Teka Komisji Urbanistyki i Architektury Oddziału Polskiej Akademii Nauk w Krakowie

Wola Justowska has long been thought of as the most attractive urban villa district of Krakow. A timber church from the XVI century that had originally been built in Komorowice Śląskie was relocated here in the year 1948, subsequently burning down a fire in 1978 in unknown circumstances. It had been rebuilt soon after, only to be set on fire a second time in 2002. After discussing numerous ideas and locations of its reconstruction, the design team developed a final version of its design, which featured the reconstruction of the church in its original location – in accordance with the will of the residents of Wola – which had been preceded by appropriate landscape analyses. The design calls for the reconstruction of the timber church in a slightly modified manner and placing it upon a concrete plinth, which is to be partially sheltered by the varied terrain around it. The aim of this idea was similar to that of the initial reconstruction, namely, to reconcile the form of the historical building that is to be reconstructed with the modern needs of the parish.

In the 19th and in the first half of the 20th century numerous parks were built all over Europe, which, though different in many aspects, still show certain similarities in space structure and composition. The question is, whether late modern public parks, built in the second half on the 20th century follow the classical design and composition „rules”? How did the extremely functionalist design approach of the era after WW2 influence park design? The answer is the result of a detailed analysis on space structure and composition principles of the parks built in these times. In this research I analyzed according to specific criteria the Jubileum Park in Budapest, one of the most prominent work of the late modern period in Hungary. The 12 ha Jubileum Park (built in 1965) is located in the heart of Budapest, on the top of Gellért Hill, next to river Danube. Laying high above the city on an exposed hillside, the park offers a broad view of the whole city. The structure of the park is basically determined by the extreme topography, and one of the great value of the park is the natural looking grading, which determines the space structure and fits to the natural terrain very nicely, and the walkway system, which fits to the contour lines and explores the whole site. Fitting to the windy and exposed hilltop position, in space division the terrain in the most appealing, the plantation is only secondary. From formal point an interesting feature is the dominance of two dimensional elements with characteristic shape, like flowerbeds or ornamental pools and the curves of the walkway system. Though the main function of the park is to underline the fantastic visual potential with providing viewpoints, there are some playgrounds as well. For the visitor of today the specialty of the park celebrating the 50th anniversary this year, is, that – disregarding some minor changes – there were no alterations since it exists. As a first step I analyzed the space structure of the park, putting an extra emphasis on the existence or lack of any axis, on the accentuation of the park entrances, on the space organization inside the park and on the existence/lack of hierarchy. Important aspect of analysis was the connection of the park to connecting urban fabric and green surfaces nearby. The next step was to compare the results with other parks built in former times, but having similar natural setting. The goal of the research is to determine, how much the spatial composition of Jubileum Park is different from the spatial composition of classical parks. The results might help to realize, what kind of spatial composition and space structure is typical of late modern parks. It would be important to preserve these space structural specialties of the Jubileum Park during a more and more urgent renovation.

The text is a general outline of the character of Professor Stefan Żychoń – a native of Zakopane, an excellent skier and architect – the co-founder and a professor of the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology. This work is an introduction to a scientific work by the Professor, published after more than half a century from the time of its writing, which he devoted to the matter of the beginnings and the development of industry at the foot of the Tatra Mountains.

The analysis of provisions of Local Spatial Management Plans and selected cases of practical implementation of such provisions showed, that the provisions of spatial law practically stay without any relation to rules of urban composition and spatial order. The research was limited to analysis of urban composition, without considering all the conditions for planning process and its results. The town planning is treated in this article as planned space resulted from clear urban concept based on general urban composition rules. Town planning does not refer in this case to spatial chaos which can be a result of implementation of Local Spatial Management Plan.

The article presents the urban layout, which is a best-preserved example of industrial estates in northern Italy. The subject of the research is a public space of the Crespi d’Adda settlement in the Province of Bergamo in Lombardy. Particular attention is paid to green areas occurring there, and their current use. Program of the public areas was very varied. The main role, besides the factory, held the public park, which is an important compositional and ideological. element of the layout. Research task was to show on example of Crespi, the current situation of former settlements in northern Italy, which are for the author reference material for settlements analyzed in Poland.

