Fever? It's well known: illness. This is also the case with housing fever, which has not escaped Poznań recently. A lot is being built, quickly and very mediocrely. The epidemic of barren meters and non-functional projections is not dying out. New disturbing symptoms are also appearing. Developers and designers immune to this plague can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
It was a hit on the Internet. At the beginning of the year, Poznań made national headlines with an original bachelor apartment in a new ploma on Rybaki Street. The long bowel of the hallway with its appendages makes up half of the square footage in it.
The hallway alone [...] costs 265 thousand zlotys! »Fatalnie rozplanowane i koszmarnie drogie« to powinna być dewiza polskich deweloperów [...] Ta oferta to symbol patologii polskiego rynku mieszkaniowego – komentował na Facebooku warszawski aktywista Jan Śpiewak. The word "pathodeveloper" ran through many of the comments.
Śpiewak makes many good points. Housing from Rybaki is an extreme, but not at all far from the norm subordinated to "squeezing" PUM. For many years, several elements in Poznań (but not only) have belonged to this norm. Despite the flaws visible at first glance, they are not passing into oblivion.
living rooms like streetcars
First, apartments lighted on one side, dark and difficult to ventilate. Second, a living room with a so-called annex, that is, a few cabinets and a stove squeezed into a windowless corner of the room. Third, narrow and long rooms with a window on the shorter wall. Four years ago, in the center of Poznań, expensive studio apartments measuring more than 40 square meters, lit by a single window, reaching 13 meters into the building were being commissioned! Nowadays, apartments with "living rooms" like streetcars are on offer. In the Naramowice district, it is possible to own a room with an "annex" 2.90 meters wide and 8.5 meters long. Similar specimens are also offered by developers in other parts of the city. To the list of pathologies should also be included disturbed relations of room areas, not as great as in Rybaki, but corridors or balconies larger than bedrooms are not uncommon.
portfenetrism
A more recent (also not only in Poznań) trend is the move away from traditional windows to the ubiquitous portfenetts - mostly in the form of single narrow doors. This is happening regardless of the function, area or proportions of the rooms. This nonsensical fad, which can already be christened "portfenetism," results in poor lighting (light-flooded center, dark corners of the room), poor framing from the interior to the surroundings, and incongruity. Sensibly stuffing a closet and a double bed into an eight-meter bedroom with two doors can become a discipline at an art competition. Very often portfenets are located in the wall so as to add variety to the facade drawing, without looking at functionality. Similarly with balconies - sometimes they belong not to the living room, but to a small bedroom, under the dictates of the external effect.
An example of portfenetrism, an investment on Mateckiego Street in Piatkow.
photo: Jakub Głaz
It is worth noting, however, that some developers have realized that customers are finally beginning to recognize the functional shortcomings of commercial offerings. Floor plans are starting to become more flexible, and kitchens that can be separated are tentatively returning - mainly with shared-room rental apartments in mind. The typical marketing incantations have also recently been joined by the slogan "thoughtfully designed apartment floor plans." However, there is no information on how they have been rethought. Badly, well? To the benefit of the investor or the user?
