SUMMARY OF PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS … fileSummary of Professional Accopmlishments 2 5 Chair of...

SUMMARY OF PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS AUTOREFERAT W JĘZYKU ANGIELSKIM

Załącznik nr 5 do wniosku o przeprowadzenie postępowania habilitacyjnego

Piotr Winskowski

Summary of Professional Accopmlishments

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Summary of Professional Accomplishments 1. First name and Surname Piotr Winskowski 2. Diplomas, certificates and academic degrees possessed – with application of names, places and years they were issued as well as title of doctoral dissertation 1. Master of Engineering (M.Sc. Eng.), graduated with distinction from the Faculty of

Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology on December 11, 1992, based on the defence of the following thesis: A Student services centre and small theatre in Krakow. Advisor Prof. Witold Korski Eng. Arch. Diploma no. 3119/A.

2. PhD in technical sciences, academic degree conferred by resolution of the Council of the Faculty of Architecture, Cracow University of Technology on 1 July 1998 based on the defence of the following PhD dissertation: Technical inspirations in formal solutions employed in modern architecture Advisor: Prof. J. Tadeusz Gawłowski. PhD Eng. Arch. Diploma no. 1205.

3. Diploma awarded on completion of training course for academic teachers at the Centre for Pedagogy and Psychology, Cracow University of Technology, 1999.

3. Information regarding employment history in scientific/artistic institutions and organisations 1. Technical clerk, Independent Chair of Industrial Architecture Design, Faculty of

Architecture, Cracow University of Technology, 21.01.1993‒30.11.1995. 2. Teaching-research assistant, Independent Chair of Industrial Architecture Design,

Faculty of Architecture, Cracow University of Technology, 1.12.1995‒31.05.1999. 3. Assistant Professor, Faculty of Architecture, Cracow University of Technology,

1.06.1999‒19.12.2018, employed in turns at: ‒ Independent Chair of Industrial Architecture Design; ‒ Independent Department of Industrial Architecture Design; ‒ Department of Environmental Architecture, Institute of Architectural Design; ‒ Chair of Environmental Architecture, Institute of Architectural Design; ‒ Chair of Architecture for Sports and Leisure Facilities, Institute of Architectural Design;


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‒ Chair of Workplace and Recreational Architecture, Institute of Architectural Design, executive of the Unit of the Theory and Aesthetics of Architecture, member of the Institute Council, 2014-2018;

4. Senior Lecturer, Chair of Workplace and Recreational Architecture, Institute of Architectural Design, since 20.12.2018.

5. Assistant Professor, Faculty of Painting, Cracow Academy of Fine Arts (additional employment, part time), 1.11.1998‒30.06.2012.

Other additional forms of employment in academic/artistic units are included in annex 6, point III.I.2. 4. Academic achievements resulting from article 16, paragraph 2 of the Act of 14 March 2003 on Academic Titles and Ranks as well as Titles and Ranks in the Area of Art (Journal of Laws 2017, item 1789) a) title of academic/artistic work The identification and analysis of complexity in architecture against the pluralistic world of the second half of the twentieth Century and the turn of the 21st Century. b) (author/authors, title/titles of publications, year of publication, name of publisher, reviewers of publications) A series of twenty thematically related academic publications from the years 1999-2017, entitled O złożoności architektury na tle pluralizmu świata II połowy XX i_początku XXI wieku (About complexity in architecture against the pluralistic world of the second half of the twentieth Century and the turn of the 21st Century), arranged into five groups of problems. Part One. About Complexity of World Architecture ‒ Transition from Modernity to Postmodernity 1. Piotr Winskowski, Drewno kształtowane przez człowieka: relikt tradycji, dzisiejsza

konieczność czy tworzywo przyszłości? [in:] Budownictwo drewniane w gospodarce przestrzennej europejskiego dziedzictwa, eds Witold Czarnecki, Marek Proniewski, Białystok 2004, pp. 49-76, Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Finansów i Zarządzania. Reviewer Prof. Bohdan Rymaszewski PhD DSc.

2. Piotr Winskowski, Rozwój kolei ‒ model przekształceń świata przemysłowego i architektury nowoczesnej [in:] Obiekty kolejowe. Układy przestrzenne, architektura, elementy techniki, eds Witold Czarnecki, Marek Proniewski, Białystok 2005, pp. 49-64, Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Finansów i Zarządzania. Reviewer Prof. Maria Stawicka-Wałkowska PhD DSc Eng. Arch.


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3. Piotr Winskowski, Nowoczesna przestrzeń Zagłady? [in:] Pamięć Shoah. Kulturowe reprezentacje i praktyki upamiętnienia, eds Tomasz Majewski, Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska, Łódź 2009, pp. 87-102, Officyna. Reviewer Prof. Roman Kubicki PhD DSc (2nd edition, 2011, pp. 99-114, reviewers: Prof. Andrzej Mencwel PhD DSc and Prof. Michał Głowiński PhD DSc).

