Issue 2(66)/2021

DOI: 10.5277/ARCHITECTUS

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Articles

Bogna Ludwig - The role of fountains in the urban space of Habsburg Silesia in modern times

doi:10.37190/arc210201

The subject of the presented publication are fountains which appeared in the market squares of Lower Silesian towns in modern times. Apart from several 17th century and Renaissance water fountains, all of them were created at the turn of the 18th century until the 1830s. during the period of reconstruction after the damage caused by the Thirty Years’ War. The aim of this article was to determine, on the basis of analyses of forms and iconographic programmes of Silesian fountains, in comparison with analogous European examples, their role in shaping the urban composition of town squares and market squares and their commemorative message. As a result of the study, it was observed that initially, with the introduction of water features, spatial effects were arranged in a Renaissance manner, creating small concentrically composed units. Subsequently, Baroque layouts were introduced. First with short viewing axes forming urban interiors and finally with long composition axes running out of the depths of the streets and including numerous decorative views in shortened perspectives. Decorative fountains were included in the system of ordering and decorating the entire city. Dates, initials and sometimes whole surnames were used on fountains to commemorate benefactors, founders and caretakers of reconstructions of buildings and public facilities and waterworks. With the symbolism of depictions of the biblical dove and the mythological figures of Neptune, Triton and Atlas, like their European counterparts they became monuments of peace and signs of loyalty to the monarchy. Most of these investments can be linked to the two most prominent representatives of power in this period, Prince Elector Franz Ludwig von Pfalz-Neuburg and Johann Anton Gotthard Schaffgotsch.

Keywords:

    fountains

    modern-urbanism

    baroque

    silesia

Adriana Sowała - The history of the Sieradz’s Old Town hidden in the former Tatarczy Market Square

doi:10.37190/arc210202

The article presents the history of the elements of the former Tatarczy Market Square, which constitute an important part of the history of the Sieradz’s Old Town. The article deals with the history of elements of the Sieradz’s Old Town, such as stockade, gates, street system, the former Dominican Monastery and craft. The history of the Tatarczy Market Square is episodic and unique – it points to necessity to popularize information about this place and continue exploring its story.     During the work, the methodology appropriate for historical and interpretative research was used. The information on the spatial development of Sieradz and the history of individual fragments of the Old Town was collected and analyzed. To get to know this story, the available archival references, literature and archaeological research were used. An analysis of these sources allows us to draw conclusions about the history of this part of the city.     The article also discusses the role of historical urban spaces and the need and ways of presenting their history by architectural and urban planning activities. For this purpose, the revitalization of the Small Market Square in Bystrzyca Kłodzka and the concept of transforming the Tatarczy Market Square in Sieradz were presented. The amount and value of the information collected on the Tatarczy Market Square proves how important it is to take care of historical spaces, stop negative transformations, explore their secrets and, above all, save them from oblivion. The collected knowledge about the Tatarczy Market Square certainly requires supplementing with archaeological research on a large scale. Nevertheless, it does indicate some directions of research that should be continued.     Disseminating the history of the Tatarczy Market Square will allow for a greater understanding of the history of the Old Town in Sieradz. Its inconspicuousness and mystery combined with the number of elements that made up this place make it unique and worth exploring.

Keywords:

    tatarczy-market-square

    sieradz

    sieradzs-old-town

    urban-planning

    architecture

Marzanna Jagiełło, Grzegorz Malkusz, Sebastian Szostek - School and kindergarten gardens as a place of education. History and contemporary design trends

doi:10.37190/arc210203

This article presents the history of school and kindergarten gardens in the context of changing educational programs and social needs in a global review that also takes into account Poland. It was based on source texts and rich literature on this issue, including its historical, didactic and socio-ecological aspects. Next, contemporary layouts of this type are presented, and then innovative architectural and spatial solutions are discussed. This was done by means of the presentation of the selected projects developed for educational facilities functionally connected with gardens, mainly schools, but also kindergartens. Some of them have already been implemented. Some still remain at the concept stage. All of them present the direction of changes in the approach to designing educational facilities for children, being a response to contemporary didactic and social challenges.

