The article is from A&B issue 02|23
Poznan, one of the few Polish „walkable” cities, will be a construction site for the next few years, with almost the entire downtown area dug up. How will infrastructure investments change the public space, what architecture is needed and possible in it, and how malleable are Poznań investors' heads—we ask Marcin Kościuch and Tomek Osięgłowski of Ultra Architects, one of the region's most recognizable architectural firms, about these and other issues.
Ania Diduch: How should Poznań develop?
Marcin Kościuch: I don't feel strong in talking about it, I think I don't know enough. We mainly design individual buildings, but I think this question should be addressed to the city authorities, to the Department of Architecture or the Municipal Urban Planning Bureau. But I think Poznań is a city like any other in the country.
Ania: What would you answer if someone asked you if you felt you were an architect from Poznań?
Marcin: I would answer that I feel I am an architect from this part of Europe.
Ania: So what would be the characteristics of this region?
Marcin: For example, the fact that we are still trying to do meaningful architecture within a very, very modest budget, because Poland and other post-communist countries are still on the upswing. These are realities that have been going on for as long as I can remember, it hasn't changed since the beginning of Utra. But in terms of the mentality and plasticity of the heads of the ordering parties—here I see only progress. Investors want architecture that is smart and relevant to the place where it is being built. There are two such sayings in the office, anecdotes. One heard, I no longer remember from whom, that an investor called to ask what is cheaper than plaster, and the person answered—no plaster. On the other hand, we always say that, again, we have a budget that will only allow moss and fern design.
"Public participation is a standard not only in Poznań. We don't do anything for the residents without them."—say Ultra Architects
Most of the new buildings in Poznań are initiatives of private investors, who build apartment buildings, or possibly small volume office buildings; pictured is a tenement at 3 Widlecki Market Square
Photo: Tomekasz Hejna © Ultra Architects
Tomek Osięgłowski: We laugh that this inside joke, in part, was realized in the residential complex in the Tri-pol, where we literally planted all the paths of balconies and roofs with plants, and the architecture operates with the simplest forms of window openings and walls of plain white plaster.
Ania: And what is it like for you, Tomek? Do you also not feel like a Poznan architect?
Tomek: I think the same way. We implement universal, international solutions—for example, in the context of seeking ecological, sustainable solutions—but the effect of our interventions is embedded very locally and resonates locally, and what Marcin said about small budgets has a big impact on them. We're from „this part of Europe,” but we design buildings „written” for this city, and it sets us firmly in it. It's the opposite of the international style of a century ago. We keep abreast of what's going on internationally in architecture, but every solution and idea has to fit into the local context.
Ania: You have been designing mostly residential recently. You are an office with a recognizable brand in the city. You certainly have your opinion on the direction of Poznan—if only by osmosis.
The bulk of Ultra Architects' projects are assignments related to complementing the fabric of the city; Poznań is urbanistically defined and does not „spill over” into the suburbs, which protects the character of the city—its intimate scale and the atmosphere of a "city on foot"
Photo: bird's-eye view of an office building on Za Bramka Street, in the very center of Poznań; part of the roof has been designed as space for greenery
Photo: © Ultra Architects
Marcin: I don't know what direction Poznań is developing in, and this is not a criticism. Well, because I would say that the city wants to be friendly, with great public transportation, with greenery, that is obvious. This is what every Polish city wants. I just think that in the second decade of the 21st century it is difficult to talk about spectacular city planning in general. Fortunately, this is no longer the 19th century, in which one could, for the sake of improving part of a space in a city, remove another part of it with impunity. But going back to the direction of development, we have a great deal of renovation and correction of public spaces in Poznań. Almost the entire center is ditched. On the one hand, it's good that so many interventions are going on in parallel, although again, low budgets that don't promote splitting investments into parts bow out, but on the other hand, I feel sorry for local businesses that are disappearing, because sometimes there is literally no access to them.
Ania: Is the war in Ukraine making its mark on design, construction, or is it too early to tell?
Marcin: It has a gigantic impact on me. Something that we used to watch on black-and-white archival films, today we have live on Instagram and on TV, the coverage is conducted from drones and with a precision that resembles recording everyday life. I watch young people being killed or maimed, purely in the name of the fact that a madman decided to distract attention from the mess in his own country by attacking his neighbor. But you ask, does this have an impact on building in the country? It has from the beginning. Many of the construction sites actually came to a halt after it started, because they were largely worked on by people from Ukraine. They immediately moved to the front to defend their country. But also imagine that we are now designing an office building, and in designing the underground parking, we are discussing it with experts from the Military University of Technology. The idea is that it can also serve as a shelter.
Tomek: The world is changing very fast. Two years of pandemics, a climate crisis, a strong push for green solutions, still a Putin-induced war. All this is happening so fast that sometimes things designed three or four years ago, and implemented today, arouse great resentment, and criticism. The now famous "concretization."
Ania: Who is financing the construction site that Poznań has become today?
Tomek: We don't have the data to answer with certainty. In our experience, it's mostly private investors who build, for example, housing, or possibly small volume office buildings. On the other hand, the bulk of redevelopment in the city is infrastructure interventions, and here the financing is public. As for public buildings, there are far fewer such contracts. There is the Musical Theater, the Museum of the Wielkopolska Uprising in play. Something is beginning to be said about the competition for the Philharmonic Hall.
