Jerzy Muzyk, Deputy Mayor of the City of Krakow for Sustainable Development, is interviewed by Malgorzata Tomczak about the role of the Chief Architect of the City, architectural competitions and plans for the development of Krakow.
Malgorzata Tomczak: Mr. President, before becoming Deputy Mayor, you worked at the Cracow City Hall and were Director of the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Jerzy Muzyk: Once upon a time, between 2003 and 2005.
Margaret: You reformed the Department and managed it very well. Such opinions in the architectural community still circulate today. In this context, I would like to ask about the role of the Chief Architect of the City. Currently, this Department is under your supervision, and the function of Chief Architect of the City is performed by Tomasz Bobrowski.
Jerzy Muzyk: Perhaps I can answer this way: this is the state that prevailed when I took over as Vice Mayor. Architect Tomasz Bobrowski was appointed Chief Architect of the City by President Jacek Majchrowski after Professor Andrzej Wyżykowski ceased to hold this position. Tomasz Bobrowski is certainly a different personality in terms of functioning style than the aforementioned Professor Wyżykowski. However, this does not change the fact that I personally highly appreciate Mr. Tomasz Bobrowski in the role of Chief Architect of the City. He has his own architectural experience and, as a practitioner, often presents a very balanced, common-sense approach. You may not see it at first glance, but he is a huge advocate of simplifying many procedures in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, which is a real support for the design community in the city. This does not change the fact that in the context of certain design solutions, in his opinion requiring modification adequate to the requirements of our city's space, he is very principled. I, being a lawyer by training, am not competent to evaluate projects in terms of their quality, at most I express my subjective opinion. My task is to supervise from the formal and legal side the administrative proceedings conducted in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning. However, it should be emphasized that engineer Bobrowski, both through his participation in the architectural and urban planning team functioning in the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, as well as his involvement in problematic issues reported to me, whether by investors or designers, supports me with his valuable advice based on his extensive design experience. In summary: I value my cooperation with Tomasz Bobrowski in the role of Chief Architect of the City of Krakow.
Krakow - economic development zones and university campuses
Source: Cracow City Hall, drawing: Małgorzata Flis
Malgorzata: In the circle of Krakow architects, but not only Krakow architects, Tomasz Bobrowski is perceived as a passive Chief Architect of the City. He tends to keep to the sidelines, rarely comes to architectural and urban planning discussions, or leaves such meetings very quickly, does not moderate discussions in his area of expertise, and does not want to give interviews.
Jerzy Muzyk: Arguably, Tomasz Bobrowski prefers to deal with certain concrete issues, and this is very good.
Malgorzata: In concrete terms - what does the President have in mind?
Jerzy Muzyk: Concretes, that is, concrete investment intentions. The most recent example of this is the competition for the Krakow Music Center, where, I must admit, the efficiency of cooperation with SARP and the organization of this competition in general, from the moment the idea of returning to the construction of the Music Center in Cichy Kącik Street was conceived, is a great merit of Tomasz Bobrowski. He efficiently synchronized everything, kept an eye on the deadlines of cooperation with the Agency for the Development of the City of Krakow, which was designated by President Jacek Majchrowski to announce and conduct this competition. By the way, entrusting this task to the Agency for the Development of the City of Krakow and going outside city structures was obviously a good solution. The competition was conducted quickly, efficiently, in accordance with the Public Procurement Law [PZP [Public Procurement Law - editor's note], which is very important for us. We have a settlement and a chance for implementation in a very short time. President Jacek Majchrowski said at the first meeting on this investment that if we manage to do it by the end of the current term, i.e. by November 2023, we certainly have the right to enter the Guinness Book of Records, taking into account the preparation and implementation cycle of an investment of this type. This is an investment of more than a hundred million zlotys, including the construction of a concert hall for a thousand people. It is to house the city's orchestras [Capella Cracoviensis and Sinfonietta Cracovia - editor's note], by the way, this need was confirmed by the public consultations that have been going on for some time on this issue. I participated in the first day of consultations with residents, and during the course of the consultations there was not a single doubt that the Music Center is needed. This is a pressing need for the residents of Krakow, music lovers and the Krakow music community, which has been waiting to be realized for years. Nor was it a discussion about the location: in Grzegórzki together with the Marshal of the Małopolska Region or in Cichy Kącik. It was a discussion mainly about the functional-utility program of the future Center, so that it would be first and foremost a home for the city's orchestras and so that other supplementary functions would not dominate the primary one, dedicated to music.
