The Mercure Szczyrk Resort hotel has landed in Szczyrk, Silesia province. The lump, impressive in size and architectural form, may compete with the equally "spectacular" Golebiewski Hotel in Pobierowo.
Szczyrk, just over 20 kilometers from Bielsko-Biala, is a town in the heart of the Silesian Beskid, whose natural advantages are enjoyed by Polish women and men all year round. In addition to mountain excursions, Szczyrk offers historical monuments and a rich infrastructure related to skiing. The tourist face of Szczyrk became known as early as the interwar period, when the post-Austrian defensive buildings began to be used as dormitories. However, the real development of the tourist industry in Szczyrk came in the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in the opening of the Orle Gniazdo Convention and Recreation Center. The facility was built as a resort for employees of three state-owned factories - the Katowice Steelworks, Chorzow's Kościuszko Steelworks and the Transprzęt production plant in Tychy. Initial plans to erect three smaller structures for each of the investors were abandoned, resulting in one giant structure designed by Jerzy Winnicki, responsible for, among other things, the master plan for Jastrzębie, the design of the Jaszowiec spa district in Ustroń and the Holy Spirit Church in Chorzów.
Panorama of Szczyrk from Skrzyczne - the Orle Gniazdo Convention and Recreation Center dominates the tourist town
Photo: Sebastian Nanek © CC BY-SA 2.0 | Wikimedia Commons
eagle's nest
For years, the Orle Gniazdo (Eagle's Nest) Convention and Recreation Center was one of the largest facilities of its kind in Poland, offering a significant number of hotel beds and a number of attractions that were modern for the time.
According to the latest data, the center will have 554 places, of which 370 places have been allocated for the Katowice Steel Mill alone. The main building is 270 meters long, has a two-track structure and a swimming pool with an opening roof dome. The center will be accessible directly by cable car," this is how Głos Huty Katowice wrote about the Center in September 1977, even before the official opening of the Eagle's Nest.
Thenearly 300-meter-high, horizontal body of the Eagles' Nest was set not at the foot, as is usually the case with resort architecture, but on the slope of one of the hills surrounding Szczyrk, becoming the dominant feature of the mountainous landscape surrounding the town. Despite the rich offer, the architecture of the resort in Szczyrk is questionable. Inserting such a large volume into the hill has resulted in a far-reaching transformation of part of the panorama of the mountain range surrounding the city. This is what Prof. Andrzej Szczerski wrote about the Eagle's Nest in 2015:
An exceptional example of gigantomania and panache in the stewardship of social-modern aesthetics.
While working on his monograph, he could not have known that it is not in socmodernism that he should see the reasons for such a state of affairs, for many years after the construction of the last socmodernist building, history comes full circle.
Mercure Szczyrk Resort - Titanic in Beskid
Press materials © Mercure Szczyrk Resort
A new chapter for the Beskid giant
The Orle Gniazdo Convention and Leisure Center has changed owners several times. In 2019 it was purchased by Accor, which manages a chain of luxury hotels scattered around the world. The Eagle's Nest was renamed Mercure Szczyrk Resort and slated for a major redevelopment. The hundreds of seats offered by the socmodern facility proved insufficient, so the Mercure Szczyrk Resort will essentially be a brand new, even larger building. As we learn from the information provided by the investor, the new facility will offer visitors as many as:
447 comfortable and modern rooms, two restaurants, three bars, as well as an extensive wellness area, including a fitness center, water park with pools, pool bar and spa, and a conference area that can accommodate up to 1,200 participants spread across 14 rooms.
The Mercure Szczyrk Resort will be accessible by helicopter - the investor has even planned a helipad there. Such infrastructure requires an appropriate volume - ARC Studio, responsible for the design of the new facility, has presented a concept for its expansion. Thus, the resort towering over Szczyrk is no longer 270 but 326 meters long, and the number of floors has also increased, from the original six to nine.
titanic in Szczyrk
In addition to its dimensions, the architectural expression of the building has also changed - while the Eagle's Nest operated with horizontal forms reminiscent of a rocky cliff, the Mercure Szczyrk Resort is a more streamlined block with somewhat irregular shapes. Aesthetically, the Eagle's Nest did not impress, but the new facility is not one of the most beautiful either. Malicious Internet users compare it to the Titanic, while to others it resembles an airship that has fallen to Earth. Each room of the Mercure Szczyrk Resort is supposed to offer a beautiful view of the Skrzyczne peak towering over Szczyrk. Tourists ascending Skrzyczne, looking towards Szczyrk, will instead see a 9-story moloch, clearly standing out from the landscape with its snow-white, cascading silhouette.
Mercure Szczyrk Resort Hotel
Press materials © Mercure Szczyrk Resort
Mercure Szczyrk Resort is another already gigantic hotel that has sprouted up in Poland in recent years. Szczyrk had a chance to get rid of the towering resort moloch, but instead a facility of even larger scale and still poor aesthetic qualities has appeared. The new resort in Szczyrk is sure to attract crowds of vacationers - undoubtedly another opportunity for this small town that makes its living from tourism. This, however, has come at the expense of the natural landscape of the area, which will be "enriched" for the next several decades by an alien, uninspired lump of a hotel. Residents also point to the issue of Szczyrk's road infrastructure, which is not prepared for the large influx of new tourists.
Crystal Mountain hotel in Wisla
Photo: MichalPL © CC BY-SA 4.0
giants on clay legs
The integration of new buildings with their surroundings is an important part of the architecture debate in cities - plans are being developed, new developments are being consulted with preservation offices and local governments, and legal solutions are being developed to curb construction arbitrariness in the real estate sector. The situation is slightly different for resorts located on the outskirts or outside cities. Mercure Szczyrk Resort is not the first example of an investment that, with its dimensions, has a negative impact on its immediate surroundings. Other developments of this kind have also met with an unfavorable public opinion. We are mainly talking about the Crystal Mountain hotel in Wisla, opened in 2021, and the still-finished Golebiewski Hotel in Pobierowo, hailed as the largest hotel in Poland. Both with their architectural form dominate and completely transform the natural landscape in which they are located. Taking into account that it is the charm of the landscape that is one of the foundations of the economic functioning of such facilities, it is difficult to understand the successive destruction of landscape values by successive buildings that are increasingly brutal in expression. Will large hotels become victims of their own gigantomania? We will probably have to wait many more years for an answer, but so far the infrastructure of small towns and cities and the nature that surrounds them is suffering above all.
