Coincidentally, just before Professor Piotr Lorens was appointed to the position of City Architect in Gdansk, this title was taken away from Piotr Fokczynski in Wroclaw, after eighteen years of service.
Until recently, Fokczynski was the only one in Poland who was simultaneously Director of the Architecture and Construction Department of the Wrocław City Hall and City Architect. By combining these two functions on a daily basis, he was able to make decisions on both the architecture and urban planning levels. Because of his dual duties with good results, he advised the authorities of other centers on the organization of urban planning work so that everything would be well arranged and function effectively. Gorzow Wielkopolski, among others, benefited from his experience, and he also had a long teleconference with the vice-president of Gdansk regarding the work of the teams he managed, although, he says, the Danzigers did not take his advice. Nevertheless, Gdansk already has a City Architect, while Wroclaw no longer has one.
structure
It is worth quoting here an excerpt from a 2016 text by Adam Oziewicz, explaining in brief what the structure of selected units in City Hall looked like until recently:
All matters related to architecture and construction, except for building supervision, are in one hand - that of Piotr Fokczynski. [He has three bosses over him: the mayor, the vice mayor, who is responsible for urban planning, and the department director. The city architect has a city visual artist on his team. [...] The structure of the department headed by the Wroclaw city architect is almost 150 people. It is divided into two departments - identically to the way construction law and spatial management are divided in substantive law. There are five teams in each department. [...] The strict team of the architect consists of five people. Their work directly translates into the development of the city - first into the study of directions and spatial development, then into local development plans, and already locally, into zoning decisions. The City Architect, if he looks at everything together, has a real chance to maintain spatial order. And maintaining it is not easy¹.
It follows that Director Fokczynski, while holding both positions, was not just a clerk, or like some city architects, for example, a chief specialist at a relatively low level of employment. He was an authority and had decision-making power, backed by immense practice.
without consultation
When asked what happened, Piotr Fokczynski replies that he received an order from the mayor, under which he ceases to be the City Architect, but remains Director of the Department of Architecture and Construction.
It is difficult for me to comment on this in a situation where I was not informed of the reorganization plans, and the decision was made without any consultation," he says. - Some time ago there was an idea to separate the two functions I hold and "detach" me from the work of the Department. I would then remain only the Architect of the City, but I did not agree to this. I believed and still believe that such a separation is inappropriate and that a dynamic city needs a strong position for this office. However, the idea there was discussed with me, and I presented arguments that I believed convinced my superiors. Now I suddenly learn that the opposite decision has been made for me - I remain director, I cease to be an architect. How do I make sense of all this?
Asked by the press about the consequences of such a decision, the office of the Mayor of Wroclaw assures that nothing will basically change in the way the mentioned institutions have operated so far, and the citizen of the city will not feel the absence of its Architect. All the more reason for the question - why?
important word "architect"
Piotr Fokczynski does not want to search for reasons for the mayor's decision. He is only puzzled - half jokingly, half seriously - by the elimination of a position whose name included the word "architect." This is not the first time it has disappeared from official language in Wroclaw. More and more changes in naming and fewer and fewer architects or architecture. For example - the department to which Director Fokczynski reports was called Architecture and Development a few years ago, today it is called Strategy and Development of the City.
There is something disturbing about the implicit relegation of our profession and the subject of our work to the background ," he says. - Paradoxically, the mainstay of architecture is the new Construction Law, in which the phrase "competent authority" was changed to "architectural and construction authority," restoring its proper nomenclature.
Behind these jocular quibbles is the fear of undermining on a larger scale the authority of the architect on a city-wide scale, as a person of high decision-making and opinion-making competence, and more broadly - the design competence of all architects in Wroclaw. In such a situation, a profession of public trust that once enjoyed great social prestige loses its value in the eyes of both investors and contractors.
competencies
Ribbon-cutting competencies don't interest me ," says the former Architect of Wroclaw. - In order to function well at the city level, you need decision-making capabilities, at least collation to local plans, i.e. access to ordering the provisions at the level of the state building law. We, at the moment, are still reviewing these records, but it would certainly improve fluidity to broaden, rather than limit, competencies at the departmental level.
Five years ago, at a conference in Gorzow Wielkopolski, Piotr Fokczynski explained:
A true city architect should prepare spatial guidelines, give opinions on local plans, and perform pre-project analyses for the mayor, so that he knows exactly what the potential of a piece of the city is. [...] It is possible to achieve amazing results in a situation where I have at my disposal - in the same department - the consultation of the city conservator, I cooperate with the greenery board and the city gardener¹.
Today he admits that with the position he would not like to lose his authority, that the city needs a voice promoting good models. A voice of an expert, an analyst, an advisor with great competence. Let's hope that it will continue to be heard in Wroclaw.
Beata Stobiecka
¹ gorzów24.pl, Adam Oziewicz, "Gorzów without rubbish. That it can be done, said the architect of the city of Wroclaw and not only he," 2016.