Margaret: We will talk more about the competition for the Music Center, let's go back to the City Architect for a moment. This simplification of procedures sounds great, but doesn't Krakow deserve a real City Architect: one with a vision, a courageous moderator of discussions about the city?
Jerzy Muzyk: Coming back to the current Chief City Architect, I would like to emphasize once again that I work very well with Tomasz Bobrowski. As I mentioned, he has a different style of acting as Chief City Architect than Professor Wyżykowski. And the fact that he prefers to be more involved in solving specific architectural problems in the city, I think, is his advantage.
Malgorzata: And who in the Cracow magistrate's office is responsible for city development issues? I ask this because some competencies belong directly to you, and others to Vice Mayor Andrzej Kulig. You are responsible, among other things, for the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, the Department of Spatial Planning, the Office of the Municipal Conservator of Monuments, the Departments of Air Quality, Geodesy, Environmental Management, Strategy Planning and Investment Monitoring and Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the Board of Urban Greenery, the Agency for the Development of the City of Krakow or the Kraków Nowa Huta Przyszłości S.A. company. President Kulig, in turn, supervises, among others, the Board of Roads of the City of Krakow, the Board of Municipal Investments, the company Miejska Infrastruktura Sp. z o.o. Is there anyone who coordinates these competencies in terms of planning and strategy for the city's development and spatial activities, so that the city has a common vision of how Krakow is to develop spatially and so that there is no "divergence" between the various departments and mayors?
Jerzy Muzyk: In our opinion it does not "diverge". President Kulig's division includes the Board of Municipal Investments, which carries out many major infrastructure investments, such as the third stage of the Krowodrza Górka-Górka Narodowa rapid tramway, the expansion of 29 Listopada Avenue, supervises the Board of Roads of the City of Krakow (ZDMK), which carries out the implementation of the fourth stage of the rapid tramway (Meissnera-Mistrzejowice) on behalf of the City under a public-private partnership. Mayor Andrzej Kulig also supervises municipal companies (MPEC, MPWiK, MPO) or the recently established municipal entity Klimat-Energia-Gospodarka Wodna (KEGW).
Krakow - public spaces
Source: Cracow City Hall, drawing: Małgorzata Flis
Malgorzata: So do the footbridges also belong to President Kulig? Recently an auction, not even a tender, was announced for such an important and prestigious space connecting Zwierzyniec and Debniki, instead of a competition.
Jerzy Muzyk: Yes, also. Mayor Kulig's division implements investments that are already started, or are so strongly prepared at the conceptual stage that it is already the implementation phase. On the other hand, the development of the city's development strategy is in my division. Please note that the full name of my function is Deputy Mayor for Sustainable Development. The entire division of strategy, monitoring and investment planning is with me. Its head is Director Anna Sochacka. We actually coordinate all these activities related to investments that are in the city, that are planned, budgeted. President Andrzej Kulig, as First Deputy Mayor, has an absolutely full understanding of all the investments being made in the city and co-creates the entire investment program, pointing out those elements of the city's development strategy that require implementation through specific investment projects, which are then entrusted to the Board of City Investments or ZDMK for implementation. At this point it is worth noting that by the decision of President Majchrowski, and this is exactly in my division, the Agency for the Development of the City of Krakow was established. The genesis of the establishment of this company was related to the fact that the previous Agency for City Development Joint Stock Company (ARM) had for a long time de facto been exclusively the operator of the Tauron Arena. ARM, which was established by resolution in 1996, realized, among other things, the first stage of the Mogilskie Roundabout high-speed tramway, but later focused mainly on the realization of the Arena, which was a unique challenge due to its scale (the largest arena in Poland).
Malgorzata: It's a bit complicated.