The metropolis of Barcelona is one of the first ten Europe's urban agglomerations. The geographic and natural conditions of the city - located in area between the sea and the forested mountain ranges running parallel to the coast and divided by broad river valleys - have considerably influenced the formation of its hybrid urban structure. The heart of the agglomeration is still Barcelona, established by the Phoenicians in a natural port at the foot of the Montjiuc hill, growing together with its neighbouring towns for more than two thousand years now, incessantly filling one fragment of natural landscape after another with urban fabric. Monumental edifices and high-rise buildings erected in all historic periods have been inorming visitors of the power of teh city and the same time defining places which are important for its urban composition and status. Recent decades have brought no revolutionary changes in this trend. What was changed, though, are the architectural forms of those most emblematic structures in the scale of the metropolis.

The traditional model of the multinational city, which was based on the harmonious coexistence of separated ethnic residential districts and common multinational public areas, where the exchange of services and goods took place, gives way to the contemporary model, based on the principle of dispersion and segmentation. In the postmodern city virtual space has increasingly becoming a platform of exchange: numerous economic, social and cultural functions are performed through the ubiquitous electronic communications. Public space, symbolic for the European concept of the city, is losing many of its previous functions in favour of the Internet. The dispersion of immigrants in the structure of the multinational city is conducive to the emergence of an attractive, kaleidoscopic and multicultural urban organism, their separation in ghettos results in intensification of pathologies. Integration is assuming the form of a network, while separation that of walls.

An attempt has been made to present “continuity” which, despite artists’ denials, is a prerequisite for the creation of novelty. Subsequent movements and styles (trends today) in architecture have tried to deny the ideas and forms of their predecessors. Avant-garde art distances itself from any continuation. The original does not exist even in the modern world, let alone in post-modernity. The world is filled with shapes, colours and images of the past, unable to liberate itself from it. The artists are left with a false impression of their genius and originality. Looking at the buildings built today, one can discern the unbuilt architecture of the early twentieth century. This is by no means the accusation of lack of originality, but rather the realisation of a harsh fact that it is impossible to create complete novelty. It might have been easier for our predecessors without access to the Internet and the World Library of Imagination.

The small scale green areas, urban parks, urban forests or natural green areas are vital components of the urban structure of cities. This paper, using examples from Bratislava, analyzes the successful and lost opportunities to apply the concept of green space as a strategy for urban regeneration and development, and discusses the ways to incorporate this concept in the teaching and educational practices in the fields of urbanism and landscape architecture.

The article presents the project and realization of Ivigna (in Merano, Italy) aerial cable car project designed by architect Roland Baldi. The boxed form has been boldly and confidently introduced into the surrounding mountains, despite distancing itself from standard references to genius loci of the natural landscape. This project presents an avant-garde, innovative and reliable approach to the composition of architecture in the context of a mountain landscape. Despite the severity of forms, a kind of architectural rhythm and lightness of shaping the object introduced in the context of an open space can be sense here. It is essential to seek new forms and technologies for communing with nature and culture, in order to shape interesting modernist architecture, entering the twenty-first century.

The paper presents the meaning of complexity as a notion in psychology, and its influence on architectural theory in the 1960s, focusing on the notion of optimal complexity. A commentary is presented on the two texts („Network of straight lines” and „Limited complexity”) by professor architect Juliusz Żórawski from 1967, where he has introduced the term of limited complexity in relation to architecture, and where he criticizes excessively far reaching forecasts of future development. Żórawski’s concepts are parallel to those of R. Venturi at that time.

Most of the medieval Italian cities are civitas born of the ruins of the ancient Roman civilization. Their beauty ist the origin for deep esthetical experiences, to which Sławomir Gzell gave the name bellezza. There are a few characteristic features composing the "picturesqueness", painterliness and harmony of those cities, which lead the observer to strong emotions and constant, sensual exploration. The author contemplates the aspects creating the phenomrnon of beauty of Italian cities and towns - which are the metapfor of human desires and deepest cravings.

