was won by young people who committed plagiarism. There was a lack of professional responsibility, because they thought it was acceptable. There was an announcement of the results, interviews, photos, newspaper articles, and the next day it turned out that a very similar project had already won somewhere. The case involved a project by the Bjarke Ingels Group in Copenhagen. One of the young architects, who had the opportunity to work at BIG as an intern, was familiar with the project. This is an extreme second example - if we don't verify anything, we may end up in trouble.
I believe that if there is to be a threshold, let it be low and verify what we would like to know, but I also understand procurers not wanting to let it go. Especially since most procurers use funds from various sources, including EU funds, which have their own procurement calendar, and they can't repeat the competition procedure. We try to suggest how to arrange everything so that they have something to choose from. In our experience, between thirty and fifty percent of the studios that enter the competition will send in works. If we have four works submitted to the competition, it means that something is wrong - the conditions are too closing, the prizes are uninteresting, or the jury does not inspire confidence.
Being in charge of the Cracow branch of SARP for seven years, I have to say that cooperation with the Marshal's Office of Malopolska was a very positive lesson. The people in the office who dealt with investment and competition matters were always extremely competent and focused on the social interest of the investment in question.
Katarzyna: The authorities of Krakow do not hide their reserve and disappointment with competition procedures. The arguments of the city investor in favor of holding tenders are saving time and money.
Biś: We live in a city that is included in the first UNESCO World Heritage List. The Krakow branch of SARP has developed a map of contemporary architecture in Krakow covering buildings completed after 2000. These are universally recognized buildings, completed through an architectural competition: Malopolska Garden of Art, Cricoteka, ICE, MOCAK, Tauron Arena, Polish Aviation Museum, Cracovia's 100th Anniversary Hall and so on. They prove that the competition procedure is the best way to obtain high quality not only in architecture, but also in public space. The situation in which a park is to be built on Karmelicka Street - what a valuable initiative by citizens within the framework of the civic budget - in a city that receives fourteen million tourists a year, andit is to be implemented through a tender in which the participants are to relinquish their rights, where out of the five proposals submitted, the lowest one is for one hundred thousand zlotys, this, in my opinion, is not frugality, but nonchalance. The last such place in the Old City environment! It is not an art to buy cheaply, the art is to do it for years. The objects I have cited were realized within the framework of architectural competitions and they defend themselves. The tender procedure, in which a contractor is selected to submit the lowest bid, or a contractor is chosen in a mode that doesn't work very well in Poland, although common in the West, i.e. design and build, is not, in my opinion, taking care of the public space for which we are all responsible. Tendering is certainly not the cheapest solution. In the short run it probably is, in the long run it certainly isn't. Decisions that affect public space should be treated differently from road lane repairs. That's why I don't agree when important development sites in Krakow are decided in a way that can't be called the highest effort for the best solution.
Maybe this is because the competition procedure is unpredictable. But praise for it. The competition procedure gives an opportunity to do something that was not envisioned by officials. There are many worldwide examples of excellent realizations, when the competition jury selected a work that went beyond the regulations or even did not meet the strict provisions of the regulations, but from the point of view of the quality of architecture, functional and spatial solutions clearly brought new value. Then there is a chance. The bidding procedure does not give such a chance.
Katarzyna: Do you think something should be fixed in the competition procedure?
Biś: We often complain that world-renowned architectural firms do not participate in our competitions. The reason is simple: we have too low prizes and draconian financial conditions when it comes to the contract. In Poland, for design work we have a percentage of the investment written in - from four to six, while the standard in Germany is from ten to twelve. If only in this aspect there is a lot of catching up to do. In the library of good competition examples, we have solutions that are excellent and were executed under a very strict financial regime. The competition does not have to mean an implementation financial burnout of the investment. He often turns out to be more expensive in implementation than the ordering party assumed, but this is for a number of reasons. First, from underestimation of investments, which is common. And secondly, since a competition under the Public Procurement Law is a public promise, it involves an administrative decision, i.e. a resolution of the city council or provincial assembly to allocate funds for a particular investment. If these funds are insufficient, the contracting authority cannot raise them in the regulations, because it is bound by this public promise. Even if he is aware that he will add this money the following year, he cannot assume this in the regulations.
SARP has always had a dream that it would prepare a model competition bylaw, a kind of "subway model" that everyone could follow. It turns out that this is unrealistic. It is true that we have a model of one- and two-stage regulations on our website, but each competition task is individual and each requires precise specification of the provisions of such regulations. For us, the success is not that the competition will be held procedurally correctly - the success is the implementation of the investment. If we hold a phenomenal competition, with excellent judges, attractive rules and regulations, and it does not end in implementation, then we are unsatisfied. That's why we always focus on the goal, the object in question, and not on an excellent procedure when talking to the ordering party. A procedure that does not select a winner that can sign a contract is a disaster for us.
Catherine: Failed examples are often cited and cited as crowning evidence that competitions are not worth holding, or that serious thought should be given to whether they are worth it. In your opinion, what are the most successful competitions and post-competition realizations that could be set as examples?
Biś: It seems to me that such a competition was the competition for Cricoteka, which created an iconic building in Krakow. You may or may not like this building, but without a doubt it gave a whole new quality. Please see how the Vistula shoreline on the Podgórze side, right here, has transformed. It was an industrial area, now it is teeming with life. This has also happened thanks to the Father Bernatek pedestrian and bicycle footbridge. Nothing is as city-forming and pro-social as a footbridge. Then there was the competition, which resulted in the Tauron Arena, a facility that is very desirable in Cracow, because finally thanks to it, it is possible to play large championship-class tournaments in volleyball and other team sports or organize large concerts with an audience of several thousand. We certainly have a great facility thanks to the competition for the Cracovia stadium, which was won by the Spanish company Estudio Lamela. I think it is an extremely tactful sports facility integrated into the urban fabric, in the vicinity of the National Museum, the former Cracovia Hotel and the Blonia. Now imagine that all these facilities would have been realized through a tender. I don't know if we would have anything to talk about today....
The best example in Poland is the competition for the Mieczyslaw Karlowicz Philharmonic Hall in Szczecin. It was won by two young people who have an office in Barcelona, Alberto Veiga and Fabrizio Barozzi. The settlement of the competition was debatable, the jury's deliberations tumultuous, the verdict of the jury not unanimous. The result was a building that is unusual in its impact on this part of Szczecin. Szczecin was badly damaged during Allied air raids during the war, and then ignored in terms of rebuilding the historic fabric of the city. This facility gave the city a whole new chance. Then came the construction of the Breakthroughs Dialogue Center next door, a fantastic building-plaza designed by Robert Konieczny, which maintained extraordinary moderation in relation to the surrounding buildings, achieving a synergistic value of the whole place. I don't want to overvalue and compare what happened in Szczecin to the Bilbao effect, but Szczecin got first-class architecture. The Philharmonic is the only building in this part of Europe that is a winner of the prestigious Mies van der Rohe Prize. And this is the most beautiful example of how a competition can result in an object that creates a new quality in the city, has an impact on the entire environment. I can assure you that they won't spoil anything there anymore, because the city authorities know that an architectural competition gives them something completely unattainable in another form. Anyway, Szczecin organizes a lot of competitions, and perhaps it is because of this wonderful philharmonic.
interviewed: Katarzyna JAGODZIÑSKA
The September issue of A&B was dedicated to architectural competitions in Poland. You can find the freee-issue here.
