The article is from A&B issue 03|23
There seems to be no doubt in anyone's mind that greenery in a city is an absolute necessity. We are becoming more and more aware of climate change, we hear about the heat island phenomenon, and we learn about what needs to be done to make it possible to function better in our cities.
I'm glad that more and more people are courting greenery, but it's important that the conversation on this topic be honest. We all watched the discussion regarding the Five Corners Square in Warsaw. A good project was created, but it was shouted down by claims for more greenery. Statements full of bad emotions and absolute misunderstanding of what the architects [proj.: WXCA - editor's note] had to achieve prevailed.
Unikato - Katowice | proj.: KWK Promes
photo: Juliusz Sokolowski © KWK Promes
I appreciate, of course, the large amount of greenery in the city, but we should not go from one extreme to another. The city has to work, after all, and it has to have sidewalks and public spaces with adequate flooring. However, it is worth planting large trees in areas that need shade, as this will keep them usable and pleasantly cool.
Advocating that every public square should now be a green square is nonsense. A few years ago I attended the Open "er Festival. After two days of continuous rainfall, the grass was trampled by thousands of people and turned into mud. I would not want something similar to happen in the city. People have to walk on something, and by sowing grass everywhere, we would kill many public spaces.
Plato Gallery of Contemporary Art - Ostrava, Czech Republic | proj.: KWK Promes
Photo: Juliusz Sokolowski © KWK Promes
At the same time, I would like to emphasize that we cannot pass by indifferently the widespread concretization, but this aspect also needs to be looked at in a broader context. What we see in our cities, in most cases, was built many years ago, and we have only recently become aware of the climate crisis we are living in. Let's not forget why markets were built in cities. They were empty squares where commerce took place and lots of people came. The type of flooring usually depended on the wealth of the city government. In the case of those poorer towns, it was more like a threshing floor. In the richer ones, cobblestones were laid, and then more noble materials. The key to decor, however, has always been function. This is the nature of the town square and marketplace.
I don't want to get into populist discussions, crying "enough concrete" and that grass should be sown in every square, preferably in the largest possible quantities. Let's think with function and context. Let's plan and ask questions during that planning. Does a small town need a huge square lined with granite? Should we sow grass in Krakow's market square and make it a meadow? Let's analyze and match solutions to needs.
In our project for the Breakthroughs Dialogue Center in Szczecin, the square was, in a way, an added value. The competition called for building the museum as a classical building, and we hid it underground. By the way, we created something on its roof that people in the city needed - a public space of real importance. The tens of thousands of pedestrians who appear there on the occasion of various events, protests or exhibitions confirmed the rightness of this solution. We hid the museum to give a view of the Philharmonic in the neighborhood, behind which, by the way, is a multi-hectare park. When we read the report on the state of the climate ten years later, we decided to opt for a minor acupuncture of the place and show that even an award-winning building and square can be corrected.
Breakthroughs Dialogue Center - Szczecin | proj.: KWK Promes current state
© KWK Promes
However, it is important that our action does not spoil what works so well there. So the floor will remain usable, and we will plant a dozen trees to create more shade on the square. This will obscure the view of the Philharmonic in summer, but we decided that there are more important things today than preserving the scenic axis. Cities should be changed thoughtfully, after careful consideration and factual discussions, not after outraged and emotional posts on the Internet. Such brawls are often about one square or another, without a broader context. Rarely does anyone consider, for example, how many rooftops around these squares could be greened? And yet these are completely unusable places, so grass on these roofs would lower the temperature in the city, without taking away valuable square space. This is what we did at Unikato in Katowice, the building where we have an office. Other places that are not talked about are the parking lots of shopping malls. It would be enough to make their floors grass in geogrids so that they can be driven on, and to plant trees between the drive aisles. Despite the fact that such changes could bring much more benefits without any usable loss, the public does not pay attention to it because it is not "clickable."
Breakthroughs Dialogue Center - Szczecin | proj.: KWK Promes project of plantings to be done this year
© KWK Promes
Observing all these discussions from the sidelines, I get the impression that bringing up the topic on social media without in-depth analysis often becomes eco-populism, directed at applause rather than real improvements in the city. That's why I urge you to approach very simplistic debates on social media with great caution. They are full of emotion and not very professional at the same time. I would not like to suggest that architects are infallible and that they cannot be criticized, because the opposite is true. Bottom-up social movements are essential today and can do a lot of good. However, it is important to talk as calmly and matter-of-factly as possible, to learn the arguments of all sides, working together to reach the best possible solution.
We recently completed the construction of our PLATO Gallery in Ostrava, where an art gallery was created in an old slaughterhouse. According to the original plan, there was to be no greenery around the building. The goal was to create an outdoor space for additional exhibitions. However, the construction coincided with the UN report on climate change, and that's when our joint discussion with the city and PLATO Gallery management began on how we could respond. We decided to reduce the space of the outdoor exhibition, originally intended for art, and heavily green this square. Trees, meadows and grasses in such numbers were possible in this case, because unlike the Breakthroughs Dialogue Center, this is not the middle of the city and not as many people will gather here as in the square in Szczecin. And artists will have to make do with a smaller outdoor exhibition space. The changes arose from new needs and were adapted to the context. And all with calm and substantive discussions, without the participation of Facebook ecopopulists.
Unikato - Katowice | proj.: KWK Promes
photo: Juliusz Sokolowski © KWK Promes
The role of architects is to talk to investors about the new situation and the need for change. It is worth showing that it is possible to design in a way that satisfies them, taking into account, for example, the trees that are already on the plot. Together with Maciek Franta and our studios, we are currently working on the expansion of the iconic spa in Ustroń, so that we can finally take full advantage of the hospital that operates there. We have a tree-lined plot of land there, on which we were supposed to place a project of the dimensions that the size of the investment area allows. However, we wanted to preserve as many of these trees as possible. So we explained to the investor that the building at that location should be smaller. The investor agreed to this, although as a result the hospital building will have fewer beds, which will bring less profit. The decision was made after a calm conversation, and that's what eco-responsibility is. I dream that it will become widespread.
Robert KONIECZNY
KWK Promes