Boulevards of Vistula, which are valuable assets in the urban planning of Kraków, constitute a key cultural development of the city. The author addresses the subject of functional activation of the Vistula river valley in Kraków, in the context of citygenic processes of the district of Zabłocie. Raising the issue of synthesis of contemporary museum and architecture, presents the Master Thesis Museum of photography at Zabłocie Street in Kraków.

City parks play a very important role in an urbanized landscape. They are forms of specially designed green space which combine elements of horticulture with architecture, history and culture. The article presents historical urban parks and old residential-park complexes included in the boundaries of Poznań and currently existing in the wedge-ring system of the urban green space. The aim of the conducted research was to show their historical and current function as well as their general state of preservation and condition. The results are presented in the form of a Table where the historical significance of those objects is compared with their role today.

The study of the relationship “the natural qualities of water – the naturally built environment – the psycho- emotional conditions of human beings” from the perspective of architectural and landscape organization is essential nowadays. By investigating modern monuments we identified the methods of landscaping and composition planning to create the appropriate environment to emotionally impact the persons dealing with grief, sadness and loss. The conducted analysis of modern memorials allowed us to explore the role of water as an important compositional element in the architectural and landscape organization of monument sites. We also identified different methods of modeling water and how they affect related emotional impressions in creating the urban social environment that would preserve the historical and cultural memory from generation to generation.

Zoo is a didactic assembly induced in the system of urban greenery. It has an educational, entertainment, and scientific values. This kind of gardens, directly derived from tradition of baroque menagerie, were created from the mid-18th century. Their greatest development occured since the 2nd half of 19th century and the 20th century. The article is regarding issues of the miniature zoo in Upper Silesia created before World War II. They will be presented their resource, state of preservation and the characteristics of selected examples.

The public demand for urban parks, citizens’ use and habits are different in every age and region. But do public parks have some eternal, unchanging values in a field of social welfare? Can we regard the idea as a value, which brought to life the 18th century public park movement in today’s rushing, tinsel and digital world? Can we find any general aspect in park use forms, which is true, even to the casual visitor or a tourist in a historical garden or a daily guest in an average city park. The Budapest Városliget is one of the world’s first urban park, in some ways perhaps the first. The site was used for urban recreation from mid-18th century, and then the city of Pest decided to develop a public park to increase the livability of the city. The plan was drawn up by Heinrich Nebbien between 1813–1816. Although Nebbien’s plan realized partly due to the lack of resources, in the capital’s life the Városliget have been acting – with changing functions and space structure – as a vital part of the open space recreation for 200 years. This article focuses on the role of urban public parks, and analyses the relationship between changing space structure and use on the example of Városliget. The Városliget analysis is based on the structural and park user surveys, which were made during the last three decades. The history of the urban park clearly illustrates that cramming new functions beyond the historical outdoor recreational activities has not increased the value of the park, but significantly deteriorate what is value and what makes the park loveable. It is almost understandable that the park is not on the international tourism program, it does not appear on the map of the capital’s iconic creations, institutions. But it could be there. Everything predestines for it: two centuries of history, the idea of its birth and creation, its location in the city structure, its current old and valuable trees. The Városliget is a value in itself, without stuffing and subsuming with new institutional functions.

The term of melancholy has left the domain of human psyche becoming a contemporary philosophical experience. In contemporaneity it appears as such in creating architectural space, showing its diverse faces – melancholic subjects, poetics of space associated with an issue of duration – melancholy of monuments or melancholic ruins. Examples of the phenomenon of melancholy in architecture, described in the article, show its various incarnations, both in built and drawn space – architecture widely understood as: buildings, urban spaces, land art and artistic interventions in built environment.

In the 17th century were functioned in England two types of public spaces: piazza type of squares, devoid of plants’ composition and green city squares of a garden nature, designed for the residents of the nearby houses. Both of these presented the high-class type of public space, which with the time became popular in many cities in Europe. The aim of the paper is to define the importance of these arrangements in urban landscape, including the identification of functions which they perform today in urban tissue of cities.

The reminiscences about prof. Tadeusz Bartkowicz focus on the figure of the significant founder of the Kraków school of urban design and spatial planning as well as environment protection. The synthetic presentation of his considerable accomplishments in this field has been based on the review of his scientific and urban planning work, personal contacts with Professor and the works of other scholars, friends and students.

