Work submitted to the Halina Skibniewskaya student competition - HE ALTHYHOUSE
PEOPLE! What are you guys doing? Are you building houses in the suburbs? Cutting down hectares of forest for sprawling housing estates? And yet you consider this a sustainable approach?
PATODEVELOPER
© Klaudia Elsner
Even the best-planned estate or any passive palace located in an honest field is no good. Do the residents of these estates actually know each other? Is there a genius loci, or spirit of place there? Moreover, even if these are not kilometer-long terraced houses, any such apartment without a car is inconvenient for daily use. And you call this ecology? Why appropriate more land for development when cities mostly look like cheese holes?
PATODEVELOPER
© Klaudia Elsner
I would like to invite you for a little walk. We are in Cwajka, which is the heart of Chorzow's 2nd district. It is here that the smell of Silesian rolls and noodles floats on a Sunday afternoon. It is here that we can buy homemade products at the local bazaar twice a week. We'll also see children playing on the playground, a neighbor operating a neighborhood store, or senior citizens chatting outside a clinic.
If someone didn't understand what they were talking about, let me remind you that there is a local dialect and local rules. If someone has taken a sweatshirt with a sports club logo on it for a walk, other than the one indicated here, put it in a backpack as soon as possible.
Strangers are watched, but there is no need for fences or cameras. Here, neighborly relations and "neighborhood monitoring" function. And what does the neighborhood look like? An architecture lover will immediately notice the chic ornamentation of the 19th-century townhouses. There are also some newer buildings, which have been meticulously integrated between the historic ones. We could see all this during a short walk, without the need for a car.
PATODEVELOPER
© Klaudia Elsner
And what's going on there in the distance... OH GOD! A certain developer has discovered this empty lot and is putting up a fenced estate! And there is already a second one being built there! As you can see, not every tenement is taken care of and is still usable. I already mentioned the hole cheese right? Here a building, there a hole, here garages, there a parking lot, etc. For many historic buildings, time is not kind, but new investors are even less kind.
PATODEVELOPER
© Klaudia Elsner
Wouldn't it be better to sensibly complement these developments rather than create new ones outside the city? Sure it would. So let's design a neighborhood that will be a collection of additions to the existing development. First, let's think of a name - after all, every settlement must have a name. Just what kind? Silesian terraces? Golden familoki? Apartments on Cwajka? I've heard it somewhere before...
What if the estate was called Patodevelopment? After all, the neighborhood is called "pathological", so the choice seems obvious... Let's now consider the development area. Most of the empty lots are currently in private hands. These people often do not have sufficient funds for renovation or construction. So let's assume the following scheme of action.
PATODEVELOPER
© Klaudia Elsner
To begin with, we need to find a "good investor" who will responsibly manage the land. If the investor were the city, then the newly built development would be properly controlled. The city would buy back private plots of land, then consolidate them. It would then sell the land to particular target groups: TBS establishments, developers, or construction groups, who would erect more buildings on predetermined terms. Such a situation would make it possible to create a network of services, such as parking and charging points for electric cars, private bicycle cells, or new city bike points. Depending on the established assumptions for individual tenants, a given "network" would grow more densely where needed. Materials would be sourced from local companies to develop the local economy. In addition, solutions such as rainwater and soap water reuse systems would be introduced.
Do you already understand what I want to convey to you? Let's build where the infrastructure is already developed and not take more land away from nature.
Klaudia Elsner
Illustrations: © Author