4. Piotr Winskowski, Obecność przeszłości w architekturze modernistycznej i neomodernistycznej [in:] Aesthetica perennis?, ed. Leszek Sosnowski, Kraków 2001, pp. 273-289, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Reviewer Prof. Beata Szymańska PhD DSc.

5. Piotr Winskowski, Od projektowania utopii do rejestracji faktów w teoriach architektury [in:] Sztuka współczesna i jej filozoficzne komentarze, eds Teresa Kostyrko, Grzegorz Dziamski, Jacek Zydorowicz, Poznań 2004, pp. 137-167, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, Instytut Kulturoznawstwa. The confirmation of the fact of the review, sent by Jacek Zydorowicz PhD, co-editor of the book and vice-director of the Institute of Cultural Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, see p. 6.

Part Two. About Complexity of Polish Architecture ‒ Transition from Modernity to Postmodernity 6. Piotr Winskowski, Między skrajnościami. O relacjach motywów tradycyjnych i

nowoczesnych w architekturze Drugiej Rzeczpospolitej [in:] Maria Jolanta Żychowska, Beata Makowska, Piotr Winskowski, Studia nad architekturą i urbanistyką Polski międzywojennej, vol. II, Wiodące zagadnienia formalne, ed. Maciej Motak, Kraków 2017, pp. 91-128, Wydawnictwo Politechniki Krakowskiej. Reviewers: Prof. Teresa Baradzińska-Bonenberg PhD DSc Eng. Arch., Prof. Elżbieta Przesmycka PhD DSc Eng. Arch.

7. Piotr Winskowski, Ciągłość z przełomem w tle [in:] Wpływ dorobku II Rzeczypospolitej na urbanistykę i architekturę powojenną, ed. Witold Czarnecki, Białystok 2011, pp. 231-268, Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Finansów i Zarządzania. Reviewer Prof. Aleksander Asanowicz PhD DSc Eng. Arch.

8. Piotr Winskowski, Lokalne powiązania umiarkowanego modernizmu. Dwa franciszkańskie kościoły pod wezwaniem św. Antoniego (w Gdyni i w Jaśle) projektu Zbigniewa Kupca [in:] Nowoczesność w sztuce i w myśli o sztuce na Pomorzu od XIX do XXI wieku, eds Jacek Bielak, Józef Tarnowski, Gdańsk 2015, pp. 189-205, Oddział Gdański Stowarzyszenia Historyków Sztuki. Reviewer Jan Salm PhD DSc Eng. Arch.

9. Piotr Winskowski, Pełzająca (kontr)rewolucja. U progu postmodernizmu w architekturze polskiej [in:] Postmodernizm polski. Architektura i urbanistyka. Antologia tekstów, ed. Lidia Klein, Warszawa 2013, pp. 33-117, Wydawnictwo 40000 Malarzy. Reviewers Marta Leśniakowska, PhD DSc, Prof. Institute of Arts Polish Academy of Sciences, Wojciech Włodarczyk PhD DSc, Prof. Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.


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10. Piotr Winskowski, Myśl Bohdana Lisowskiego wobec orientacji ponowoczesnej [in:] Architektura ‒ sztuka, umiejętność, nauka, Sesja naukowa z okazji 75 rocznicy urodzin prof. Bohdana Lisowskiego (1924-1992), Kraków 1999, pp. 103-110, Samodzielny Zakład Projektowania Architektury Przemysłowej Wydziału Architektury Politechniki Krakowskiej. Reviewers Prof. J. Tadeusz Gawłowski PhD Eng. Arch., J. Krzysztof Lenartowicz PhD DSc Eng. Arch. Prof. Cracow University of Technology, Maciej Złowodzki PhD DSc Eng. Arch. Prof. Cracow University of Technology.

Part Three. About Complexity of Architecture in Times of Globalization 11. Piotr Winskowski, The Belly and the Mind of the Architect at the Threshold of the

21st Century [in:] Man within Culture at the Threshold of the 21st Century, eds Ewa Rewers, Jacek Sójka, Poznań 2001, pp. 209-228, Wydawnictwo Fundacji Humaniora. Reviewer Prof. Paweł Zeidler PhD DSc.

12. Piotr Winskowski, Kosmopolityczna architektura i jej lokalna recepcja [in:] Kultura w czasach globalizacji, eds Małgorzata Jacyno, Aldona Jawłowska, Marian Kempny, Warszawa 2004, pp. 45-72, Wydawnictwo Instytutu Filozofii i Socjologii PAN. The confirmation of the fact of the review, sent by Barbara Gruszka, editor at Institute of Philosophy and Sociology Polish Academy of Sciences Publishing, see p. 7.

