City-forming solutions for quarter development in the designs of the Grupa 5 Architekci studio

Krzysztof Mycielski

doi:10.37190/arc230212

Abstract

The Warsaw-based Grupa 5 Architekci studio is a team of several dozen designers operating on the Polish construction market, shaped by the experience of the Polish transformation. After two decades of activity, the architects who created it undertook a joint attempt at ideological self-definition. The aim of the article is to show how personal conclusions drawn from education, subsequent practice, the evolution of the theory of architecture as well as personal beliefs and experiencing space translate into specific design solutions. Since one of the architectural threads connecting people co-creating the studio are achievements in the field of designing quarter development, the method adopted in the article is a detailed analysis of this part of the work of Grupa 5, from the implementation of individual buildings to the urban planning assumptions of large housing complexes. The article ends with the author’s theses on the philosophy of design, which result from design practice.

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Krzysztof Mycielski*

City-forming solutions for quarter development

in the designs of the Grupa 5 Architekci studio

Introduction

The Warsaw studio Group 5 Architects (in Polish: Gru-

pa 5 Architekci) is not a classic design team. Founded on

the wave of transformation in 1998 by ve young archi-

tects with dierent creative personalities, in a short time

it began to meet the challenge of large commercial orders.

Building an eective studio was done in a hurry, whereas

the lack of experience was made up for by the determina-

tion of the multi-person management team. Within a few

years, the studio grew to a team of several dozen designers

who with each subsequent year grew into an increasingly

ecient structure.

At that time, we did not have time to develop a pre-

cise design philosophy. The relations between the partners

were democratic, there was no ideological leader among

us. The dynamically changing Polish reality, the constant

evolution of the standard of living and social needs, as well

as the changing intellectual climate around architecture,

veried the sense of the creative priorities developed in the

studio several times.

For 25 years, Grupa 5 has been developing in two ways.

The rst aspect of our activity is related to the challenges

posed by the realities of the market and the development

of complex methods of managing a modern design studio.

The second path of our exploration concerns architectur-

al creation. Importantly, these two issues are inseparably

linked and they inuence each other. We have always tried

to nd a balance between them so that neither of them

dominates our approach to the profession, which in itself

is a kind of operating philosophy. In 2018, on the occasion

of the twentieth anniversary of Grupa 5, we published

a book entitled Życie i przestrzeń [Life and Space] dedi-

cated to the history of our team, in which we described

both the business and creative face of the studio in the

convention of a double narrative. Written in an accessible

language, the story was also intended for non-profession-

al readers, and its journalistic and non-scientic character

was intentional. The free dialogue present in the book be-

tween the people managing the studio was supposed to

foster a joint attempt at ideological self-denition [1].

The role played by market realities and organizational

issues in an architect’s workshop, underestimated in the

academic community, has been scientically researched

in recent years by a member of the management board

of Grupa 5, namely Michał Leszczyński, who has been

the company’s president for several years. In his doctoral

dissertation, using the achievements and experience of the

studio, he put forward the thesis that […] during the pe-

riod of political transformation in Poland, in the dynam-

ically changing conditions of planning and implementing

architectural and urban projects, the group of partici-

pants in the design process is expanding. The role of the

demiurge architect is transforming and moving towards

a creative coordinator [2, p. 14].

Despite our mastery of the rules governing the contem-

porary architectural market and the consistently devel-

oped concept of an eective studio, devoid of a clear hi-

erarchy, but based on a constant exchange of experience,

cooperation and coordination, the design method itself in

DOI: 10.37190/arc230212

Published in open access. CC BY NC ND license

* ORCID: 0000-0001-5334-5131. Faculty of Architecture, War-

saw University of Technology, Poland, e-mail: Krzysztof.Mycielski@

pw.edu.pl

Design Philosophy

116 Krzysztof Mycielski

Grupa 5, which is the result of the professed ideas regard-

ing space, has not been implemented to this day in a cate-

gorical denition. In the publishing announcement of the

above-mentioned publication from 2018, the areas of our

creative interests were described in a literary formula like

this: projects are created having in mind the need for root-

ing, common space and everyday relationships between

people [1, cover]. We do agree on the importance of these

concepts, however, each time they are translated into the

designed space, the process bears the mark of various peo-

ple co-creating the studio and their dierent sensitivities.

Sometimes we meet with the opinion of critics and col-

leagues that Grupa 5 lacks a clear architectural language

[3]. By improving the studio, we see the advantages of this.

The work of Grupa 5 still has a exible and open formu-

la. Questions about aesthetics and creating the right liv-

ing environment through architecture are constantly being

raised, which is a key development impulse for us.

As a member of the management board of the studio

and its co-founder, when describing the creative phenom-

ena taking place in Grupa 5, in which we can nd a com-

mon ideological denominator, I must make it clear that

I am trying only from my own perspective to capture the

current moment of development of the constantly evolv-

ing, today two-generation group of designers. At the same

time, I can no longer precisely separate my own views

from the beliefs we all share within the group. This is in-

uenced by mutual inspirations lasting for 25 years and

the deeply collective nature of our work.

