Lodz is a hotbed of investments from under the lex developer. More than twenty of these have already been reviewed in the city, most of them positively. Another proposal under the housing speculative law has been prepared by the Design Lab Group studio from Lodz, which designed unusual towers at 82 Pilsudskiego Avenue. Will the interesting design be enough for the project to gain the approval of councilors?
The influx of lex developer applications to Lodz offices continues unabated. Barely has the calendar spring begun, and since the beginning of the year four applications have been filed in Lodz to establish the location of investments under the housing speculative law. Proposals appear not only in the densely built-up inner city, but also outside its borders. The concept, which will soon be debated by the City Council of Lodz, was created for a plot of land located in Widzew. How will the lex developer perform there?
Piłsudskiego 82 in Łódź
© Design Lab Group
Towers at Piłsudskiego
The project by the Design Lab Group studio in Łódź involves the construction of four residential and commercial buildings on a plot of land at 82 Pilsudskiego Street, on the site where a printing hall and a gas station currently stand, in areas designated in the Local Development Plan for industrial and commercial development.
In their concept, the designers included two types of buildings - three point-blocks, located closer to Piłsudskiego Avenue, and a huge block with a terraced layout, planned in the depth of the plot.
Piłsudskiego 82 in Łódź
© Design Lab Group
The former are seven- and eight-story octagonal towers, numbered successively, from the west, A1, A2 and A3. The designed buildings were connected by a common underground garage, additionally the A2 and A3 towers were connected to each other by an extensive arcade, stretched over the commercial premises, at the height of the second story. Vertical articulation has been solved with semi-columns and pillars (in places where loggias appear in the facades), horizontal divisions are accented by massive, in some places gently concave cross beams.
Piłsudskiego 82 in Łódź
© Design Lab Group
A trident in Widzew
Deep within the plot, a residential building was designed on a plan resembling the shape of the letter "E". The building's arms, extending north-south, were stepped, so that the green spaces created between them gained additional access to light.
The facade of the buildings was shaped based on two repetitive modules, differing in material and detail. The first module, applied to the basic body of the building, emphasizes the rhythmic nature of the development's layout, giving it a consistent and orderly character. The second module, dedicated to the recessed terrace elements, accentuates the spatial dynamics of the building.
- the architects describe the concept.
if you get between the crows, you have to caw like them too
The architects paid a lot of attention to inscribing the new volumes into the surroundings:
Part of the context is the complex of buildings of the Spirits Factory "Vodka Monopoly", the so-called Monopolis, located between Kopcińskiego Street and Wydawnicza Street, as well as the development of office and service buildings at the intersection of Piłsudskiego Avenue/Smigłego Rydza Avenue (continued as Kopcińskiego Street). Along Piłsudskiego Avenue there is a wide variety of buildings. On the northern side (on the side of the project site) there is a predominance of spot buildings with a service and industrial function, on the opposite side there are service buildings and multi-family residential buildings (tenements). On the northern side, the project site is bordered by low-rise commercial and warehouse buildings.
- This is the content of the application for the location of the investment in question.
Piłsudskiego 82 in Łódź
© Design Lab Group
Urbanistically, the project fits in with the existing buildings - the towers on the south side relate to the neighboring office spot towers, and in the context of this location we saw no justification for frontage development, which along Piłsudskiego is found only on the south side.
- comments Mateusz Cyganek, an architect at the Design Lab Group studio on the Spaces for Lodz profile, who was the first to widely share the proposed concept.
This includes, for example, the two nearby Symetris Park skyscrapers or the 19th-century buildings of the nearby Monopolis, which are matched by the brick façade of the westernmost point building. The very form of the octagonal towers finds analogues in closer buildings, as in the case of the wooden cooling tower of Widzew Manufaktura.
Pilsudskiego 82 in Lodz
© Design Lab Group
blocks on the site of the Press Printing House
The Press Printing House, on the site of which the housing development would be built, is located in an edifice constructed back in the first half of the 1970s. One of the most distinctive elements of the modernist hall are four massive circular ventilation shafts rising from the ground just in front of the front elevation. In addition to participating in air circulation inside the building, the concrete structures also served as passageways through which printing machinery was transported to the lower levels. On the triangular finials of the shafts were hung the titles of newspapers printed at the plant, including the Workers' Voice and the Daily Popular.
Beneath the entire establishment is also a shelter for 108 people, which was probably intended to protect against potential chemical hazards from, among others, the nearby Anilana textile factory.
Pilsudskiego 82 in Lodz
© Design Lab Group
lex developer a direction for Lodz?
We talked about lex developer investments in Lodz during OEES 2024 with Adam Pustelnik, the city's deputy mayor. According to him, the housing specs law is a recipe for the specific urban fabric of Lodz, which is full of holes. Thanks to punctual changes in the Local Area Plans, plots of land can be created, which increase urban coherence, densify the city and expand the housing stock.
Recently, however, the atmosphere around lex developer in Lodz has been changing. The councilmen, who so far have almost always (there have been only 4 exceptions) agreed to start more projects under the housing speculative law, unanimously decided to reject the application of an investor who hoped to implement the Nova Piotrkowska apartment building project on the grounds of the Ludwik Geyer factory gardens. As lodz.pl reported, the decision was based on the opinion of Robert Sobanski, the city's acting architect, who negatively assessed the project as harming the cultural landscape of the protected area of the former Geyer factory.
Piłsudskiego 82 in Lodz
© Design Lab Group
Will Piłsudskiego 82 defend itself?
In the case of Piłsudskiego 82, councilors' opinions are not positive either. As Lodz's Wyborcza reported, the project did not meet with the approval of local government officials. First of all, its location was pointed out as problematic - despite the fact that it is well connected and surrounded by the most necessary infrastructure (right next door is the Tulipan shopping center, three parks, it is not far from the pediatric hospital, and an elementary school is on the other side of the street), Piłsudskiego 82 is an address located on the provincial road, one of the busiest in the city, which is part of the Lodz W-Z route.
Pilsudskiego 82 in Lodz
© Design Lab Group
At the location where the new development would be built, Marszałek Piłsudskiego Avenue is a six-lane thoroughfare divided by two streetcar lines. The level of noise and exhaust fumes at this location is very high, the sheer volume of traffic can cause problems with entering and leaving the development. However, as the architects argue:
The ground floor of the front buildings was designed to provide a visual and acoustic barrier to the busy street.
Despite the comments, a vote on the feasibility of the project still hasn't taken place; the concept was only presented to the City Planning and Architecture Commission by Robert Sobanski, the city's acting architect. Mateusz Cyganek, architect of Design Lab Group, in social media declares his willingness to confront the comments during the presentation of the project before the City Council. Will this be enough to make the local government's opinion positive?