13. Piotr Winskowski, Luwr ‒ zamek, pałac, muzeum, piramida [in:] Muzeum sztuki. Od Luwru do Bilbao, ed. Maria Popczyk, Katowice 2006, pp. 361-373, 470-472, Muzeum Śląskie. Reviewers Prof. Alicja Kuczyńska PhD DSc, Prof. Barbara Szczypka-Gwiazda PhD DSc.

14. Piotr Winskowski, Nowe cechy architektury nurtu high-tech, na przykładach japońskich ostatnich lat. Wybrane projekty Shina Takamatsu, „Czasopismo Techniczne” (”Technical Transactions”) vol. 1-A, 1999, pp. 208-241, Wydawnictwo Politechniki Krakowskiej. Reviewer Prof. J. Tadeusz Gawłowski PhD Eng. Arch.

Part Four. About Complexity of the Process and Effect of Revitalisation in Architecture 15. Piotr Winskowski, Dzieło rewitalizacji jako obiekt po-sztuki? / A Work of

Revitalisation as an Object of After-art? [in:] Kultura dla rewitalizacji ‒ rewitalizacja dla kultury / Culture for Revitalisation ‒ Revitalisation for Culture, eds Lucyna Nyka, Jakub Szczepański, Gdańsk 2010, pp. 61-86, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Łaźnia. The confirmation of the fact of the review, sent by Lucyna Nyka PhD DSc Eng. Arch., Prof. Technical University in Gdańsk , see p. 8.

16. Piotr Winskowski, Wirtualne półtrwanie architektury [in:] Estetyka wirtualności, ed. Michał Ostrowicki, Kraków 2005, pp. 259-276, Universitas. The confirmation of the fact of the review, sent by Jan Sadkiewicz, editor, assistant director of the Association of Authors and Editors of Scientific Work Universitas in Cracow, see p. 9.


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c) an elaboration of the scholarly/artistic objective of the above-mentioned works and the results achieved together with a discussion of their possible application. Complexity in architecture was discussed as the main theme of two studies that constitute the theoretical basis for a revision of the modern paradigm at the same time. Such an endeavour was undertaken in the mid-1960s by Robert Venturi in his well-known book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture and also by Juliusz Żórawski in Poland, in his book Siatka prostych (The Net of Lines) and his paper entitled Ograniczona złożoność (Limited Complexity) (which only published in 2012 and 2016, respectively). The attached series of articles outlines the evolution in architectural complexity as understood by Venturi and Żórawski: it deals with various cultural and aesthetic concepts of space, its formal connections, perceptual qualities and the architectural functions related to them, all considered through the prism of human behaviour and the opportunities for promoting such behaviour through the configuration and shaping of space. In the second half of the 20th century and at the turn of the millennium pluralism as a value was by no means embraced in all parts of the world nor in all areas of human endeavour. It took root in those places where historical experiences confirmed the benefits to be gained from the pursuit of consensus and tolerance in practice. This trend coincided with the emergence of economic and political forces that aspired towards consolidation, uniformization and monopolization as well as ideas that prioritized the ‘whole’ and ‘oneness’ as their core centre of interest. Hence, the attached works do not deal with all the conditions determining the shape and development of architecture, but with those geographic areas and those cultural-civilizational situations, where the acknowledgement of pluralism provided the conditions for an architecture characterised by the attribute of complexity. In the decades that followed, Venturi's categories ‒ complexity, ambiguity, double-functioning element, both-and – became increasingly important tools both for describing current architecture as well as for the discourse that revolved around it and around our understanding of earlier architecture. The range of architectural forms and their ideological contexts has expanded as a result of different approaches to formulating needs, which are reflected in the shaping of space – and thus is a consequence of changes in the lifestyles, cognitive horizons and emotional states of both individuals and large human groups. In turn, Venturi’s second central theme, contradiction (space presented as slightly enhanced complexity), involved the mutual incommensurability of the many different factors that affect architectural shape, even when they themselves are formulated unambiguously. When this happens, their partial character exposes a confrontation with other scholarly discourses with other priorities. In such a situation, the absence of any common ground for dispute (which in conditions of contradiction is tacitly assumed) is difficult to resolve based on dualistic dichotomies. This appears to be one of the factors determining the popularity of deconstruction in architectural theory in the 1980s and 1990s, which called for the abandonment of this approach to setting problems. Deconstruction, addressed in several of the