Revaluations

In 2002, describing one of the studio’s rst projects,

which was a housing estate in Strumykowa Street in War-

saw’s Tarchomin district, Hubert Trammer, an architec-

ture critic, stated that […] designers from Grupa 5 dene

the style of their architecture as humanized modernism. In

fact, many of their realizations can be classied as post-

modernism, which is becoming popular again. However,

there is a taboo on architects admitting to using this style

[4, p. 20].

Regardless of how distant the above statement juggling

“isms” in designing may seem today, it is characteristic of

the Polish discussion about the architecture of the begin-

ning of the century and concerns the essence of the dis-

pute between the older and younger generations of native

architects, which actually took place at that time.

The designers who manage Grupa 5 today studied at

the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of

Technology in the 1990s. They received a solid lesson in

modernism as listeners of Professor Lech Kłosiewicz’s

lectures and as students of the generation of functionalists

who were still present at the university, although starting

to depart, such as Witold Benedek, Jan Zdanowicz, Ha li-

na Skibniewska, Hanna Adamczewska-Wejhert. The op-

posite pole was represented by the key Warsaw postmo-

dernists teaching at the Faculty, i.e. Marek Budzyński,

An drzej Kiciński or Magdalena Staniszkis, and the then

dean of the Faculty, Konrad Kucza-Kuczyński, who stood

somewhat apart from the architectural discourse. The

confrontation of both of these epochs in design, which in

Poland was additionally overlapped with the change of

the political system, resounded loudest in the mouth of

Czesław Bielecki, an architect, a former oppositionist and

author of a groundbreaking essay on continuity in archi-

tecture [5], who in the early 1990s gave a series of bril-

liant guest lectures at the Faculty, depreciating the dogma-

tism of the Athens Charter and its architectural heritage.

Ambitious students of the Faculty carefully followed the

arguments of both sides, mostly keeping a generational

distance. Although they perpetuated the lessons of errors

of modernism, the historicizing Polish postmodernism for

many of them was not an alternative, but a synonym for

the provincial character of the native construction of those

times [1].

When we were nishing our studies, an interest in mo -

dernist avant-garde realizations returned in Western Euro-

pean architecture. The urban dogmatism of functionalism

was rejected, but the minimalist aesthetics still aroused

deep emotions. Soon, also in Poland, neo-modernism was

to become the hallmark of the young generation of archi-

tects. It was reected in the nationwide meeting of young

architects The Young to Łódź, organized in 2003 by the edi-

tors of the “Architektura Murator” monthly. The architects

from our studio played a signicant role in it [6].

Adhering to neo-modernism in the rst years of our

activity, in the course of time we realized the pointless-

ness of the dispute over style, which does not bring any

important content to the art of shaping space, excluding

the sphere of design itself. The orientation towards the

aesthetic universalism of the avant-garde turned out to

be a limited formula. Years later, it was evocatively de-

scribed by architect and art historian Błażej Ciarkowski:

Neo-modernism is full of contradictions. It is perceived as

a continuation of modernism, while contradicting its fun-

damental premises. It is associated with modernity, but it

is not modern. It is a non-modern modernity or a postmod-

ern modernism [7, p. 95].

This does not change the fact that the fascination with

the visual attractiveness of minimalism and the avant-gar-

de idea of geometric abstraction, expressive in our rst

pro jects, still has its loyal followers both in the studio and

among the architects cooperating with it [8]. Tarchomin

reali zation of a residential quarter at Odkryta Street from

1999 (Fig. 1), a farmer’s house near Warsaw built four years

later, a residential house at Morskie Oko Street in War saw

and an oce building at Komandorska Street in Wrocław

erected much later, in the next decade (Fig. 2) as well as

many other projects in which we participated testify to the

everlasting seductive power of the international style.

City-forming space

Persistent and constantly developing ideas present to-

day in Grupa 5 appeared where the architect touches ur-

ban planning. The dynamics of the times of transformation

helped in this. In the rst two decades of the 21

century,

consistently modernized Warsaw is becoming an attractive

European city. The development of local self-government

and urban movements indicates new elds of research,

City-forming solutions for quarter development in the designs of the Grupa 5 Architekci studio 117

sensitizing architects to social thinking. Journalism and

architectural criticism are developing creatively. For the

rst time, the works of the classics, freshly translated into

Polish and widely discussed in Poland, appear on the pub-

lishing market, including those of Le Corbusier, but also

of later urban theoreticians who opposed the achievements

of the avant-garde, such as Jane Jacobs, Christopher

Alexander, Leon Krier or Jan Gehl, postulating the per-

ception of the city not as a rational, coherent work of art,

but as a place of development for human activity. At the

same time, in the architecture of the West, the intellectual

twilight of the age of starchitects begins.

