can? can!
In the deluge of this mass production and marketing hustle, there are, fortunately, exceptions. For years, the best apartments in the city have been designed, without publicity, by architects from Szymon Januszewski's Insomia studio. Here you won't find barren meters, dark kitchens are almost out of the question, it's hard to find kishkesque rooms, it's increasingly difficult to find portfenets, and often you can see strands of windows almost from Le Corbusier's dreams. Whether it's the infill on Przemyslowa Street or the blocks of the estate on Botaniczna Street, the premises hold a high standard. It is also worth mentioning the small, but double-sided lighted apartments on Traugutta Street and balconies with... greenhouses on Bukowska Street. In addition, zero cliché, stylistically each development is different. And an intimate estate in Strzeszyn, currently under construction, combining the advantages of a single-family house and a block of flats, can be considered a hit. Insomia works for typical developers, which (to some extent!) weakens the laments of other architects talking about their good intentions and the ruthless dictate of the investor.
project at the intersection of Bukowska and Grochowska streets, designed by Insomia
photo: Jakub Głaz
Well-designed apartments have also been provided for almost twenty years by the Kostka&Kurka studio, which carries out projects primarily for Budimex. The floor plans of the units are functional, the kitchens can be separated, and the windows are usually shaped to fit the role of the room. Good proportions of the buildings and elevations do not interfere with the functionality of the interiors. Worse, in the case of Budimex housing estates, absolute PUM rules. Good apartments on Wilczak and Główna are packed into a small space, as is the case with most other residential developments. Peeking into neighbors' pots and beds is the order of the day.
The courtyard at the Na Smolnej estate in the Glowna district; well-designed apartments are housed in tightly arranged blocks;
realization of the entire estate: from 2010 to today, on the photo one of the first stages, proj.: Kostka&Kurka
photo: Jakub Głaz
Two more studios have been trying to join the modest number of good housing specialists in recent years. The Litoborski+Marciniak office is putting up more and more interesting buildings (on Jakuba Wujka and Poznańska streets), as well as the Ultra Architects studio, which is just entering the residential sector and has won awards for its office buildings. It is the first in Poznań to erect residential houses planted with trees and shrubs on terraces. Greenery has been growing for a year in a house on the corner of Maczek and Sokol streets, and plantings are currently underway in a development on Piatkowska Street.
Latin or patched?
Unfortunately, good projects are being lost among the rest, it has not been possible - as in Wroclaw Żerniki - to gather decent architecture in one place. None of the studios for good apartments is currently designing on the intensively developed Łacina - a few dozen hectares of space between the Old Town and the modernist settlements of Rataj. Since the 1990s, the area had raised high hopes. Plans were drawn up for a model residential district with a central square, commerce, entertainment, services and a sensible transportation system. The master plan for implementation, however, never came into being, and individual fragments began to be developed by developers in the early part of this century according to plans not specifically linked to any vision of the whole. Meanwhile, in 2016, one sixth (!) of the area was wasted on the city's largest shopping center "Posnania."
Currently, Łacina is being flooded by another wave of developers - buildings erected by national tycoons. Although they are being built on plots of land covered by local development plans, this is typical commercial development. Not so much exemplary, but even worse than the Poznań average. Apparently, in such a well-located place there is no need to strive for interesting and functional architecture, the location itself is enough. Instead of the "Latin Quarter", sketches of which were drawn 25 years ago by the well-known architect Jerzy Gurawski, we have only the Patchy Quarter.
Latin Quarter, construction of successive investments on Miczanska and Niemen Streets by various developers, 2020
photo: Jakub Głaz
The last chance for a new Poznan neighborhood of real substance is therefore the development of the so-called Free Tracks, a massive area near the Central Station between the Wilda and Lazarus districts. It's already several years after the urban planning competition, and a draft local plan is being chiseled. It is not yet known when and by whom the district will be developed. However, the city must force investors to reach for real specialists in housing, because, as the example of Łacina, among others, shows, local plans alone are definitely not enough.
For me, this project is crossing the intellectual threshold of Poznań," said Jerzy Buszkiewicz, also a respected architect and urban planner, about his (ultimately unrealized) concept for the Free Tracks.
At the end of the 20th century, he believed that what would happen here was crucial to the city's future. More than 20 years have passed, the thesis remains valid, Wolne Tory is the last chance for a downtown residential district of real significance. There will be no more opportunities.