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enclosed articles, has consequences for architecture that go beyond the popularity of one design manner or one design method. The non-verbal character of architecture and the simultaneous perception of its elements through the many senses of the recipient/user, as well as the global intensity of information exchange, which has led to the simultaneous presence of many cultural codes, which in turn are key to the way in which the objects of such perception are invested with meaning, justifies considering architecture on many levels and readdressing topics discussed and (partially) settled earlier on the basis of new experience. Such a situation, however, makes achieving a synthesis of all the material extremely difficult. Instead it is possible to prepare chronological or problem-specific cross-sectional profiles, according to a certain ordering criterion, as well as construct case studies or comparative studies of several case studies. The author undertook this task in different articles in the attached series as well as by comparing them in the groups presented below. The five parts show the conceptualisation of architectural complexity in the outlined problem area. Such references to architectural complexity, as understood by Venturi, will return in subsequent articles in the series presented below, although not as a subject of deliberation itself, but rather as a starting point for an analysis of later architecture, as was indicated above. Nor do these articles address issues known today under the common name of "complexity paradigm", which was developed in parallel with the natural sciences and adapted to architectural theory in the 1990s ‒ although the complexity of formal motifs used in specific buildings (e.g. self-similarity) can be successfully identified using existing research tools and terminology, and without referring to another "new beginning". Likewise, the author has paid only cursory attention to themes associated with digital design tools and computer information networks, as well as their impact on the design process, technical and formal solutions, and on the monitoring of the performance parameters of buildings. This subject has already been discussed by other authors. A promising "new beginning" has emerged in that area linking neuroscience and spatial research (expanding existing psychological research and behavioural studies) that started to form in the second decade of the 21st Century, an area which nevertheless requires research conducted within the framework of interdisciplinary research teams. Objective of the research: The aim of the author’s research has been to trace the ways in which architectural complexity developed in intensity in the second half of the twentieth century, i.e. since the time it was first postulated as a desirable feature, as a remedy for the excessive simplification of modern architecture. Complexity began gradually to manifest itself in an increasing number of ways: both as an effect of an architecture engaged in a dialogue with other cultural spheres and as a secondary feature emerging in the wake of the growing complexity of the functional tasks of buildings. Finally – complexity became so ubiquitous and commonplace that buildings and extremely diverse spaces ceased to attract attention, and complexity itself became an


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irksome necessity rather than a domain of promising possibilities. Between its emergence as an original innovation and its final incarnation as commonplace forms, however, many evolutionary transformations have taken place, when successive stages in the conceptual complexity of architecture turn out to be advances on those preceding them, and their material expression is increasingly filled with original conceptualizations. Another objective was to illustrate the strategies used to cope with excessive complexity in architecture, not so much by denying it or evading it, but rather by absorbing, coordinating and transforming heterogeneous components into a means of expression – tasks performed both by designers and users/interpreters. In this way, the author set himself the task of identifying the further consequences of the development of complexity no longer as a rhetorical category or as a conceptual discourse, but instead as a feature present in space as it is experienced on an everyday basis. Another goal was to present 20th Century Polish architecture, in particular architecture from the second half of the century, as an area where complexity assumed a specific character, with its own artistic and social ideas and programmes, as well as discuss the reception of foreign impulses in this area. This specificity resulted from the fact that Poland experienced the historical, political and social upheavals of this period in a different dimension than the West. This historical legacy explains the frequent delays observed in Polish architecture as a result of from technical factors, and at the same time also the unique character of a building's response to a larger number of contradictory factors, in contrast to the stereotypical rules of development based on the model taken from Western countries. Another aim of this research was to illustrate the unique values of this Polish developmental path from the perspective of complexity, not only in terms of (neo) traditional architecture, but also from the perspective of native modernism: both in terms of the interweaving of the latter into the local tradition (semi-modernism), and how it served as a local point of departure for extreme experimentation. Another goal of this analysis was to demonstrate the specificity that globalization brings to the issue of architectural complexity. Such phenomena are in evidence when the design and construction of single buildings and entire complexes of buildings are commissioned by supranational institutions or individual states, which use such investments to respond to the challenges of global forces – in both the economic and cultural spheres. This trend has given rise to a dramatically new relationship between global centres and peripheries, between which these impulses run ‒ the aim of this study was to describe this trend and conceptualize it in the field of architectural theory. At the local level the clash of heterogeneous factors in architecture tends to manifest itself in areas characterised by neglect and abandonment where efforts at urban renewal are being undertaken ‒ another aim of the author’s research has been to identify the process and effects of revitalisation in architecture from the perspective of complexity.