Fig. 1. Wróblewo 2 Housing

Estate at Odkryta Street

in Warsaw

(2003, designed by

Grupa 5 Architekci,

photo by M. Czechowicz)

Il. 1. Osiedle Wróblewo 2

przy ul. Odkrytej w Warszawie

(2003, proj. Grupa 5 Architekci,

fot. M. Czechowicz))

Fig. 2. Office building at

Komandorska Street in Wrocław

(2017, designed by Grupa 5

Architekci / Studio Kosmos,

photo by M. Czechowicz)

Il. 2. Budynek biurowy przy

ul. Komandorskiej

we Wrocławiu

(2017, proj. Grupa 5 Architekci /

Studio Kosmos,

fot. M. Czechowicz)

118 Krzysztof Mycielski

protecting heritage while respecting the continuity and

evolution of urban communities [12].

When looking for solutions in Warsaw that can be

a point of reference here, we can reach for examples from

the rst decades of Polish independence, when the capi-

tal city’s planning reached an impressive level of compe-

tence. In the modern parts of the city created at that time,

such as Żoliborz, Bielany, Mokotów, Ochota or Saska

Kępa, it was possible to maintain the continuity of urban

space with its characteristic size, legible streets and public

spaces. Modernist in its rationalism, but not yet avant-gar-

de urban planning of that time overcame the ills of the

-century city, providing buildings with sun, greenery

and decent hygienic conditions long before the radical

postulates of the Athens Charter. The culmination of the

achievements of urban planners of the interwar period was

the General Plan of Warsaw [13] approved in 1931, creat-

ing not only a consistent and clear structure of the metrop-

olis, but also a potentially communal city, which today, in

accordance with the terminology of New Urbanism, we

would call polycentric [14]. The way of shaping the ur-

ban structure in interwar Warsaw, based on modernized

quarter buildings and largely on participatory cooperative

housing, was at that time similar to the achievements of

urban planners in other European cities, e.g. associated

with the Amsterdam School (whose achievements the ar-

chitects from Grupa 5 became interested in, which result-

ed in organizing a few-day reconnaissance of the entire

studio in Amsterdam in 2016).

Analyzing the intersection of architecture and urban

planning in Warsaw’s interwar projects, which interests us,

we see the development of Kolonia Lubeckiego in Stara

Ochota as an exceptional example. Its location a short dis-

tance from the rst seat of the studio in Sękocińska Street

and the fact that two partners from Grupa 5 have been its

residents for years, allowed us not only to thoroughly ex-

perience the space designed here, but also to observe how

its spatial solutions stimulate the local community. Until

the end of the 20

century, the urban structure of Kolonia

Lubeckiego remained underestimated in scientic stud-

ies. Also nowadays, it is rarely mentioned in architectur-

al journalism. According to architect and urban planner

Andrzej Kiciński, this was due to ideological and personal

reasons related to its creators [15], who did not t into the

post-war narrative of modernism. The architecture of the

complex itself is mostly historicizing or embedded in the

Art Deco trend [16], only in some places it is purely mod-

ernist, and therefore incomparably less “modern” than the

pre-war buildings of the Warsaw Housing Cooperative in

Żoliborz, most often referred to in publications.

In the most interesting part of Kolonia Lubeckiego be-

tween Solariego and Krzyckiego Streets, the urban tissue

was designed as a series of cooperative quarters forming

a frontage along Filtrowa Street with mutually open green

court yards (Fig. 3). Across the quarters, thanks to the wide

clear ances between the buildings, rows of greenery have

been planted, creating unique walking routes linking the

public courtyards. The intimate atmosphere of the short ac-

cess streets located along the quarters was obtained thanks

to the trees growing in the adjacent front gardens. These

In pluralistic times, which Zygmunt Bauman calls post-

modernity, there is no chance for charismatic doctrines

worthy of the modernist avant-garde [9]. Urban planning

of cities of the 21

century faces issues of multi-layered-

ness and participation, which require the will and ability

to cooperate on the part of many stakeholders and users of

space, and to reconcile contradictions. Although at pres-

ent there is no unambiguous method for coherent shaping

of the urban spatial structure [10], along with the growing

local awareness there are more and more interesting possi-

bilities of local interventions in a quarter, street, square or

park on a scale available to an architectural designer.

In Grupa 5, the experience of urban threats resulting from

the confrontation of the development market and city o-

cials does not lead to reconciliation with Rem Koolhaas’s

diagnosis of junkspace, popular 20 years ago [11]. We have

always perceived his essay as a catchy demiurgic rhetoric

that disregards the values inherent in the urban fabric and

the community that inhabits it. We are seduced not by the

structure of global cities, but by the identity of the place and

the power of locality. And this has a chance to emerge not

through design, but in a consciously designed and experi-

enced space at the junction of architecture and urban plan-

ning. We believe in the value of city-forming ar chitecture,

the creation of which consists in using the po tential hid-

den in the existing context, not only cultural but also so-

cial, when the city creates the building, and the building co-

creates the real city.