In 1847, the City Council of Pest opened a new central necropolis. In 1956, the cemetery was declared to be a National Pantheon and Graveyard. Nowadays, about half of the territory of the cemetery is settled, the individually or artistically remarkable tombs are protected, and the rest of the site is being re-designed as green area. In some parts of the cemetery, burials can still be carried out, but the major part of the graveyard is functioning as a public park.

Public spaces designed in a reasonable way make up an element that heals the city. They are both areas dedicated to collective recreation and a catalyst for social activities. Regarding a rational space exploitation, a reuse of grounds that are being liberated as a result of cities reorganization and revitalization of postindustrial areas should be a clue. The latter represent a unique esthetic virtues due to specificity of their original function. Comparison of the selected designs and scientific approaches had been made in order to take the floor in a debate about devastated areas revitalisation and city – and center-making capability of cultural investments. The importance of psychological links between human and his environment is set down by the presence of features defining the open form in a mentioned projects.

Hamburg with the quantity of about 18 mlns m2 is, alongside with Berlin and Munich, the biggest office centre in Germany. The large-scale planning and urban operations with the aim of location this function in the centre have been carried out since the beginning of the '60s. The policy of deployment the ofiice sites has beez modified since then, from isolating the monofunctional area of the Modernism's spirit, to multifunctional structures interplaying with the other sites when it comes to activities' potentiality with the expansion of the large-scale urban structures. Many recent realisations abound with significant buildings that bring the avant-garde approach to the idea of an office building. The high level of building technology and the importance of ecological aspects are the important distinction. The mentioned realizations has been noticed by the architectural critics and mentioned in professional press. The pride of place belongs to the works of BRT (Bothe-Richter-Teherani), that has created many innovatory office buildings.

The work concerns city parks in Poznan and their importance in the structure and landscape of the city. The research included 38 park objects of various origin , size and nature . There were evaluated the uniformity of parks’ distribution within the agglomeration, the shape of the outline of the plan ( the nature of the border line) and their surroundings.

This paper is dedicated to Voivodship Park of Culture and Recreation in Chorzów (Silesia Park) – one of the biggest of its kind in Poland and in Europe (ca. 600 ha of total area). Construction of the Park had begun in 1954 according to the design under the direction of prof. Władysław Niemirski. After many years it became an example of successful land remediation and re-naturalization of anthropogenic landscape. The whole facility though formally created in socrealism style, actually represents classical modernism’s features inspired probably by American parks with a rich recreation program.

The town of Siemianowice Śląskie is where we can find a palace-and-park complex which nowadays serves as the Town Park. The complex used to be owned by the Henckel von Donnersmarck family; today it is open to everyone looking for either active or passive leisure. Apart from its historical value (the complex being the most significant monument of the town), the park is also of special importance to the environment. It can be seen as an enclave of greenery and a sanctuary for plants and animals. Moreover, together with the neighbouring recreation area and ecological sites, the park contributes to the symbolic “green lungs” of the town

The never before published paper is one of the last writings of Juliusz Żórawski (1898–1967), professor architect and theoretician of architecture. The notion of limited complexity introduced here relates to individual characteristics of the conceptual abilities of man. Tasks of architecture are based on prognoses, and this brings with it the risk of making errors. The author criticises J. Fourastié’s prognoses related to the Earth’s overpopulation in 3000 AD, which would force building new cities above the ground, contrary to human psychosomatic nature and habitude.

Professor Lech Kłosiewicz left us on the 11th of March, 2016. The professor was known not only in the community of architects and urbanists, but also in the wider world of men of science and culture. The opinions that he formulated were always marked with a deepened scientific reflection, based on a wide ranging analysis of the matters that He investigated. As a scholar and analyst of Modern Architecture, he continually discovered in it qualities which arose from the comparison of particular works, which allowed them to be viewed as the components of the larger urban scale.

A reminiscence of prof. dr hab. inż. arch. Hanka Zaniewska, an outstanding scholar and lecturer on architecture and urban design.