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The case studies presented in these articles together with their accompanying analyses of existing buildings may prove instructive for future design, although not as formal models, but rather as real, permanent laboratories of specific human behaviour and as ideas which can help guide the attention of users. The case studies described in these articles do not provide a platform for formulating general instructions. On the other hand, they do provide examples of buildings in which a multitude of factors have been successfully integrated, even those factors that on the surface appear contradictory, but which interact in local conditions. These case studies also shed light on the conditions of such success. By means of chronological or problem-specific cross-sectional profiles of broader issues, the author describes the complexities of artistic concepts and the spatial consequences of such processes as well as both case studies and individual spatial parameters of buildings and their surroundings, which have also been embedded in the wider contexts of villages, metropolises and their suburbs. The author focused on studying the formal and functional components of these hybrid systems and the structure of the phenomena taking place around them, while also being aware of the limited possibilities of capturing the whole within his own discipline alone. Since many hitherto ways of describing this whole involved simplifying such phenomena and tailoring them to a predetermined field of discourse, the author tried to balance this approach with the painstaking task of adjusting even partial results and seeking architectural applications for knowledge contributed by authors from other disciplines. This series of twenty articles applies the above objectives in practice in a manner that can be achieved using already available methods. Research results The author’s research as a whole has been divided into five parts, which present the core theme of architectural complexity, ranging from the more general to the more detailed as well as chronologically – from earlier to later or more advanced topics. The first part highlights the problem of complexity in modern architecture both during the classical period of its popularity and as a movement on the margins of the mainstream, with the emphasis on world architecture. First paper [4b), item 1] concerns wood as a material with obvious applications in traditional architecture in many regions around the world, which was also a feature in architecture more inclined towards modernity and which bound it to cultural content of the time, i.e. the ”return to craft” philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement in England; for example its referencing of local tradition in the Zakopane Style; and its presence even in buildings directly associated with iron and steel, such as railway station lobbies (in Copenhagen, Heinrich Wenck, 1904-1911) Wood was also used as a material in architectural experiments in the ways in which the connection between the interior of a building and its surroundings are fashioned: in the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright ‒ in the skeleton, which he applied in a manner akin to solutions applied in traditional Japanese architecture ‒ in Richard


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Neutra’s transformations of the American balloon frame building structure, as well as in the works of Soviet constructivism (a few which were built, like Machorka pavilion in Moscow by Konstantin Mielnikov, 1923). In all these structures ‒ highly innovative for their time ‒ wood played an important role, often used in a non-traditional way, combining together different traditions, or alternatively as a substitute for other materials at that time unavailable (like concrete or steel) so as to conceal its actual visual values and connotations of meaning. In the architecture of moderate modernism, wood provided decorative details and served as a reference point to surrounding nature. The former approach was adopted by, among others Stanisław Bukowski, who, when designing the interior of St. Roch’s Church in Białystok (1927-1946), during the post-war period developed congenially motifs for the geometric ornamentation embedded in the edifice’s reinforced concrete structure designed by Oskar Sosnowski. Similarly, Stefan Borzęcki and Antoni Hajdecki – the two sculptors who made the concrete relief for the facade of the BWA pavilion in Krakow (nowadays Bunkier Sztuki, 1958-1965, designed by Krystyna Tołłoczko-Różyska) from wooden formwork prints – exploited the artistic qualities of this raw material and the complex historical context of the place (functioning on the wall located right alongside the line of the former city walls), and, on the other hand, the task of representing contemporary architectonic ideas (brutalism). Examples of the second theme ‒ where wood as a material functions as a malleable bond between modern architecture and nature ‒ are the student chapel at Helsinki University of Technology in Otaniemi (1953-1957, designed by Kaija and Heikki Siren) and the nearby Dipoli Center (1961-1966, designed by Raili and Reima Pietilä). When refining the proportions, details, and, in particular, the reciprocal arrangement between the different structural elements, the architects used their similarity to the spatial structure and lighting effects appropriate to the pine forest in which these edifices were erected. Another motif analysed in the text is the double curvature surface. Produced with great difficulty in extravagant works of contemporary architecture, these solutions are inextricably connected with wood, allowing ‒ as part of the "system" (i.e. a shingle-covered roof) ‒ for the gentle resorption of the curves. Hence the juxtaposition (incomparable in any other respect) between the titanium facade of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, designed by Frank O. Gehry (1991-1997) and the roofs and external wooden arcades of the church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Lachowice near Sucha Beskidzka (before 1798) indicates possibilities that have existed for centuries, but which have only recently been achieved again in architecture thanks to designs based on advanced digital tools. The multiplicity of spatial and decorative effects, which makes it possible to combine simultaneous references to ancient traditions while at the same time satisfying contemporary needs, justifies the inclusion of the author’s article on wood applications in architecture. It provides a preliminary perspective of the many