Warsaw reminiscences

On the contemporary market of ideas, New Urbanism

is an inspiring direction for us, even if its co-creator Leon

Krier, entering the eld of architecture design, does not

meet our minimalist tastes. The Charter of New Ur ba-

nism, published in Poland in 2005, emphasizes shaping

the city by creating spaces that are conducive to neigh-

borhood communities, creating inclusive public space and

Fig. 3. Sketch of a fragment of Kolonia Lubeckiego in Warsaw

between Górnickiego and Krzyckiego Streets

(drawing by K. Mycielski)

Il. 3. Szkic fragmentu Kolonii Lubeckiego w Warszawie

pomiędzy ul. Górnickiego a Krzyckiego

(rys. K. Mycielski)

City-forming solutions for quarter development in the designs of the Grupa 5 Architekci studio 119

streets end in a park. To this day, it serves as a space inte-

grating the community of the estate. The designed structure

of each quarter consisted of diversied buildings: a large-

city tenement house located along Filtrowa Street, with two

three-storey stadt-villas designed at its back and a two-sto-

rey terraced house erected behind them, closing the quarter

and adjacent to the park (Fig. 4). Thanks to such a game of

scale, the size of the buildings was gradually homogenized

towards a green public space [18].

The layout of the buildings designed in this way is an

inspiration for us for several reasons. It respects the iden-

tity of the city in which it was built, preserving the legi-

bility and dimensions of its frontage buildings. By hier-

archizing the scale of buildings according to a clear rule,

it oers residents a harmoniously dierentiated housing

estate space. Thanks to the short quarters and pedestrian

routes connecting the backyards intersecting with intimate

streets, and above all thanks to the consistently maintained

idea of accessibility of public and semi-public spaces, it

creates the possibility of choosing many walking routes

around the estate. The access streets, leading users towards

the park, create a centripetal compositional arrangement in

which the public space is not only a compositional but also

a functional keystone of the entire space. The pro-social

nature of Kolonia Lubeckiego, erected several decades

ago, and its local identity shaped over several genera-

tions, is evidenced by today’s activity of its inhabitants.

Neighborhood events are organized in the park every year.

The community of the colony has been successfully de-

fending the park managed by the city against ill-consid-

ered interventions of decision-makers in its space for years

[19]. It also initiates many important participatory events

in Ochota, such as multi-stage public consultations orga-

nized by the city in 2016 regarding the modernization of

the nearby Pola Mokotowskie, taking into account the di-

verse activity of their users.

Quarter development potential

The advantages of compact quarter development were

described by Czesław Bielecki in the well-known book

Gra w Miasto [City Game] [20], which was famous in

the 1990s. Following Christopher Alexander, he divides

the external space in the city into positive and negative,

the rst of which means drilling the interior in one solid,

and the second arranging interiors from dierent solids.

Bielecki states that when choosing between these two

types of spaces […] it is about the original intention of

the architect: whether he starts from urban interiors or

from buildings; whether the public space of the city is di-

vided by volume or it is made of blocks. This distinction

does not concern the interiors of buildings, but the way

in which buildings form the urban tissue of streets and

squares [20, p. 57]. Alexander himself states directly that

[…] People feel comfortable in spaces which are “posi-

tive” and use these spaces; people feel relatively uncom-

fortable in spaces which are “negative” and such spaces

tend to remain unused [21, p. 519].

The quarter gives the opportunity to identify residents

with the area they own. It enables clear typologization of

space, dividing it into public and semi-public [22]. In the

rst years of transformation, which were a formative pe-

riod for the founders of Grupa 5, in Warsaw, struggling

with its functionalist heritage, the quarter grew to the rank

of an urban archetype, becoming a synonym of traditional

urbanity.

Our interest in the quarter dating back to the begin-

nings of the studio has a strong ideological foundation

resulting from personal experience of space, but to

a large extent it is also dictated by the pragmatics of

the investment. On today’s Polish construction market,

where prot optimization is a priority, quarterly devel-

opment is an eective way to use the plot area, guar-

anteeing high margins. The decision to use a quarter in

a project is often unavoidable. It is the result of the in-

vestor’s guidelines set out in the contract regarding the

expected usable or leasable area and the need to t the

building layout into the external conditions dictated by

the conditions of local planners. When recalling inspir-

ing quarterly solutions from the past, such as Kolonia

Lubeckiego, we should bear in mind that today it is an

almost unattainable model due to the dierence of cir-

cumstances. Direct application of a similar idea of an

intimate housing estate completed with a park in today’s

realities is very dicult to achieve. It was established

as an enterprise of housing cooperatives beneting from

public preferences for construction in the rst years of

independence [18]. This is an investment model focused

not on prot, but on the quality of space. This is what

makes it dierent from today’s market of tenants and

developers.

