The Nowy Werdon Residential Unit in Ruda Śląska, built to a design by the Joanna and Wojciech Małecki studio, combines tradition with modernity.
For a long time, multifamily residential architecture in Upper Silesia was mainly associated with familoks - brick, low-rise houses with gabled roofs. Many of them have not stood the test of time and are unsuitable for either continued habitation or renovation.
Architects from the MAŁECCY design office proposed a new solution in the Wirek district of Ruda Śląska - English-inspired terraced houses enclosed in a simple block covered with a gable roof.
sections
© MAŁECCY Biuro Projektowe
The project includes a complex of five terraced houses with their own garage and parking space at the entrance level, a living and dining room on the second floor and bedrooms on the second. From the living room on the second floor, residents can step out onto an expansive terrace and down a winding staircase to a small garden, which, as the project's authors point out, is a reference to the Silesian tradition of having such a place next to the house. Above, on the third and fourth floors, there are apartments connected to the first floor by an internal staircase and elevator.
1st floor plan
© MAŁECCY Design Office
We were intrigued by the challenge - Ruda Śląska, located fifteen minutes from the center of Katowice, a well-connected but severely depopulated working-class group of small towns united into one organism in the 20th century. Wirek district, with a beautiful neo-Gothic church from 1909. The buildings across the street are a housing complex called "Werdon." The name comes from the residents - veterans of the Battle of Verdun who settled there [...]. We decided on a gentle neo-Gothic soaring of the building with a single ridge and ceramic material on the facade which was in accordance with the guidelines of the City Conservator. We laid the brick in a modern way with a continuous vertical joint," the authors write about the project.