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different ways in which contemporary architecture is characterised by growing complexity. The second paper [4.b), item 2] – which is also a review article ‒ concerns the railways, which, as the crowning achievement of nineteenth century technical infrastructure, was a major factor of economic development, helping integrate the great powers of the time with their colonies. As it became an increasingly commonplace means of mass communication, it also provided material for individual experiences, which were later transformed into cultural content. The images, paintings, and especially newspaper illustrations of the trains themselves, as well as the landscapes intersected by railway lines, bridges, viaducts and train stations, had the secondary effect of shaping our perception of the engineering structures themselves and the social changes brought about by the development of the railways. The architecture built around the railways, both in the 19th century and today, is not always and not simply a manifestation of the "age of steam and iron" and the "unlimited possibilities" of industry. The presence of medieval town districts, which began to be valued more highly following the tragic experiences of the 20th century, provide arguments in favour of shaping this architecture according to a more complex set of premises. Thus, for example, on the one hand the structure of the signal tower in the main railway station in Nuremberg, consisting of interpenetrating cuboids covered with metal panels and ceramics, is direct testimony to the times in which it was erected (1970s). On the other, however, it contains elements that reflect both 19th-century brick railway architecture and the preserved fortified towers of the medieval city located close to the station. From this perspective the most complex arrangement of formal features, achieved thanks to an experimental structure and simultaneous references to both the sphere of ideas and the basic physiological needs of users, can be observed in the architecture of the Gare de Saint-Exupéry TGV (formerly Gare de Satolas TGV) railway station near Lyon (1989-1994), designed by Santiago Calatrava. The immediate vicinity of the airport, where passengers disembark, places the station in a subordinate position in relation to this more advanced mode of transport, which clearly enjoys greater spatial freedom and enjoys its own autonomous tradition of construction (airport terminals) based on an architecture that emphasizes this freedom. Refusing to abandon those solutions characteristic of his usual approach (which is closer to airports), Calatrava designed the body of the station in the form of a glass fan. However, this structure is saturated not so much even with iconographic railway themes as with geometrical details, the spatial layout of which recreates certain structural features that belong more to the world of railways than to aviation, and this in places where neither function nor technical requirements demand such an approach. These include long sequences of many small elements (such as the surprisingly massive curtain wall partitions), densely arranged one after another – and thus in a way that somehow corresponds to railway tracks, the trains themselves, the dynamics of their movement and the entire layout of railway lines.


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From a clearly symbolic perspective, the two large, double arches set in front of each other in the station lobby and under which passengers make their way to the platforms, create a powerful bond between the building and the Earth. The inscriptions visible in them have nothing to do with the numbers of platforms or other logistical issues, but rather with the main theme: the place’s location on Earth and the name of the region (department of Rhône-Alpes). This information is divided into two inscriptions, one placed on each arch, showing the direction of the railway both to the south, i.e. towards the Alps (Porte Alpes), and to the north, towards the Rhône (Porte Rhône). This same principle is evident in the way the gates of medieval cities bore the names of other cities or the places to which the roads from them led. And it was evoked once more in this station building located in a "non place" (to use Marc Augé’s term), among the wasteland of airport car parks and as part of an architecture so expressive that it would not tolerate the proximity of other objects with their own distinctive compositional features. However, this topographical connection is needed for passengers arriving from even more distant places. This solution shows how contemporary architecture absorbs the complexity of new situations created by artificially layered, often contradictory factors present in today's world and how it helps people sometimes lost in its embrace to regain their sense of orientation (which is shaped on many levels of needs). The articles presented above are essentially historical reviews, albeit written from today's perspective, when contemporary buildings and structures are shown as joining together cumulative aspirations and earlier experiences. The third article [4.b), item 3] deals with two major moments in the history of the 20th century: the mass extermination carried out by the Third Reich and post-war monuments commemorating Nazi crimes erected in the places where they were committed. This article adds its own marginal note to the debate on the Holocaust and the social and technical conditions that caused it to happen. The author supports, using arguments based on an analysis of urban and architectural space, those theories and conceptualizations of the mechanism of the Holocaust (developed by historians and philosophers), which assign an important role in its preparation and implementation to factors specific to modernity itself. These include the role played by modern logistics, planning and building solutions in ensuring the macabre effectiveness of the Holocaust plan, regardless of the specific location and character of the buildings used to commit these crimes, or the views of the many individuals involved in the modern architectural movement, who themselves became victims of Nazism for racial or ideological reasons. The article describes the intrinsic complexity of this process and the possibility of manipulating for its own needs solutions in social policy, planning and logistics developed in the modern state. This is evident only in archival data, but also in a functional analysis of the spatial solutions that made it possible to segregate people in ghettos and death camps, optimize transport between these locations, and employ methods ensuring the mass theft and plundering of victims' property, etc. This article also looks at memorials and entire areas turned into monuments to commemorate the Holocaust, focusing in particular on the spatial and functional