Jerzy Muzyk: We came to the conclusion that running such a facility - the largest arena in Poland, one of the largest in Europe - could not be combined with other tasks. Also, the personnel structure of the then ARM was dominated by the management of this facility, which the city of Krakow will be paying off until 2027 (there is still nearly 300 million left to pay off). It was necessary to exclude to a separate entity the implementation of the strategic tasks set out in the Development Strategy of the City of Krakow "Here I want to live. Kraków 2030," which was adopted by a resolution of the City Council in February 2018. When I was appointed by President Majchrowski to the position of Deputy for Sustainable Development, I wanted first and foremost to get us started with the implementation of this fresh strategy, which, among other things, identified a number of such places in the city whose development, transformation and change of the current function are of fundamental importance for the future of Krakow. It should be remembered that the aforementioned strategy is the result of the work of almost a thousand consultants of various kinds over a period of five years, so it is a document that is of historic importance. I know that today a decade is not such a long time, and we are already beginning to prepare certain assumptions for updating this strategy in view of the current situation. This pandemic reality must have an impact, but at the same time we want to extend this strategy to 2050.
Malgorzata: In well-run cities, such as Scandinavian ones, it's done that way. On a city scale, decisions that are made quickly are usually not good decisions.
Jerzy Muzyk: Please note what we are dealing with in this strategy. We have designated areas such as Plaszow-Rybitwy (conventionally called the New City in the strategy), we have designated Air Port City, and we have the New Steelworks of the Future. And in fact, at the start of the current term, the implementation of this last project, the New Steelworks of the Future, was institutionalized through the establishment of the company Krakow Nowa Huta Przyszłości S.A., whose president is Artur Paszko. It has four groups of tasks assigned: Industrial and Logistics Center "Ruszcza", Science and Technology Park "Branice" or tasks related to recreation, such as "Przylasek Rusiecki", "Błonia 2.0". Very important for the whole project is the expansion of Igołomska Street. Nowa Huta Przyszłości S.A. is also our emissary in talks on the development of land freed by the ArcelorMittal smelter in connection with the reduction of their activity. But in addition to the New Steelworks, other strategic tasks had to be taken on board, and time flies fast. We are in 2021, with nine years left until 2030. The New City, or the projected City of Krakow, is the entrance to the area of Płaszów and Rybitwy, which for many years has been a typically industrial and warehousing area, with activities of great importance to the city. These are the kind of areas that the current and still valid plan from 2011, on the basis of the old Study, further provides for this type of function. We are now well advanced in the opinion stage of the internal draft of the New Town local plan. This is nearly six hundred hectares. We simply want to create a new district here, because the current Study, after the changes in 2014, gives us very good possibilities here. We don't see the need or necessity to take advantage of these opportunities one hundred percent, for example, in terms of the height of the designed buildings (the Study in some places in the New Town allows buildings up to 250 meters high), but it will certainly be something completely innovative compared to what has been designed so far. This is practically the creation of an entirely new district of the city. I don't want to compare it with the construction of Nowa Huta, because that's a bad comparison, while there hasn't been such a project since the construction of Nowa Huta. Nowe Miasto is a project to plan and implement a new city district that will have the potential to accommodate up to a hundred thousand people.
Margaret: Mr. President, this is all very interesting, and in view of this I am already planning another conversation about this Strategy. In the meantime, let's talk about architectural competitions, because this is the main topic I came to you with today. First of all, I congratulate you on the efficiency and speed with which the competition for the Music Center was organized and decided. The competition has taken place, it has been decided, and it looks like the winning project has a good chance of being realized. However, one can notice such a regularity that the magistrate is very eager to hold competitions for buildings, and very reluctant for urban spaces. And those squares that are in the center of the city, even considering the nearest space: Szczepanski Square or, for example, St. Mary's Square, were all tenders and renovations, not a new contemporary layer of the city. We can see what the effect of this is. In a tender, we don't get the best architectural concept, we don't evaluate the quality, only the project that is simply the cheapest according to the Public Procurement Law is chosen. So we are going in the direction of a cheap city, not a city where quality matters. And this is in historic and very valuable urban areas. Doesn't Krakow deserve quality? Another disturbing phenomenon is what the City Greenery Board is now often doing. Belonging to the most important spaces in the city, such as the Vistula River boulevards or Grzegórzec Square, the overpasses with Railway Park, ZZM designs itself. On the one hand, the Board of Urban Greenery works efficiently, this can be seen and is credited to it. It takes care of and manages greenery, pocket parks are appearing - this is great! But important and strategic spaces cannot and should not be designed by itself. Competitions are needed for such spaces!