Fig. 4. Development quarter of Kolonia Lubeckiego in Warsaw (1928)

(source: [17, Fig. 45, p. 86])

Il. 4. Kwartał zabudowy Kolonii Lubeckiego w Warszawie (1928)

zaprojektowany przez R. Felińskiego

(źródło: [17, rys. 45, s. 86])

120 Krzysztof Mycielski

Nevertheless, the type of development discussed

here, which today is not threatened by the 19

-centu-

ry claustrophobia of well yards, if only because of the

restrictive provisions in Polish law regarding the obscu-

ra tion and required access to the sun, may be an ar chi-

tec tural material on a human scale and susceptible to

countless modications, even though minor, but import-

ant for the comfort of space. In the achievements of Gru-

pa 5 we will nd many examples of implementation that

prove this.

Fig. 5. Apartment building at Leszczyńska Street in Warsaw:

a) land development plan with ground floor plan, b) building façade (2006, designed by Grupa 5 Architekci, photo by M. Czechowicz)

Il. 5. Budynek apartamentowy przy ul. Leszczyńskiej w Warszawie:

a) plan zagospodarowania terenu wraz z rzutem parteru, b) fasada budynku (2006, proj. Grupa 5 Architekci, fot. M. Czechowicz)

Fig. 6. Residential quarters at Sarmacka Street in Warsaw:

a) land development plan, b) clearance between courtyards (2006, designed by Grupa 5 Architekci, photo by M. Czechowicz)

Il. 6. Kwartały mieszkalne przy ul. Sarmackiej w Warszawie:

a) plan zagospodarowania terenu, b) prześwit pomiędzy dziedzińcami (2006, proj. Grupa 5 Architekci, fot. M. Czechowicz)

The idea of an open courtyard

In his reections on positive outdoor space, Alexander

recalls the results of the analysis of the 19

-century

Austrian urban planner Camillo Sitte, which shows that

well-liked and eagerly visited squares are characterized by

two features: On the one hand, they are partly enclosed;

on the other hand they are also open to one another, so

that each one leads into the next [21, p. 520]. The above

rule for city squares can also be applied to the interiors of

a b

City-forming solutions for quarter development in the designs of the Grupa 5 Architekci studio 121

Fig. 7. Brzozowy Zakątek

Housing Estate at Branickiego

Street in Warsaw:

a) land development plan,

b) clearance between courtyards

(2018, designed by Grupa 5

Architekci,

photo by M. Czechowicz)

Il. 7. Osiedle Brzozowy Zakątek

przy ul. Branickiego

w Warszawie:

a) plan zagospodarowania

terenu,

b) prześwit pomiędzy

dziedzińcami

(2018, proj Grupa 5 Architekci,

fot. M. Czechowicz)

quarters. In our projects, it means striving to create a clear

relationship between the courtyard and the neighboring

spaces. We use several solutions here.

The simplest of them concerns places where the quarter

meets the street. We believe that in the case of intensive

downtown development, where the gate clearance is used,

it should be as wide as possible, so that there is a real pen-

etration of public and semi-public space, and the moment

of crossing the border between them is clear. In Warsaw,

similar solutions from the interwar period can be an inspi-

ration here. We used them in several of our projects, for

example, in the apartment quarter at Leszczyńska Street in

Warsaw’s Powiśle (Fig. 5).

When designing larger-scale housing estates, containing

several hundred premises, we try to divide the space into

several cooperating backyards. In the case of two residen-

tial quarters at Sarmacka Street in Warsaw’s Miasteczko

Wilanów, we turned the designed buildings towards each

other, creating a system of three green courtyards interpen-

etrating each other through wide openings in the ground

oors (Fig. 6). Each of the backyards fullls a dierent

function in the estate, from the courtyard for quiet relax-

ation, through a common tree-lined passage between the

buildings, to the space with a playground for children. All

spaces are connected by a path running around the court-

yards, which makes pedestrian communication in the es-

tate more legible.

Positive reception by the users of the space designed

at Sarmacka Street strengthened our belief in the adopted

solutions. A similar sequence of spatially semi-autono-

mous courtyards connected to each other, between which

it is easy to move around using housing estate paths and

wide openings, was used by us in the Brzozowy Zakątek

estate, which ten years later was also implemented in

Miasteczko Wilanów (Fig. 7). Clearances not only serve

as expressive openings between yards and are responsible

122 Krzysztof Mycielski

for the eect of multi-plan space, but also have a utilitari-

an meaning, fullling the function of roong for bicycles.

An example of a realization based on similar, although

slightly modied, assumptions dictated by a specic con-

text is the Tivoli housing estate in Warsaw’s Targówek

district. On a stretched triangular plot, we managed to

create a whole series of intimate common spaces connect-

ed with each other (Fig. 8). You go from one to the next,

they have dierent proportions and scale. The internal

pedestrian route running along the estate and connecting

the courtyards slightly changes direction several times,

which is consistent with the theories of Krier [14], who

emphasized the need to enrich the perspective. The court-

yards open not only to each other, but also towards the

Bródnowski Canal overgrown with old trees, running in

the immediate vicinity of the housing estate.