Ania: A year ago I was developing material on the Lazarski market with a spectacular aerial roof. I remember that it was a project that, for the first time on such a large scale, included an element of public consultation in a competition in Poznan. Has this practice become standard?
Marcin: Public participation is a standard not only in Poznań. We don't do anything for residents without them. But see, when the Lazarski market was designed, those few years ago, it was seen by many people, and no one paid attention to the fact that there was not much greenery in this project. And when implementation began a few years later, public thinking about public space changed, and criticism began that there was too little greenery in this implementation. Three or four years and what a change in thinking! I remember how in 2010 an opinionated newspaper from Poznan asked questions to a dozen people what they would change in the city. We were asked as well. We answered that we would like to see all the felled trees in the city restored and new ones planted, and imagine that our answer was not printed. At the time, only bicycle paths and the restoration of commerce in the city were fashionable. Greenery is very important. At every meeting with officials I repeat that it should be mandated that all flat roofs in newly constructed buildings be designed as green roofs. It's a small gesture, but very important, these roofs with simple extensive greenery would help reduce heat islands, retain moisture, increase biodiversity. This needs to be forcefully introduced in all cities in the country. This already does not drastically increase the cost of implementation.
A residential building on Fabryczna Street in Poznań
a characteristic element of the facade are made of aluminum, surrounding the balconies, the inter-story strips are a contemporary version of the cornices typical of tenement houses and a good example of the minimalist style for which Ultra Architects are known
Photo: Dawid Majewski © Ultra Architects
Ania: So you can assume that people really know what they want if they are given the space to have their say?
Marcin: Public consultations have two important elements: firstly, collecting feedback, and secondly, they allow you to present the project modified by this feedback and explain why the project is going in a certain direction. Collecting feedback after a project presentation is crucial to the success of the whole thing. But participation is difficult. We have carried it out on a large scale only once—in a housing development on Chrobrego 25, 26, 27, where we had to create balcony enclosures from scratch during the thermal modernization of the blocks. We wanted to preserve the memory of the original mosaic with which the facade was covered, and apply it in the form of graphics to these enclosures. And we came up with the idea to do it the way Winiarski used to paint his paintings: when painting one of his series of paintings, he would divide the canvas into fields and throw a dice. When an even number fell out he would paint the field black, and when an odd number fell out he would leave it blank. We decided that we would do the same, and invite the residents of these blocks to play. Well, and it turned out that 30-35 percent of people participated in the action, and the rest were completely uninterested, even though we went from apartment to apartment.
Tomek: We mainly get orders related to replenishing the fabric of the city. Poznan's fabric is so rigid that we can only talk about replenishing it. This may be characteristic of Poznań. We do a lot of infill, that is, buildings that are inscribed in existing, tight surroundings.
Marcin: The thickening of Poznań is a very good direction, because it protects its characteristic feature, which is scale. The city doesn't spill over, Poznań is a city for walking, not driving.
Tomek: Coming back to the city, we also have such an area, which is a kind of time capsule and which may yet change the face of the city, namely the Free Tracks. For now, we don't know what direction this space will go. That's how I think that the development of Poznań should be seen not in architecture and urban planning, but in infrastructure and strategic green design. This has its tradition in the design of bicycle paths decades ago. Well, and a still unsolved issue is air pollution. If there was an idea of a new public building for 600 million zlotys, I would prefer that the money be used for a smog reduction program.
Ania: So is Poznań an architect-friendly city? And in the context of what you said at the beginning about being architects from „this part of Europe,” would you ever want to move out of Poznań?
Tomek: I have had several suggestions to move to another, bigger city. I just like Poznań, I feel good here, I am embedded and innate here, and because of this I have never had the feeling that I want or need to move away.
A housing estate on Bolesława Chrobrego Street, where during the thermal modernization of blocks 25, 26, 27 (2012) the balcony casings had to be restored
in order to preserve the memory of the original mosaic with which the facade was covered, the pattern was applied in the form of graphics to the new balconies
Photo: Przemyslaw Turlej © Ultra Architects
Ania: To answer with full conviction, you would probably have to live and work for several years in different cities for comparison, and anyway you know that the realities of the place are dynamic.
Tomek: On the other hand, from the position of my profession—I don't know what it would mean to say that Poznań is architect-friendly. We have a circle of collaborators and developers with whom we understand each other. As far as the administrative side is concerned, architects have an uphill battle, but not because of specific people who work in offices, but because of regulations that are imprecise and create misunderstandings or conflicts. The regulations don't keep up with changes or are so general that they don't fit the unique issues within Poznan's inner city.
Marcin: I also feel like a Poznań resident—I've lived here for thirty years. Before that, I had never lived so long in one place. I like the scale, I like the fact that almost everyone in the community, and in the city in general, knows each other. As architects, we don't feel like an „established office.” Our environment has many outstanding studios. The development market is growing, and we don't have to practice fierce competition for new commissions. We have two architecture departments at two public universities, which is a unique situation in the country.
Ania: Thank you for the interview!
interviewed: Anna Diduch
Illustrations courtesy of Ultra Architects