Jerzy Muzyk: I think this was also due to the fact that the Urban Greenery Board felt strong in its five years of operation. Mind you, it certainly has an unquestionable track record here.
Krakow - parks and green areas
Source: Krakow City Hall, drawing: Malgorzata Flis
Margaret: Unquestionable. That's something we don't question. ZZM takes care of the city's greenery and this is to its great credit. But doesn't it overstep its authority and try to design the city for us? All over the world, architectural competitions are held for green spaces Of course, we are talking about those cities where the quality of urban spaces matters.
Jerzy Muzyk: This is a topic for reopening the discussion, for the reason that even if we are talking about something that is very much involved in the sense of a design concept, this does not yet prejudge that we give up entirely on holding a competition. I am in front of such a conversation with the management of the Urban Greenery Board in terms of looking again at what we want to do ourselves - because I understand that pocket parks are within their scope - and what would be indicated for a competition procedure.
Malgorzata: Pocket parks as much as possible, because these are spaces that are easily modifiable at little cost.
Jerzy Muzyk: I understand that the development of the Vistula boulevards or the space in Grzegórzki, or what has been done so far by the Urban Greenery Board, we can possibly treat as an expanded concept and a foretaste for the design competition. This is not a definitively closed topic. It is closed only where a contract has been signed with the contractor selected in the tender. On the other hand, where it is still an open issue, it seems to me that we can absolutely return to the topic, or at least to the discussion regarding the advisability of holding such a competition. I am a supporter of only such competitions as in the case of the Krakow Music Center, i.e. not conceptual, but two-stage implementation, because this works and gives us a result in the form of a project, and not a concept created "off the shelf". I make no secret that I was also in favor of holding a competition for the park on Karmelicka Street, but here....
Malgorzata: ...well, that's what. What went wrong here? This is one of the most important spaces in the city center and this is where the bidding took place.
Jerzy Muzyk: The park on Karmelicka Street is a community initiative, qualified from the civic budget. This, too, we must keep in mind, since from the civic budget, we should also listen to the voices of those who, in a sense, led to the fact that, first: this area was not designated for development, and second, that it has this function and not another. Here it is absolutely necessary to appreciate the work of city activists and activists, for example, Natalia Nazim, but also Monika Bogdanowska as a conservationist.
Malgorzata: By all means, only this still does not exclude a competition. You can conduct a participatory process with residents, activists, and the proposals can be written into the functional program of a later competition. This is a common tactic.
Jerzy Muzyk: Unfortunately, it is too late. The city has a contract with a contractor selected through a tender.
Malgorzata: Unfortunately. And it's a great pity. The worst thing is that the casual citizen will be happy anyway, because turning a parking lot into a park is already such a significant change that he probably won't understand that the effect could have been much better if a competition had been held and the results implemented.
Jerzy Muzyk: Yes, now the topic is closed. We'll see what the result will be, let's hope we're not wrong, and let's hope the design community is also satisfied with the outcome. All the more so because I am rather calm, after all, the contractor for this project is none other than the Gajda Architektura Krajobrazu studio, which was the contractor for the Krakow Park renovation project, which is quite highly regarded.
Margaret: Mr. President, this is not about satisfying the design community strictly speaking. We are fighting for the quality of our common urban space and the quality procedures that only an architectural or urban design competition provides. And this is not our environmental flight, so to speak. These are the standards of a democratic city. If we have a space to develop, we ask professionals, in this case designers, to show their concepts and stand for competition, which will be judged by a professional jury. This is the only way we can get quality. Observations show that even a poor work that wins in a competition is better than a work won in a tender, where the decisive evaluation criterion is the lowest price.
