The fate of the headquarters of the Łódź magistrate seems... very Łódź. They consist of great unrealized plans and eternal makeshift. They say a lot about the aspirations characteristic of the era, the ambitions of a city that always wanted to be a metropolis. Lodz's modern authorities are adding another chapter to this story.
cracking walls, a school and a factory
It all began in 1827, when a brick town hall with classicizing forms was erected in the southern frontage of the New Town square (now Liberty Square). It was a reflection of local ambitions, a sign of metropolitanity and modernity. However, as Professor Krzysztof Stefanski wrote, "soon after the city hall was completed, serious defects came to light." The roof turned out to be leaking, damp patches appeared on the walls and ceilings, stucco began to fall off the walls.
The first Lodz magistrate's office was suitable for renovation only a few years after its completion.
It now serves as the headquarters of the State Archives.
Photo: Błażej Ciarkowski
As the city grew, so did the number of officials. The old city hall turned out to be too cramped to accommodate the new structures of the office, which, like a huge superorganism, occupied one premises after another. Step by step, room by room, building by building, a one-of-a-kind, dispersed office, embedded in the urban fabric, was created.
From time to time the idea of centralization returned, which was to materialize in a new magnificent magistrate's building. The seat of the municipal authorities worthy of a metropolis was dreamed of just after the restoration of independence, when in 1919 Adolf Goldberg and Edward Szenfeld sketched a plan for a new center organized around the Łódź Fabryczna(sic!) station. Less than a decade later, a competition was announced for the design of the magistrate's office at Wolności Square. The winner, Czeslaw Przybylski, proposed a striking modernist edifice at Liberty Square. The project fell through for political reasons. Opposition councilors not unreasonably argued that in times of crisis there are more important matters than building a new seat of government. Officials had to be content with a nearby former school building adapted for their needs.
One of the first attempts to give the headquarters of the municipal authorities of Lodz a proper architectural setting.
Competition design of the representative building by Czeslaw Przybylski.
Source: "Architektura i Budownictwo" 1928, no 1
magistrate in the annex
Plans for the construction of a new magistrate were revisited several more times. All concepts had one thing in common - sooner or later each one ended up on the archive shelf. Visions of socialist-realist edifices and Brutalist molochs remained in the realm of architects' and local politicians' fantasies.
Meanwhile, the office's employees occupied the premises of Juliusz Heinzl's former palace on Piotrkowska Street and the adjacent post-factory buildings, adapted for office functions by Isaac Gutman. In addition, following the pattern of past years, various available properties were adapted for the needs of the various departments of the magistrate.
The current seat of the city authorities - the former palace of J. Heinzl on Piotrkowska Street.
photo: Błażej Ciarkowski
The result of this policy is the current situation. The city hall, spread over several different locations, is like a living organism that has filled voids in the urban space. It has occupied a former palace and a factory. It fills the outbuildings of downtown tenements and former apartments in front buildings. It represents a unique dispersed structure, which with its chaotic and rather haphazard character is a kind of negation of the hierarchical, centralized structure of the office.
At the back of the Hainzl palace are the former factory buildings converted by I. Gutman into the headquarters of the magistrate.
Photo: Błażej Ciarkowski
The dispersed office is an imperfect creation. It was created in an unplanned, rather haphazard manner, as an ad hoc solution to the problem of lack of space. Functioning within this structure poses a number of objective difficulties for employees and stakeholders. At the same time, the dispersed office is a living proof of the flexibility of 19th-century rental housing. A tenement house turns into the department's headquarters. The living room becomes the director's office, and the Berlin Room becomes the secretariat. The former servants' room is placed as an archive. An outbuilding with a series of rooms accessible from a long corridor does not even require much adaptation to become an office.
officials drink coffee
Perhaps, however, we are witnessing the end of a makeshift that has lasted more than a century. Lodz authorities have announced a plan to build a new office, and it's hard to argue with the validity of the concept. A dispersed office, however interesting, is hardly practical, and the construction of a public edifice may provide a unique opportunity for a public discussion of the role of architecture in the city.
However, before the City Hall of Lodz presents the first visualizations, before the colorful renderings are filled with smiling residents and satisfied officials, it is worth leaning into the words of local politicians, who make a very specific case for the necessity of the construction.
The various divisions and departments have been housed in townhouses and outbuildings. Some of them have been waiting for renovation for many years.
Photo: Blazej Ciarkowski
"I'm tired of meeting officials who sit somewhere having coffee while working"- stated Hanna Zdanowska, the mayor of Lodz. The dispersed office "has dozens of people employed solely to carry correspondence, materials, etc." The 70-meter-high office building in the New Center of Lodz is therefore expected to become a way to increase efficiency and save money. It will provide an impetus to revitalize the Lodz Fabryczna station area.
When Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue designed the Scottish Parliament building, a massive discussion swept through the local media, covering all aspects of the premise - from the location, to the concept of the block, to the idea it expressed. Will we live to see a similar debate in Lodz? The architects wanted a building associated with the identity of Scotland to grow out of the local context and tradition. The Lodz office, already by moving from Piotrkowska Street to the New Center, breaks a certain continuity. How will the change be received by Lodz residents and will the "corporate" box be "their" office?
Scottish Parliament building, bird's eye view, pro: Miralles Tagliabue EMBT
© Scottish Parliament
a return to the past
The plan to build a new magistrate's office is a kind of journey to the past. A return to the great ideas of a century ago and to... the corpo-world of the 1990s. Today, at a time when corporations-monopolies are putting coffee machines in their offices, treating them as an integral part of the office space (almost on a par with a photocopier or computer), when Frank O. Gehry creates a concept for Facebook's headquarters conceived as a place of work and recreation, and food and beverage establishments often become an extension of office space (as the creators of Lodz's Monopolis make clear), Lodz's authorities talk about increasing control because "officials sit on coffee." The specifications include ideas to create gigantic open-space type spaces capable of accommodating up to 700 people. These ideas are closer to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of 1986, where Norman Forster designed glass "shelves" for identically dressed white collars, than to what the same Foster created for Steve Jobs and Apple.
Architecture speaks of the times and circumstances in which it is created. The idea presented for the new magistrate's office shows a vision of a city-corporation and office-panopticon rather than a modern polis.