Experiments with a courtyard remaining in spatial con-

tact with the surroundings and constituting a harmonious

part of a larger spatial composition do not apply only to

residential architecture in Grupa 5. Similar searches are

made in the design of public utility buildings. In oce

projects, we are dealing with a dierent geometry of the

buildings due to the greater width of the routes and dier-

ent requirements for shaping the enclosed space between

them. In one of our early projects, the headquarters of

Bank Millennium, located in the center of the Eko-Park

estate in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, intimate green court -

yards have a linear character and have been located on the

second oor level in order to create an environment of rest

and integration for oce employees (Fig. 9). These spac-

es have been partially closed. Their frames are the walls

of oce tracts and bay windows of conference rooms

Fig. 8. Land development plan for Tivoli Estate at Malborska Street in Warsaw (2008, designed by Grupa 5 Architekci)

Il. 8. Plan zagospodarowania terenu osiedla Tivoli przy ul. Malborskiej w Warszawie (2008, proj. Grupa 5 Architekci)

Fig. 9. The seat of Bank Millennium in Warsaw at Biały Kamień Street:

a) plan of the 2

floor, b) courtyard between the building’s tracts (2009, designed by Grupa 5 Architekci, photo by M. Czechowicz)

Il. 9. Siedziba Banku Millennium w Warszawie przy ul. Biały Kamień: a) rzut drugiej kondygnacji, b) dziedziniec pomiędzy traktami budynku

(2009, proj. Grupa 5 Architekci, fot. M. Czechowicz)

City-forming solutions for quarter development in the designs of the Grupa 5 Architekci studio 123

suspended at various heights. The courtyards at one end

open to the treetops of the neighboring allotment gardens,

and at the other end to the central public space of the es-

tate. Located among residential houses, the oce build-

ing with its distinctive semi-public spaces blends in with

the urban code of the surroundings, the tissue of which is

quarter development.

Experiences with the open space of the courtyard, scaled

for people, which is conducive to interpersonal contacts,

translated into decisions in the project of revitalizing the

historic post-industrial buildings in Łódź in the Monopolis

oce and service complex. The intimate nature of the fac-

tory quarter is additionally emphasized here by a recessed

square oering greenery and attractive solutions of small

architecture, as well as access to services located under the

historical tissue (Fig. 10). An elongated square on the scale

of a larger courtyard maintains a visual and communication

relationship with the entire complex, being one of several

publicly accessible public spaces adjacent to each other.

Quarter and identity

The implementation constituting the essence of the ap-

proach to shaping the city described here is the head quarters

of the Faculty of Radio and Television of the University of

Silesia in Katowice, appreciated around the world (Fig. 11).

Fig. 10. The Monopolis office and service complex at Kopcińskiego Street in Łódź

(2020, designed by Grupa 5 Architekci, photo by M. Czechowicz)

Il. 10. Zespół biurowo-usługowy Monopolis przy ul. Kopcińskiego w Łodzi

(2020, proj. Grupa 5 Architekci, fot. M. Czechowicz)

This is an example of identity building by creating relation-

ships between designed and existing spaces.

We participated in this project as co-authors and a stu-

dio coordinating the work of an international team of

architects. The starting point for the project was the rec-

ognition by our Catalan partners of unique local values

existing in a Silesian family apartment house which was

intended for demolition, and in the fragmented structure

of courtyards of the dilapidated 19

-century quarter, in-

side which the designed building was to be built. The new

facility, with the scale of its courtyard, precisely t into

the existing tissue. By lowering the height of its rear bays,

the designed courtyard established a spatial dialogue with

the existing courtyards. The austere mood of the hundred-

year-old outbuildings literally penetrated the interior of

the new lm school.

According to similar assumptions, the seat of the Ka-

to wice faculty aects the recipient from the side of the

street. The openwork façade, made of raw ceramic hollow

bricks, creates a background architecture for the familok

(Silesian family apartment house) that has been saved

here. There is also an important city-forming accent here,

thanks to the deep arcade highlighting the transparent

zone of the entrance to the building and connecting it with

the courtyard. It makes the street penetrate into the build-

ing, and the university overlooks the street.

124 Krzysztof Mycielski

Quarter in public space

Although, as the authors of the modernization of the

square in front of the Main Railway Station in Wrocław,

we have experience in creating a large-format public

space that shapes the city, we have not been involved in

any projects in which, in a broad urban context, the idea of

mutual relations between publicly accessible urban space

and quarter development would be clear. We performed

several such exercises that ended at the conceptual stage.

Among them were competition projects of large-scale

housing estates developed together with friendly urban

planners who identied themselves with the ideas of New

Urbanism.