Jerzy Muzyk: The experience I gained as a member of the jury in the competition for the design of the Krakow Music Center gives me a new perspective on the legitimacy of competitions. It's true. This substantive discussion among professionals, people who have done similar projects, gives a completely different perspective on certain issues. After all, the outcome in this competition was not clear-cut either. Fortunately, the chairman's vote did not have to decide, but the votes of the majority of the jury members. I remember what a heated discussion it was, and for me it was wildly creative. And these are really not some empty words. For the first time I had the opportunity to be a member of the jury, and I am extremely satisfied with that.
Malgorzata: Since this is the case, I already invite the President to join the chapter of the competition for the Maciej Nowicki Award, organized by our publishing house. I'd just like to add that it's a slightly different competition, because there we evaluate both realizations and projects. Innovation is judged. But I hope it will also be an interesting experience for the President.
Jerzy Muzyk: Very happy, thank you! I really become a supporter of competitions, as long as we get them carried out as smoothly as we did with the Krakow Music Center. I believe that this project will be carried out to the end. I see that competitions are the right path. For me, the design community, the architects, are a support to the local authorities in terms of communicating with the public about why such and not another design solution in a particular place is the best. Then we can always say: please, ladies and gentlemen, since professionals who have professional experience, who design and implement similar projects, speak on this subject, these are arguments.
Malgorzata: Yes, and you can also always emphasize that a particular space was the subject of a competition and the best design was selected.
Jerzy Muzyk: The planning resolution defining the conditions for development on a given part of the city is adopted by the City Council, but this does not change the fact that the draft plan, which is prepared by the Mayor, is done by the hands of urban planners. It is prepared by the Department of Spatial Planning, among other things, after consultations with the Commission for Spatial Planning and Environmental Protection, with the Urban Planning and Architectural Commission. All this shows that I would very much like the substantive factor to support the office, because the office is perceived by residents as something so much more virtual. Often it is the case that our decisions cannot be fully understood by the stakeholders, that is, in fact, all the residents to whom they are addressed, and very often, perhaps, we ourselves cannot explain it, because we do not have the right instrumentarium, which is to present the right argumentation: this is the best, most optimal solution. I, in the design community, would see a very important factor of support for justifying the reasons for the adopted solutions as the most optimal ones, in line with the prevailing architectural and urban planning trends.
Malgorzata: These are certainly good strategies, both in terms of spatial solutions and communication with residents. Competitions should be a matter of course when we talk about public space or buildings. And does Krakow please the President?
Jerzy Muzyk: For me, Krakow is an exceptional city with its unique atmosphere, an atmosphere created not only by the Old Town or Kazimierz, but also by the "old" Nowa Huta. Please note that Krakow is already very often mentioned among cities such as Vienna, Barcelona or some cities in the south of France with their old substance. Please note why we feel comfortable in the Downtown, in the old city. It's because it's a city made for people, where spaces on the one hand are made for face-to-face interactions, and on the other hand - everything is reasonably close. Scaled-down American modernist cities with dominant vehicular transportation, where everywhere is far away, are difficult to live in. We don't want to make this mistake when designing the New City, and I don't hide the fact that the first concepts could have led us to something like this. One has to be careful not to fall into this trap.
Malgorzata: In Cracow, a strategy like that of Paris - the fifteen-minute city - would work: all necessary functions are within a maximum of fifteen minutes walking distance from where you live.
Jerzy Muzyk: This is how it should be approached. The main emphasis should be on public transportation, and public spaces should encourage people to use them, then the city is vibrant and safe.
Malgorzata: Let's go back to competitions and tenders for a moment, if you will. I am very pleased that the mayor is becoming an advocate of competition procedures as the best ways to design spaces in the city. However, from time to time we are surprised by information in the press: that a Marina will be built at Podolski Boulevard and there is a tender for it, that a Winter Sports Center will be built and there is a tender for it, the footbridge that was selected in the competition (an outstanding one, in Ludwinów, designed by the Lewicki Łatak Design Bureau) will not be built. Instead, a quasi-tender (auction) has been announced for another, which we mentioned a moment ago. It seems that a lot of public spaces are handled by tender after all. Likewise, by the way, with the New Square: there was a competition some ten years ago, the project of the Lewicki Łatak office won. It was not implemented. But recently there is information again about a tender for this place.
