The SARP Award of the Year for a multi-family residential building went to Katowice's Nova Mikołowska development from Activ Investment, which was invited by the Krakow office UCEES. Although the project, which is being built in a difficult environment, managed to attract the attention of the judges of the most important architectural award in Poland, there was a lot of controversy surrounding its construction.
Nowadays, it is not often that such a large area as the triangular square delineated by Raciborska, Strzelców and Mikolowska streets in Katowice is undeveloped in the city center. In its immediate vicinity, a truly explosive architectural mix has sprung up over the centuries - from the eclectic church of St. Peter and Paul, through the Socialist-Realist Youth Palace, to the rows of 19th-century tenement houses and familoches scattered disorderly across the lots adjacent to the aforementioned streets. UCEES architects faced a daunting task - to develop a quarter in the center of this chaos. How did they manage it?
Nova Mikołowska
Photo: Jakub Certowicz © UCEES
katowitz triangle
The developer and investors had only part of the space described above to develop - a plot of land located at the intersection of Raciborska and Strzelców, located in the southern part of the triangular wasteland. The southernmost patch of land was already built up, there were several tenement houses there. Thus, at the designers' disposal was a parcel of land with a trapezoidal outline, which on the northern side lacked road connections to the surrounding infrastructure.
Nova Mikołowska
Photo: Bartosz Dworski © UCEES
This situation, which was difficult in terms of urban planning, was cleverly overcome. The designers planned the development in the form of two five-sided subquadrants, one of which is adjacent to Raciborska Street and the other to Strzelecka Street. The new buildings were named "Building A" and "Building B" respectively. Between them, a space was created in the form of an elongated square-alea, running towards Mikolowska Street.
building design scheme
© UCEES
Inside the five-sided buildings two courtyards were created, which are implicitly intended to serve the residents, but in practice remain open to the city and open to the public. At the longest side of the plot, the developer built a two-lane road, which was given over to the city. The urban fabric is also enriched by the corners of the plots, which the designers planned as publicly accessible green squares.
Nova Mikołowska
Photo: Jakub Certowicz © UCEES
mikołowska viewpoint
The spaces between the buildings and the greenery overgrowing them were designed by Krakow-based studio Land-Arch. The most important place here is definitely the already mentioned square between "Building A" and "Building B". A space was created here in the form of a gently lowered basin, framed by stone seats and filled with greenery. On the south side there was room for a playground, while looking to the north a view of the towering façade of the Church of St. Peter and Paul appears before the eyes. The development of space taking into account the scenic qualities is not a common phenomenon on Polish developer housing estates. From the square one can get to the courtyards of both buildings - in the case of "Building A" it is through an architectural gate with austere forms, reminiscent of the rigor of the forms of classicizing modernism or socialist realist blocks, like the nearby Youth Palace from 1947.
Nova Mikołowska
Photo: Jakub Certowicz © UCEES
Silesian facades
The viewing axis is not the only element of Nova Mikolowska that unites it with the surrounding buildings. At least two more factors were taken into account here - the covering of the facade and the way the building's gables were solved. On the walls visible from the streets, the designers decided to use dark mineral clinker. The color of the facade materials is a resultant of the tones that characterize the facades of nearby buildings. The buildings of Nova Mikolowska look different from the side of the courtyards - here white plaster was used, which allows to keep more light in the "wells". The interior spaces, however, don't look as good as the street-side elevations - it's minimalist, even sterile there.
Nova Mikołowska
Photo: Jakub Certowicz © UCEES
The gable lines of the buildings have also been varied from place to place. Designers from the UCEES studio took into account the non-uniform height of the surrounding buildings. For this reason, in the higher parts of the facades appeared fragments set back from the frontage, obscured by openwork structures or, as an exception to the accepted rule, covered with white plaster. The large surface area of the exterior facades is varied by a variable rhythm of window openings.
Nova Mikołowska
Photo: Jakub Certowicz © UCEES
chestnut to fence
Analyzing the realization, it is difficult not to agree with most of the advantages of Nova Mikolowska, which are listed in the justification of the jury of the SARP Year Award 2024. The jury emphasized, among other things, the accuracy of spatial solutions, both on an urban scale and the newly constructed buildings themselves, their integration with the surrounding architectural tissue and their city-forming character. However, the story of the building's creation did not lack stumbling blocks, which we will not read about in the verdict issued by SARP. Leaving aside the somewhat humorous thread of the development of an illegally placed window in the building to which one of the Nova Mikolowska buildings was to be adjacent, the real controversy, as is often the case with private investments, grew around the greenery.
Nova Mikolowska
Photo: Jakub Certowicz © UCEES
The way greenery was designed in the courtyards and on the corners of the lots was rightly appreciated in the verdict announced by SARP. There were plenty of new plantings in the area, including dozens of ginkgo and hornbeam trees. However, this did not prevent the developer from cutting down three century-old chestnut trees that had been growing on Raciborska Street for more than a century. The developer explained the cutting with an unexpected violation of the statics of the trees, but it is hard to believe that such an eventuality was not taken into account when preparing the design of the building, since its wall was planned at a distance of one meter from the tree trunks. Taxus Arbor, which was involved in the dendrological analysis, warned the investor about the possibility of damaging the tree stand even before excavation began, recommending that the walls be moved back a few meters into the plot.
Nova Mikolowska
Photo: Jakub Certowicz © UCEES
how to forget
An important factor in the whole situation was certainly the provisions of the local development plan, which required the projects to align the walls of the newly constructed buildings with the existing frontage. In conversations with the media, city representatives claimed that the cutout could have been avoided by designing bay windows - indeed, the local plan for the area in question allows deviations from the frontage line of up to 1.5 meters. It is difficult to say whether such a distance would be enough to save the chestnut trees. Was the future of the trees already in question at the design stage? We probably won't find out anymore. Regardless of the intentions, and despite the many advantages presented by the Katowice neighborhood, one cannot forget the enormous price paid by the city, its residents and nature for cleaning up the quarter. Were these extremely important circumstances taken into account during the award?