Fig. 12. Unrealized competition design of “Śródmieście Leśne” Housing Estate in Bydgoszcz:

a) land development plan, b) fragment of the linear park design with a pond, c) competition model

(2015, designed by Grupa 5 Architekci / OWAD Michał Owadowicz Architekt)

Il. 12. Niezrealizowany projekt konkursowy osiedla “Śródmieście Leśne” w Bydgoszczy:

a) plan zagospodarowania terenu, b) fragment projektu parku liniowego z oczkiem wodnym, c) makieta konkursowa

(2015, proj. Grupa 5 Architekci / OWAD Michał Owadowicz Architekt)

a cb

Fig. 11. The headquarters of the Faculty of Radio and Television of the University of Silesia in Katowice at St. Paul Street in Katowice

(2017, designed by BAAS Arquitectura / Grupa 5 Architekci / MAŁECCY Biuro Projektowe):

a) façade (photo by J. Certowicz), b) competition model,

c) terrace on the roof of the building surrounded by historic outbuildings (photo by J. Certowicz)

Il. 11. Siedziba Wydziału Radia i Telewizji Uniwersytetu Śląskiego przy ul. Św. Pawła w Katowicach (2017, proj. BAAS Arquitectura / Grupa 5

Architekci / MAŁECCY Biuro Projektowe):

a) fasada (fot. J. Certowicz), b) makieta konkursowa, c) taras na dachu budynku w otoczeniu historycznych oficyn (fot. J. Certowicz)

a c

City-forming solutions for quarter development in the designs of the Grupa 5 Architekci studio 125

Fig. 13. Unrealized competition design of model housing estate Nowe Jeziorki in Warsaw.

Land development plan with shown spatial relations between courtyards

(2018, designed by MAU Mycielski Architecture & Urbanism / OWAD Michał Owadowicz Architekt / Grupa 5 Architekci)

Il. 13. Niezrealizowany projekt konkursowy modelowego osiedla mieszkaniowego Nowe Jeziorki w Warszawie.

Plan zagospodarowania terenu z pokazanymi relacjami przestrzennymi pomiędzy dziedzińcami

(2018, proj. MAU Mycielski Architecture & Urbanism / OWAD Michał Owadowicz Architekt / Grupa 5 Architekci)

In the competition project “Śródmieście Leśne” [Forest

Downtown] made for a developer company from Byd-

goszcz, we designed a system of two wide pedestrian routes

in the form of linear parks, intersecting with a meandering

residential street with slow vehicular trac divided into

three sections (Fig. 12). The residential quarters, which

thus have become part of this arrangement, open up to the

surroundings in two ways, namely, at the junction with lin-

ear parks through wide breaks in the buildings so that the

greenery of the pedestrian route merges with the greenery of

the

courtyard, while at the junction with the street through

wide openings in the ground oors of buildings. In the lat-

ter case, the relationship is more visual in nature reduced

to the eect of permeation and multi-plane space, which

would create a unique atmosphere of the designed street.

We adopted similar solutions in the competition con -

cept of the model housing estate Nowe Jeziorki in War saw,

which was to be implemented in one stage and intended

entirely for rent as part of the Mieszkanie Plus housing

program (Fig. 13). In our project, the role of the commu-

nication and functional backbone of the building complex

was taken over by the street with basic services located

along it, while the compositional keystones of the com-

plex are the bazaar at the suburban railway station and two

city squares connected by a pedestrian green route, where

social functions are located. According to the postulates

of American activist Jane Jacobs, the quarters forming the

tissue of the estate are short, which makes it possible to

turn the corner and choose dierent walking routes [23].

The courtyards of the quarters, opening onto each other

on the ground oor with wide openings, visually “seize”

fragments of public spaces into their interiors.

In both of the projects mentioned above, due to their ur-

ban scale, a signicant issue is to combine the greenery of

126 Krzysztof Mycielski

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References

the courtyards with the landscape of public spaces. Accord-

ing to the competition description by Justyna Dzie dziej-

ko, a landscape designer cooperating with the Grupa 5

Architekci studio, […] the concept of “Śródmieś cie Leś-

ne” merges the idea of combining modern architecture and

nature. […] Linear parks have the character of landscape

gardens. […] Courtyards within quarters have a develop-

ment character dierent from linear parks and a more ur-

ban landscape style [24, pp. 14–15].

On the other hand, in the concept of the Nowe Jeziorki

housing estate, the intended advantage of the project was

the layout of the courtyards on real land, not on under-

ground garages, thanks to the location of all housing estate

parking spaces outside the quarters in separately designed

parking buildings. This allowed for the introduction of

high greenery with a park character into the space of the

courtyards.

Distinctive signs for both concepts were natural reten-

tion reservoirs in the form of ponds designed in the public

space. All the above solutions in the eld of landscape

architecture are related to the use of species biodiversi-

ty postulated in the context of climate warming and the

avoidance of the so-called heat islands by increasing the

porosity of the urban tissue.

Summary. Design philosophy

Concentrating on a fragment of our creative search,

in this case regarding the model of quarter development,

I tried to show how spatial solutions, which are most often

the result of a specic architectural task contracted, can

aect the beliefs of designers.