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concepts specific to modernity applied in these sites. An effort was made to shape by architectural and sculptural means places of remembrance which today not only provide a passive historical education, but which also highlight what was a dangerous mechanism for activating mass murder, and which to a great extent enabled the implementation of the Holocaust. In these places visitors are guided through spaces and situations that constitute a (partial) reconstruction of the victims' experiences. The article also touches on the moral limitations of such a strategy. The fourth article [4.b), item 4] dealing with the presence of the past in modern and new-modern architecture discusses the similarities and differences between the various strategies for referencing the past employed in both these trends, the latter of which further develops some features of the former. The author notes references to Ancient Greek architecture in the work of Le Corbusier (Vers une Architecture), which reinforce rhetorical arguments in favour of the notion that the rules of architecture have an "objective" character. On the other hand, the designs of Carlo Scarpa, Aris Konstantinidis and Alvar Aalto, make use of classical sources in their search for geometric motifs characteristic of modern architecture, which would interact in the same way as the classical tradition referred to traditional details. One of these methods involves the juxtaposition of the main structure dominating the horizontal basis, which is the equivalent of a dome rising from the nave or corpus in historical buildings. In turn, the long tradition of evolution that has shaped the domes themselves – which have constituted an engineering challenge since Antiquity – includes many modernist examples. The uniquely designed support for the thin-walled, shell-shaped dome, erected on (almost) intact rocks in the Temppeliaukio Kirkko Church in Helsinki (1960-1969, Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen), recreates in a completely different form the ideological content associated with the critical transition from a square span base (representing the land, according to the Platonic tradition) to a circular dome base (heaven, God), which was once achieved by the means of pendentives. The "presence of the past", i.e. the motto proclaimed in the title of the Architecture Biennale in Venice in 1980, soon began to refer to the recent modern past whilst also incorporating the motifs of other traditions. Such combinations ‒ mutually modifying the existing cultural context of these motifs and creating new constellations – pave the way not only for greater visual chaos, but also for promising new meanings. One important achievement in this field was the reformulation of the dome for contemporary secular purposes in the design of the Berlin Reichstag (1992, evident first in Santiago Calatrava’s competition entry, and later in the implementation of Norman Foster’s project). On the other hand, the archetypal motif of the tower, with a solid base passing into the lightness and openwork of the upper section (in contrast to modernist cuboid skyscrapers, in which the impression of stacking was avoided), has made a comeback, one necessitated by technical conditions, as each new skyscraper seeks to outdo its predecessors. This return to history in the field of construction, paralleled by a constant (also historically conditioned) striving upwards in architectural vision, was evident in the "Tower without End" competition entry by


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Jean Nouvel (1989, first prize, never built), which was to have dominated skyscrapers on the skyline in Paris’ La Défense district. Another contemporary tower structure lying at the top of Chełm mountain in Myślenice, designed by Kazimierz Łatak and Piotr Lewicki (1998), by its very nature overshadows its surroundings. It contrasts with the former thanks to the openwork pattern of the entire structure (of constructivist provenance), and the fact that houses a mobile phone relay network is a manifestation of the new communication era. Its construction also reflects the tradition of watchtowers and signalling towers (like semaphore telegraph). A summary of the above texts and their reviews of buildings in terms of function and material, as well as the historical conditions within which they are embedded, can be found in the fifth article of the first part [4.b), item 5], which focuses directly on architectural theory vis a vis the general state of culture at the turn of the 21st century. It discusses the nature of contemporary theoretical approaches to architecture, which are devoid of any ambition to explain the world as a whole or the desire to offer general prescriptions for its improvement. An outlook that placed value in local features of the landscape, climate, people and social conditions in which they live, a philosophy propagated ever since the postmodern sea change – found detailed expression in particular buildings. Their designers accepted the complexity and individuality of the hierarchy of importance of solutions to such or other problems by shaping space in what were always unique locations. The author also tried to show the broader benefits of such theories devoid of normative ambitions, i.e. the “pursuit of facts” and generalizations that only apply at the local level, which are often adaptations of earlier theories, whose application in a particular place produces positive “crossover” effects. The most striking example of this approach is Rem Koolhaas's application of a design method based on deconstruction theory to solve a functional problem and thus ensure optimal satisfaction of the needs of a disabled user (a single-family house in Bordeaux, 1994-1998). He used deconstruction to achieve external values to the area of interest of this theory, and not to develop an intraarchitectural discourse. It was not the merits of the theory itself, but rather the designer’s own artistic and moral sensitivity that guided him in setting his goal and choosing the right method to achieve it. Furthermore, this method was employed solely to determine the location of the windows in the walls of the first floor of the building, the other features of which ‒ like the static scheme, which in all other senses is highly innovative – are an extension of other concepts. Thus, spatial and artistic complexity, designed, perceived and experienced within a single building results from the blending together of fragments of different theories that are themselves a product of selection and adaptation, and which do not determine the entire undertaking. The second part of this series of articles is intended as a complement to the first. These studies analyse modern and post-modern Polish architecture in the second half of the 20th century as well as the evolution of interwoven stylistic tendencies, social needs, technical possibilities and the way in which the functional issues determining specific manifestations of complexity have been addressed.


