Bad Architecture: Buildings That Destroy Landscapes
The concept of ugliness is difficult to grasp in contemporary architecture because the creative freedom and rich variety of forms that characterise our times allow for a building to have practically any shape. But it’s not difficult to find designs that have simply defaced their surroundings and have had a negative impact on the landscape.
Web portals and social media are full of groups whose members collect examples of the worst buildings in various parts of Poland. Browsing through them, it’s not difficult to come to the conclusion that we’re constantly surrounded by extremely ugly architecture. At the same time, it’s easy to see a certain divergence of opinions there. It turns out that there are just as many supporters of simple, modernist structures as those who criticize them as monotonous and boring; at the sight of an ornate building with lavish detail, equally numerous groups of defenders and opponents of such architecture speak out. It will turn out that some prefer smooth glass surfaces, others pastel colours on the facades; some are attracted to postmodernism while still others prefer classic forms; there are also ascetics who worship modernist minimalism. The matter gets even more complicated when experts join the debate because they evaluate buildings not only in terms of aesthetics, but also their historical value and whether they represent an important trend in the development of architecture.
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Solpol building, Wrocław, photo: Kamila Kubat/AG
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Take the Solpol building in Wrocław, for example – certainly one of the most significant expressions of Polish postmodernism, which, however, has a considerable number of opponents who find it difficult to accept its striking appearance. Or perhaps the churches built in the second half of the 20th century – they are untraditional, expressive, overpowering and austere, not due to malice or architects’ lack of talent (as we sometimes hear), but an outcome of the extremely complicated system of relations between the state and the church, as well as social, financial, and even architectural conditions, since expressionistic forms were often designed in opposition to the monotony of the large housing estates built at the same time.
Monotonous order or joyful chaos
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Reconstruction of a villa in Zakopane, photo: Marek Podmokł/AG
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Jerzy Gurawski, a highly respected architect based in Poznań, has often stated in interviews that the orderly, standardized, and highly regulated architectural landscape of Poland’s western neighbours bores him – he admits that the Polish landscape, which is chaotic but rich in various forms, is incomparably more interesting. And again: there are probably as many defenders of this thesis as there are enemies of spatial clutter who dream of rows of identical houses replacing the cacophony of forms that make up Polish cities and towns.
If there are so many different opinions about buildings, and if so many elements can influence these opinions, by what criteria should architecture be judged? Who can say which building is good and which is bad? After all, as the saying often quoted in such situations goes, 'there is no disputing about tastes'. Architecture, even if it is created on a private plot of land and paid for with private money, is not a private matter because it affects the surroundings. It co-creates the space that other people use and in which they function. This is why the most universal criterion for assessing the quality of new architecture is whether it respects the landscape in which it has appeared.
A giga-hotel for everyone
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Visualisation of a high-rise building by the beach in Międzyzdroje, photo: developer's press materials/https://siemaszko.pl/
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Let’s take a look at one of the most recently presented designs: a Szczecin-based developer named Lesław Siemaszko wishes to build two twin skyscrapers on a beach in Międzyzdroje. Each will have 33 floors and nearly 200 apartments. They were designed by Arkadiusz Czarkowski and Sławomir Wunsch, who used very traditional, universal patterns – in other words, skyscrapers on the beach in the style of corporate office buildings, which have been constructed for many years in most cities all over the world. Although the buildings themselves can hardly be called particularly ugly, they are quite plain and ordinary, not very interesting, and it’s hard not to consider this investment quite barbaric for the landscape. There are beaches in the world densely built up with large hotels, but constructing high-rises within a natural landscape at a small Polish resort can hardly be compared with the scale of urbanization of coastal areas in Miami or Dubai.
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Hotel Gołębiewski in Karpacz, photo: Radek Jaworski /Forum
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The owner of the Gołębiewski Hotel chain has been pursuing a similar idea of exploiting scenically valuable areas for years. In Mikołajki, Wisła, and Karpacz, gigantic buildings have already been constructed that have replaced forests in picturesque resorts. Another of the chain’s investment projects has recently come to an end. The Gołębiewski Hotel in Pobierowo is currently the largest hotel in Poland, with 1,100 rooms and attractions such as an underground year-round ice rink, a bowling alley, and two cinemas. And once again: is the architecture of these buildings itself worth condemnation? Not necessarily; the building simply represents a very standard style of mass lodging facility. It is bad architecture, however, because it ‘pushes’ and dominates the landscape and devastates the coastal area, and in order to provide access to the hotel for thousands of guests and suppliers it will be necessary to cut down the forest and pave more parts of it.