In autumn 2019, architects from Grupa 5 presented their

achievements at a meeting in the Zodiak architecture pa vi-

lion

in Warsaw. For the rst time, they decided to summa-

rize their shared approach to the profession in the form of

several theses, which became a pretext for discussion with

the audience. By referring to them, even in the journalistic

form in which they were written, we can arrive at a sum-

mary of this article as follows:

1. Design is a complex process involving many archi-

tects and engineers with dierent competencies. For this

reason, a modern architectural studio should be based

on perfect partnership cooperation between people. The

strength of such a model is the exchange of ideas, and

above all diversity, which is in contradiction with the star

image of the architect promoted by the media.

2. We do not die for architecture (which we emphasize

at every interview with job candidates). We do not have

to prove anything with our work, let alone be avant-gar-

de. An architect must have time for himself, time needed

to experience ordinary everyday reality, from which he

draws reection and inspiration for design.

It is not our goal to design visual gadgets or spectacu-

lar spaces that look good in visualizations and photos. What

we aim at is to create a valuable environment for life – to

live, to work, to study, to spend time in the city… An envi-

ronment with which a person will identify. Equally import-

ant to us as the buildings themselves is the space between

them and what can happen between people in it [25]. It is

not a coincidence that the title of the book devoted to our

studio does not include buildings, only “life and space”.

4. When we design in the existing context, to us as im-

portant as genius loci is the user’s sense of identity with

the place.

Translated by

Bogusław Setkowicz

City-forming solutions for quarter development in the designs of the Grupa 5 Architekci studio 127

Abstract

City-forming solutions for quarter development in the designs of the Grupa 5 Architekci studio

The Warsaw-based Grupa 5 Architekci studio is a team of several dozen designers operating on the Polish construction market, shaped by

the experience of the Polish transformation. After two decades of activity, the architects who created it undertook a joint attempt at ideological

self-denition.

The aim of the article is to show how personal conclusions drawn from education, subsequent practice, the evolution of the theory of architecture

as well as personal beliefs and experiencing space translate into specic design solutions. Since one of the architectural threads connecting people

co-creating the studio are achievements in the eld of designing quarter development, the method adopted in the article is a detailed analysis of this

part of the work of Grupa 5, from the implementation of individual buildings to the urban planning assumptions of large housing complexes.

The article ends with the author’s theses on the philosophy of design, which result from design practice.

Key words: Grupa 5 Architekci, quarter development, design philosophy, Polish architecture, architectural identity

Streszczenie

Rozwiązania miastotwórcze dla zabudowy kwartałowej w projektach pracowni Grupa 5 Architekci

Warszawska pracownia Grupa 5 Architekci to działający na polskim rynku budowlanym kilkudziesięcioosobowy zespół projektantów ukształ-

towany przez doświadczenia polskiej transformacji. Po dwóch dekadach działalności tworzący go architekci podjęli wspólną próbę ideowego

samookreślenia.

Celem artykułu jest pokazanie, jak osobiste wnioski płynące z edukacji, późniejszej praktyki, ewolucji teorii architektury oraz z osobistych prze-

konań i doświadczania przestrzeni przekładają się na konkretne rozwiązania projektowe. Ponieważ jednym z architektonicznych wątków łączących

ludzi współtworzących pracownię są dokonania w zakresie projektowania zabudowy kwartałowej, metodą przyjętą w artykule jest szczegółowa

analiza tego wycinka twórczości Grupy 5 od realizacji pojedynczych budynków do urbanistycznych założeń dużych zespołów mieszkaniowych.

Artykuł zamykają płynące z praktyki projektowej – autorskie tezy dotyczące lozoi projektowania.

Słowa kluczowe: Grupa 5 Architekci, zabudowa kwartałowa, lozoa projektowania, architektura polska, tożsamość architektoniczna

[20] Bielecki C., Gra w miasto, Fundacja Dom Dostępny, Warszawa

1996.

[21] Alexander C., A pattern language: towns, buildings, construction,

Oxford University Press, New York 1977.

[22] Bigaj P., Idea współczesnego kwartału zabudowy mieszkaniowej

jako przyczynek do restytucji przestrzeni miasta, “Przestrzeń Urba-

nistyka Architektura” 2006, Vol. 1, 5–18.

[23] Jacobs J., Śmierć i życie wielkich miast Ameryki, Centrum Archi-

tektury, Warszawa 2014.

[24] Grupa 5 Architekci, Koncepcja wielobranżowa projektu osiedla

mieszkaniowego z funkcjami towarzyszącymi “Śródmieście Leśne”

w Bydgoszczy pomiędzy ulicami Leśną, Sułkowskiego, Dwernickie-

go i Kamienną, Warszawa 2015 [manuscript in: Pracownia Grupa

5 Architekci].

[25] Gehl J., Życie między budynkami. Użytkowanie przestrzeni publicz-

nych, Wydawnictwo RAM, Kraków 2009.