Keywords:

    school-gardens

    nursery-gardens

    education

    school-architecture

Wessel de Jonge - Concrete heritage in the Netherlands. Valuation and conservation of concrete and reinforced concrete structures

doi:10.37190/arc210204

The article deals with reinforced concrete structures in the Netherlands in the interwar period. The aim of the article was to present the changes in the use of reinforced concrete and the introduction of various light concrete products for the construction of light façades structures such as curtain walls. Reinforced concrete, which appeared in Dutch architecture around 1900, causes conservation problems today, which are discussed in the article on the example of the Sint Jobsveem (Jan J. Kanters), the Zonnestraal Sanatorium in Hilversum (Jan Duiker, Bernard Bijvoet and Jan Gerko Wiebenga) and the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam (Johannes Brikman, Leendert van der Vlugt and Jan Gerko Wiebenga), involving the author’s own experiences related to renovation works on these buildings. The most serious problem today is the porosity of concrete and the process of its carbonation due to the high level of CO2 caused by air pollution. In the past, the influence of cement alkalinity and its role in protecting reinforcement against corrosion was not well understood. The damaging effects of curing agents such as calcium chlorides were unknown. The focus was mainly on the relationship between the water-cement ratio and the compressive strength. Today, concrete repair methods are usually selected individually, depending on whether we are dealing with exposed or plastered concrete work, and on the size and scale of the damage. The most effective way to protect concrete against carbonation is to use a special waterproof protective coating – offering the highest possible diffusion resistance to carbon, sulfur and chloride ions and the lowest possible diffusion resistance to water vapor. Such a coating protects concrete against the penetration of CO2 and acid ions, and at the same time allows free evaporation of moisture from the concrete to the environment. The described experiences show that even heavily damaged concrete can be restored. It is a matter of cost and the challenge of keeping its original appearance.

Keywords:

    concrete

    reinforced-concrete

    the-netherlands

    conservation

    interwar-period

Denise Gaudiot, João Pernão, Laura Martins - The street as sociability space: the case of the Grand Avenues in Paris and Lisbon in the 19th century

doi:10.37190/arc210205

The industrial revolution, as well as the French revolution in the 18th century, marked the period of transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe. These two events generated two new social classes: the working class and the bourgeoisie. With the progressive concentration of these emerging classes in urban centers, to the detriment of rural areas, the movement of people, machines and goods became an essential urban function, generating new social public spaces.     This article proposes an analysis, based on a literature review, of the streets known as Grands Boulevards, proposed by George Eugène Haussmann for Paris in the middle of the 19th century, and their role as a sociability space. The aim of this article is to present similarities between the Parisian avenues and Portuguese solutions of streets in Lisbon in social and urban-design terms. The repetition of Haussmannian characteristic was seen in several cities in the world, however in the city of Lisbon it was designed on a much larger scale. The construction of a new avenue, known as Avenida da Liberdade, for the growth and beautification of the city was inspired by Haussmann work in Paris and became a place to see and be seen in. The consumption habits of the new classes within a modern machine city, asked for different street shapes and sizes, which were designed for everyday use in order to organize the city’s urban fabric. Wider, greener and equipped with urban furniture, these representative avenues both in Paris and Lisbon were more inviting and open to a diversity of social classes and their coexistence, until then segregated at public spaces.

Keywords:

    avenues

    street

    hausmmann

    sociability

    public-space

Michał Domińczak - Ideological identity of New Urbanism

doi:10.37190/arc210206

The article is devoted to the issues of ideological identity of New Urbanism and it is an attempt to expand the general knowledge about this particular phenomenon of contemporary urbanism and a complete idea of social life. It also undertakes, to a lesser extent, a polemic with some of the theses of its critics.     The article adopts a method of deduction. First of all, the official declarations of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), including, in particular, the Charter of the New Urbanism were analyzed. Then, the writings and publications of the precursors and founders of New Urbanism were examined. A mention was also made of the theories presented by various groups, which are now the point of reference for New Urbanists as their mentors. The conducted analyses allowed us to lay out the thesis that research conclusions are sufficient to identify New Urbanism as a conservative, or more precisely – a traditionalist movement, which aims for creative improvement of the good habits in town planning and restoration of the continuity of cultural and spatial development of local communities. New Urbanism is a defined, comprehensive philosophy of a city, understood as an idea of a diverse and family-based living community set in specific spatial conditions. This idea of local “urbanity” – a concept of social life represented in New Urbanism, fits in with the ideal, Aristotelian republican system (politeia). New Urbanism represents at least five out of six fundamental attributes of a conservative mindset: realism in the judgment of reality; affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life; faith that man must take control of his anarchic impulses; conviction that a civilized society requires order and classes; and acceptance of the apparent principle that change and progress are not identical. Striving for an equilibrium between the freedom of choice and the social responsibility is fully in line with a conservative mindset, too. Thereby, New Urbanism became a counterbalance to both the neoliberal, consumer-driven exaggerated individualism and neo-Marxist collectivism.