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Stobnica Castle, photo by Lukasz Dejnarowic/Forum
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Another very controversial investment – the ‘castle’ in Stobnica, within the Notecka Forest – is a brutal encroachment into a protected landscape. Waldemar Szeszuła designed a gigantic building stylized as a medieval fortress for a private investor. Historical forms of architecture and references to ancient styles are very popular among Poles, and are often appreciated much more than modern designs. However, it is hard to find admirers of this building: both the scale of the building and its location in a valuable natural area are difficult to accept.
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Renovated Resursa Rzemieślnicza, Ilumino housing estate, Łódź, photo by Tomasz Stańczak /AG
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New investments resulting from egotistical motives can also harm the city’s landscape. The urban tissue was torn apart by the Marina Mokotów housing estate built in 2003 in Warsaw (designed by Kuryłowicz & Associates), which was so efficiently fenced off that it disturbed the natural traffic routes, creating a closed enclave separated from its surroundings. Fortunately this idea, detrimental to the city, turned out to be merely an episode, not a model to follow. As we have already established, bad architecture is, above all, a kind of architecture that’s not necessarily ‘ugly’, but which harms both the landscape and people – such as the Liwa shopping centre in Kwidzyn, which a few years ago ‘overgrew’ two residential buildings, surrounding them not only with huge, blind walls, but also with ramps for deliveries.
Another questionable idea of preserving a monument can be seen in the overdevelopment of a villa in Zaruskiego Street in Zakopane, the addition of a residential wing to the roof of the historical Resursa Rzemieślnicza building, and Kilińskiego Street in Łódź (where a building dating back to the beginning of the 20th century was carefully renovated but received a deforming ‘cap’ and simply disappeared between very high blocks of flats).
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Nursery School No. 412 with Integrated Branches, 8 Pála Telekiego St., Warsaw, photo: Grażyna Jaworska /AG
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Although there are no coherent criteria for evaluating the beauty of contemporary architecture, since modernity has eradicated the canons to which one might refer and in relation to which one should position subsequent buildings, there are some investments which have undoubtedly failed. For example, the kindergarten on Telekiego Street in the Warsaw district of Kabaty (designed by Włodzimierz Jastrzębski and Ryszard Kufel). Although the architects probably had good intentions of creating a facility that would be user friendly for children, maintaining appropriate aesthetics for them, the result is a kitschy building that doesn’t have a positive influence on the young generation.
Although the Crooked House in Sopot is a popular tourist attraction, it’s difficult to consider it a successful building. Each city has such ‘monstrosities’ – on Grodzka Street in Gdańsk, a hotel was built with undulating walls for some unknown reason, and in Olsztyn a building was erected whose colourful and undulating facades are derisively compared to the style of Antonio Gaudi. A nightmarish two-storey superstructure made of black sheet metal appeared above a neo-gothic tenement house in Wrocław, and a light, modernist pavilion in Sosnowiec, once housing the Wedding Palace, was covered with styrofoam. But ugly, kitschy, tacky buildings can be rebuilt. It is more difficult to recover the devastated environment.
Trees versus architecture
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The Temple of Divine Providence (Świątynia Opatrzności ) in Warsaw, photo by Łukasz Szczepański/Reporter/East News
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The increasingly visible effects of climate change, as well as the coronavirus pandemic, have made us even more sensitive to the issue of greenery, both that which occurs naturally in the landscape and that planted in cities. The latter has a strong relationship with architecture. Some believe that it harms it – such as those in charge of the post-Cistercian abbey in Krzeszów in Lower Silesia, who decided to cut down an alley of trees leading to the baroque Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The wide view of the two-tower façade turned out to be more valuable than the trees. Greenery is also becoming a victim of renovations (called ‘revitalizations’) of city squares and marketplaces, from which trees are removed, creating in their place concrete deserts, apparently considered by city officials to be more ‘stylish’.
In recent months, Poland has been flooded by photos from Kutno, where one of the city squares has not only lost its greenery but has been completely replaced by a concrete garage. Its roof, high above the sidewalk, has been turned into a public space of questionable quality and attractiveness. Residents of Miasteczko Wilanów, a new residential area in the south of Warsaw, have repeatedly raised the issue of the lack of greenery around the Holy Providence Church, which towers over the area. The impressive church stands on a fenced-in, vacant lot that would certainly accommodate both trees and spaces needed by the church for outdoor events (those usually held in the summer would be more bearable for participants in the shade of trees than on concrete).
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Kutno market square after revitalisation, photo: Jakub Kamiński/East News
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Bad architecture comes in many guises, and it doesn’t always have to do with the shape or exterior decor of the building itself. It is easy to ridicule ‘churches that look like chickens’ or ‘macabre buildings’ (two of the keywords under which photos of buildings deemed ugly are being grouped on social media). However, what’s most lacking in our cities are spatial order, harmony and consistency in the creation of buildings, not ‘pretty’ houses – not only because nobody knows how to define this concept, but also because a single bad structure won’t do much harm to a well-designed urban space.
Translated by Scotia Gilroy