Jerzy Muzyk: In my opinion, these tenders, very often (maybe not all) should have been thought through beforehand, whether this was the best solution, but it is what it is. I can talk about a certain situation that we have at the moment. There are places that are so strongly defined and determined by the provisions of, for example, the existing function or the existing local plan, that the possibilities of holding a competition are very narrow.
Malgorzata: But not impossible. Still a competition is the best procedure, even if you define very narrowly for architects what they can and can't do, it's still better to organize a competition.
Jerzy Muzyk: I think you can see that I make no secret of the fact that I have some doubts about tenders skipping the competition mode. Of course, in many cases there is a kind of time pressure, but as we said to each other at the beginning of the conversation, it is not a good practice for the said time pressure to determine the decision whether or not to subject a given investment to the competition mode. Sometimes, however, this time pressure is due to a number of conditions in which the office operates, and this may not be fully understood by the urban planning and architectural community. The issue, for example, is the possibility of releasing some external funding and there is a need to use it "here and now." In other words, there is an urgent need to allocate these funds, so that they are not lost. This kind of thing usually argues for a faster bidding process.
Malgorzata: Maybe I'll ask a naive question, but isn't it possible to reallocate these funds in such a way, to freeze them in time for the competition procedure?
Jerzy Muzyk: Anything is possible. There is only the question of what direction we will take. I don't hide, my experience after the competition for the Music Center shows that a competition is a good solution, and certainly as long as I have influence on the preparation of certain investment processes in the city, I will, however, lean towards holding competitions.
Malgorzata: Great! That's very good to hear. Finally, I still have a question from a reader, I promised to ask. It's about St. Lazarus Church in Wesola, which, it is reported, the magistrate plans to sell to the church with a ninety-eight percent discount.
Jerzy Muzyk: This is not true. The situation at the moment is that the City owns the church and the monastery complex, which was an integral part of Wesola. Today this church serves as a hospital chapel, which is the place for services held by University Hospital chaplains, hospital employees. The church, according to the agreement we have with the University Hospital, is to be released by the end of 2022, and there is absolutely no decision to sell it. Besides, we have assumed all along that we would not sell any of the facilities that the City acquired as part of the Wesola property, for which we paid PLN 283 million. The Agency for the Development of the City of Krakow, to which we want to make a contribution in kind of the entire purchased land on Wesola, this I want to emphasize, is a municipal company fully controlled by the Mayor. It is true that at the outset (both to the University Hospital and, when the deal was struck, to the President) Archbishop Jędraszewski sent a letter that he was interested in exchanging the church and monastery complex for other properties or facilities owned by the Curia. I would like to emphatically emphasize that it never occurred to anyone in the Cracow magistrate's office that such a thing as the desacralization of a church could occur, especially since the desacralization of a given church cannot be decided by any entity other than the bishop under whose jurisdiction the church is located.
There is absolutely no such policy and no such plan here. We further want to maintain the sacred function of St. Lazarus Church. We only want to bring this church to be used simultaneously as a concert venue for Capella Cracoviensis, whose music is most appropriate to be presented in the church. Besides, Capella Cracoviensis has already given concerts in this church for many years, so here I don't see any unrest, and I don't understand all this action, which, for example, in our case manifests itself in comments to the draft local plan for Wesola. Perhaps the misunderstanding is due to the fact that we wrote in the plan that it is about "services" instead of "religious services". Wherever we write services, we also mean sacred services. This we also do in relation to other religious facilities, in other local plans, not just in relation to Wesola. It has never dawned on anyone that the idea of making the sacred function disappear from this church, which, by the way, has been repeatedly confirmed in discussions held with the management of the University Hospital and the Hospital's chaplains. The idea of selling the religious building on Wesola Street with a ninety-eight percent discount was never considered. It cannot be ruled out that the Curia will want to return to talks about the church.
Malgorzata: Mr. President, thank you very much for talking with us today.
interviewed: Malgorzata TOMCZAK
Krakow, January 20, 2021
Illustrations provided courtesy of the Office of the City of Krakow.
Illustrations are from the Strategy "Here I want to live. Kraków 2030".