Keywords:

    new-urbanism

    conservatism

    traditionalism

    communitarianism

Marcin Brzezicki - Disturbance of transparency in the architecture of contemporary glass façades. Part 2

doi:10.37190/arc210207

Over the last two decades, new trends have emerged in the design of translucent façades. Those trends result from the dynamic technological progress and achievements in material engineering. The trends that are associated with the use of envelopes that interfere with the transmission of light through the façade are particularly interesting. This is strongly related to the significant transformation that took place in the dialectic of the building, the transformation of the “façade” into an “envelope”. The paper presents the author’s original distinction between the two most characteristic main sub-trends, distinguished based on optical phenomena occurring within the façade. The proposed division includes two main groups of disturbances: homogenous and heterogeneous. The former is present where panes of glass are used to disperse/diffuse light evenly, while the latter in façades with strong – usually printed – ornamentation. The article systematizes the issues of transparency disturbance in contemporary architecture and presents the typology of light-transmitting façades, in which this phenomenon takes place. The author also presents a matrix of relations that systematizes the presented case studies. Only this type of matrix makes it possible to illustrate an issue in which more than one variable is present. An assignment of the case studies to the trends and the determination of trend models are also included in the paper. The first part of the paper (published in March 2021) presents the introduction, methodology and simplified typology, the second one presents case studies, discussion and conclusions.

Keywords:

    transparency

    theory-of-architecture

    façade-glazing

    printing-on-glass

    coatings-on-glass

Salih Ceylan, Mehmet Emre Arslan - Living Lab approach to community training for recycling. A workshop experience

doi:10.37190/arc210208

The subject of the article is Living Labs – innovative platforms for meetings and exchange of ideas between specialists and users in order to develop and implement improvements oriented towards the needs of the latter. These modifications may concern not only products and services, but also, for example, the urban living environment. Living Labs are among those enterprises that approach sustainable development in a social context. Living Labs’ practical activities relate directly to the everyday problems of local communities, and in the search for solutions, the opinions and ideas of their members are taken into account, therefore these platforms are potentially an important place helping to shape sustainable societies.The aim of this study was to present the benefits of living laboratories. This was done on the basis of the case study of Başakşehir Living Lab, an organization that conducts research on the efficient use of natural resources and the improvement of the quality of life in one of the districts of Istanbul, the city with the highest population in Turkey. The publication focused on the presentation of a series of workshops entitled “From electronic waste to design”, the purpose of which was to show the possibility of reusing electronic waste. From the methodological point of view, the article was prepared on the basis of the authors’ own experience related to the organization and conducting of workshops and a review of the literature, on the basis of which the theoretical foundation for the undertaken practical activities was outlined. The article also discusses the results of surveys which were carried out at the end of the series of workshops, which showed that such projects have a significant impact on building and raising the pro-ecological awareness of participants.

Keywords:

    living-lab

    sustainable-societies

    waste-management

    electronic-waste

Rafał Oleksik - Healthy housing environment in contemporary investments. Contribution to the research on the Mieszkaj w Mieście – Wizjonerów Estate in Krakow

doi:10.37190/arc210209

The article is devoted to the contemporary, multi-stage, Krakow-based investment Mieszkaj w Mieście – Osiedle Wizjonerów. The study mainly refers to its completed stages, Wizjonerów and Kompozytorów, however, while discussing the individual features of the investment, due to the context and the multi-stage nature of the estate, information on its other phases was also used. The first part of this article is devoted to an attempt to define the concept of a “healthy housing environment” by formulating its features in relation to the scale of the city, housing estate and apartment. In the second part, the characteristics of the investment were made based on the above-mentioned features. This fragment was prepared using available information about the estate, statistical data, spatial data, existing research on the district in which the investment is located, literature and legal acts review, as well as our own observations. After performing the characteristics, it was found that the adopted features of the “healthy housing environment” are appropriate from the point of view of future research. As a consequence, exemplary research methods that can be used to carry out a detailed analysis of the housing estate were proposed, and a preliminary evaluation of the estate in the context of the issues discussed was made.

