For more than 70 years, the Institute of Industrial Design has studied Polish design, popularized good design and supported Polish designers. At the beginning of October, the helm of the Institute of Industrial Design was taken over by a person who has little to do with design - she is good at selling microcaleras, flipping apartments and making YouTube videos about real estate development projects. Should such a model be given by the president of the Institute of Industrial Design?
The Institute of Industrial Design is an institution-legend. Established in 1950 by Eugeniusz Stawinski, and managed from the beginning by design specialists - Prof. Wanda Telakowska, deputy director - it was one of the first centers of its kind in Europe. The activities of the Institute and its founder and manager organized Polish design during the communist era, working to improve the quality of items produced at the time and popularize folk craftsmanship in industrial production. In 2007, IWP was transformed into a limited liability company subordinate to the State Treasury. Now the chairman of the board of this important institution has become a person engaged in troublesome activities, and without adequate competence, as WP portal journalists were the first to report.
flips on the board
At the beginning of October, the Institute of Industrial Design announced the election of a new president of the company's management board. He was appointed Adrian Musial - a lawyer and investor, but also... developer, flipper and YouTuber. Adrian Musial replaced Agnieszka Wasilewska, who had served as CEO since 2020, in this position. A little earlier, Agnieszka Wasilewska became a member of the supervisory board of the Industrial Development Agency, which owns a majority stake in the Institute of Industrial Design. The competition for the position of the new chairman of the IWP board was announced on July 10, but information about it was not widely circulated.
I think this open competition for president hung only on the IWP website, I came across it completely by accident, when it was the fifth announcement on the matter. It was not posted, for example, on the portal pracujwkulturze, where people familiar with the research and exhibition business would have found it sooner.
- Aleksandra Kędziorek, an art historian, design expert and lecturer at the School of Form, writes on Facebook.
The problem is that apparently experience in research and exhibition activities was not a very important criterion here.
micro-café and mega-café
After all,the president of an institution with a history of more than 70 years was a person who specializes in real estate, including flipping, i.e. buying up apartments from private individuals, renovating them (usually for rent) and then reselling them at a considerable premium. Musiał Company, Adrian Musiał's real estate development company, has several investments in Silesia, mainly in Czeladź. One of them is Kawalerki na Piaskach, which included several small apartments of 26 to 28 square meters and ten so-called condominium units. Formally they are apartments of about 43 square meters, but in practice each is divided into two micro-apartments, offering tenants about 21.5 meters of usable living space.
Adrian Musial popularizes his business activities through a YouTube channel. Adrian.Developer, as its name implies, advises on how to earn more from flips, invest in micro-apartments or double income from short-term rentals.
guilty of explaining itself?
The Institute of Industrial Design explains the decisions with the management and investment competencies of the new president, reasoning that IWP is a company that makes its living from renting office space, something Adrian Musial has experience in. Competence in design is not needed, as the other members of the Institute of Industrial Design team will take care of the merits. This is interesting because in the competition announcement for the position of CEO, the first of the subsections listing interview topics reads:
(a) Knowledge of the Company's scope of operations and the sector in which the Company operates
Is this a responsible approach to managing such an important institution? It seems that such a philosophy may push the activities of this important research and popularization unit far into the cogs of the capitalist economy, which is rightly criticized by the design community. What's more, it seems highly unpalatable to choose as CEO a person who pairs himself with activities that are questionable from the perspective of the public interest, such as real estate development and flipping, contributing to the rise in housing prices and the development of pathological phenomena such as the sale of units with appallingly low square meters. Is the sale of micro-apartments and flipping of apartments an activity that should characterize a person managing an important state institute?