Keywords:

    contemporary-housing-estate

    healthy-housing-environment

    mieszkaj-w-mieście-osiedle-wizjonerów

Michał Malewczyk - The usage of the openBIM idea in architectural design on the example of Blender and BlenderBIM add-on

doi:10.37190/arc210210

The aim of the article is an analysis of the method and advancement of the openBIM idea implementation, clearly defined by the buildingSMART organization. The conducted analyses are limited to the Blender program and the BlenderBIM add-on and were embedded in the context of the work of an architect and other IT solutions. The article presents four aspects of the openBIM concept implementation. The first approach relates to a process of data exchanging between different computer applications using the open IFC standard. Another two focus on the method of creating and coding the three-dimensional geometry itself, through the prism of cooperation between various entities and further editing possibilities. The last aspect deals with the extension of the openBIM concept by combining it with the open-source idea. The author bases his considerations on the existing, analyzed scientific material, as well as on his own experience in the everyday reality of a designer and a teacher.

Keywords:

    openbim

    blender

    blenderbim

    ifc

    buildingsmart

Andrzej Jarczewski - Yes is more comics as an architectural manifesto

doi:10.37190/arc210211

The aim of the article was to present a comic book as a new medium of communicating the architectural manifesto and to highlight the transmission possibilities that this genre of art brings to architects. The subject of our study was the archicomic Yes is more created by Bjarke Ingels, the founder of the Danish architectural firm BIG. The visual and narrative means used by the author, which are characteristic of the language of comics, have been analyzed. A study was conducted on what linguistic and graphic forms the author used to take advantage of the popularity of the medium chosen by him. In a declaration so important for every author, which is a creative manifesto, the choice of the medium of communication also becomes an artistic declaration. During the research, the case of the architectural manifesto of the British design group Archigram was investigated, which first published it as a comic book. The article describes how Bjerk Ingels, in his archicomic, gave his thoughts on the architect’s methods of operation, how to create architecture, and how this architecture should exist and function. The 400-page long graphic novel used the divisions, narrative lines and visual effects characteristic of a comic book. The author, appearing here as a comic book hero, uses images illustrating the methods of designing architecture and the effects of this work. The conclusions of the study are in line with Ingels’ actual achievements. Referring to the phenomenon that the comic has now become in the form of a manifesto gives measurable marketing effects, confirming the effectiveness of the medium used. Yes is more is the most cited example of an architectural comic today.

Keywords:

    architecture

    comics

    manifesto

    bjarke-ingels

Tomasz Konior - Distinctness of shaping form and the context of place – open landscape and urban structure

doi:10.37190/arc210212

The subject of this publication represents thoughts and reflections of an architect-practitioner, concerning the differences in shaping architecture depending on the context of the location. The subject of our considerations are buildings designed under the supervision of the author of this text, in Konior Studio. Two examples of buildings in an open landscape are presented: Gymnasium and Cultural Center in Warsaw Białołęka, located outside the urban area, on the edge of the Vistula River, and an office building that is the head office of Press Glass in Konopiska, located in a transformed, green area of a former agricultural wasteland. The next two examples concern buildings located in the urban structure: the Symphony building, which is an extension of the Academy of Music in Katowice, and the building of the State Music School Complex in Warsaw. The author analyzes distinctiveness in the designer’s way of thinking as well as distinctiveness in the solutions shaping architecture depending on the context of place. He also underlines the importance of continuity of thought from the sketch-dream which contains the main idea of the structure, until its implementation. The text is based on relevant literature, supported by in situ research done on characteristic buildings, as well as the architect’s own experiences from the designing process and building development, which served as an illustration of the theses put forth.

Keywords:

    contemporary-architecture

    architectural-design

    site-context

    open-landscape

    urban-structure