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The first paper [4.b), item 6] concerns interwar architecture. Various features of Polish architecture are presented against the background of examples taken from around the world. The author singles out certain moderate, even traditional features (most often in the form of regional differences), observed in buildings widely recognized on a global scale as emblematic of modern avant-garde architecture: residential houses on the Weissenhof estate in Stuttgart (1927), in particular those designed by Le Corbusier and Johannes Jacobus Pieter Oud, as well as the German pavilion at the world exhibition in Barcelona (1929) designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Against this backdrop, the author provides a few examples of Polish architecture: buildings and interiors, as well as the critical texts accompanying them (in “Arkady” magazine). Edgar Norwerth describes works of engineering (bridges) as ‘servants’ attending to the landscape, through which a path has been cut so that travellers may experience of its beauty. In two articles, Jerzy Hryniewiecki stresses the value of antique chairs as structural and functional templates for the design of modern residential interiors, while at the same time rejecting modern furniture, especially those examples that reflect the trend towards geometric abstraction without taking into account the complex aspects inherent in the shape and proportions of the user. This same intense blending of both traditional and modern features in the same object can also be seen on an architectural scale, for example in the (never built) design for the National Museum in Krakow (1921), the canopy above the entrance to Marshal Piłsudski’s Crypt in Wawel Cathedral (1937), a villa on Domeyko Street in Krakow (1936-1937, designed by Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz), the interior designs of Jan Bogusławski (1935), as well as a villa and its interiors in Mokotów in Warsaw (designed by Aleksander Kodelski, 1935). These objects capture a specific moment in the history of architecture, when designers and their enlightened clients began to broaden their understanding of modernity, ceased looking uncritically at their own recent manifestos, and started to incorporate traditional motifs into their works without giving up the benefits still provided by experimental spatial solutions. The second article from this group [4.b), item 7] discusses the watershed years of the Second World War and analyses selected designs of architects active both in the Underground and in exile, and the impact that their experiences had on their strategies and approaches during the post-war reconstruction. The author tries to identify those features of (admittedly isolated) buildings and designs produce during the war, which were "ahead of their time", and thus represented features of late modernism. He also discusses certain specific features of buildings, work on which began before the war, but which were completed after it, and whether the shape of both these edifices as a whole as well as their details would indicate whether they represented the architecture of the Second Polish Republic, i.e. "buildings from the previous era". Finally, there is a third category, comprising "buildings outside their era", for which it is impossible not only to identify the date they were designed and built, but also to evaluate all its conditions, the


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organizational factors, the accessibility of the available materials and the skills required to build them, which creates a very intriguing, cognitive dissonance. A more widely discussed example of the first category is the design of the chapel (never built) in Laski near Warsaw by Maciej Nowicki (1944-1948) ‒ initially in collaboration with Stefan Putowski ‒ regarding a covering composed of two interlocking reinforced concrete umbrellas (betraying the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright, of whom Nowicki was an admirer), surrounded by an innovative, structural curtain wall; at the same time, the pillars supporting these umbrellas divide the interior into two aisles, in a way that enhances by means of modern technology the specific character of Polish Gothic churches in Wiślica, Szydłów and, even more so, in Stopnica. Striking representative of the second is St Roch’s Church in Białystok (designed by Oskar Sosnowski), whose interiors and furnishings were designed in the post-war years by Stanisław Bukowski (mentioned earlier in the context of the formation of materials in the article about wooden architecture) and the Marine Station in Gdynia (from 1937-1939 and 1958-1960, currently the National Marine Fisheries Research Institute and the Oceanographic Museum), which features a glazed rotunda on its side facing the sea (designed by Leonard Tomaszewski and Juliusz Żakowski). Typical of the third category is the Franciscan monastery in Gdynia (designed by Zbigniew Kupiec, 1935-1939), and the church built alongside it according to a much later modified design (1955-1974). The interrelationship between the two edifices, the affinities between earlier and later parts of a project produced by the same designer, as well as the creation of the details provided the author with a platform for making many comparisons: how some details explain others, if some features build upon others and what was the chronology of this process. Regardless of the archival materials clarifying such issues, this is the starting point for analysing not only the linear evolution of the design work but also the interconnections and turning points in the process, which undoubtedly increased the complexity of such an edifice, whilst also reflecting the changing economic and political conditions and ideological needs of the local community for whom the church was built. The next article [4.b), item 8] builds directly on the themes of its predecessor. Here the material for comparison is the same Franciscan church and monastery in Gdynia and a second church in Jasło (1957-1963), designed by the same architect for monks of the same order, and even dedicated to the same patron saint. Given the unavoidable repetition of some data, the criteria for analysis in this second article is the architecture of both buildings from the perspective of their surroundings and the architectural traditions of two such contrasting regions as Pomerania and Carpathian Country. Both edifices are characterized by a similarly high standard of workmanship for the time in which they were built, as well as a somewhat similar shape and similar artistic features that combine moderate modernism with elements of historicism. However, where these two edifices diverge is in the regional variations in the sources of these historical references and in the ways in which modern themes were expressed in practice.


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Various details of historical provenance have been geometrically simplified here, which was a common strategy employed in moderate modern architecture in the 20th century. However, the tension between the principles of the composition and the elements that are subject to it creates a unique type of complexity that goes far beyond the dichotomous division between tradition and innovation. The next article [4.b), item 9] provides an overview of the events, architectural and urban designs as well as completed buildings that were in the spotlight in Poland in the years 1980-1981. The 14th Congress of the International Union of Architects took place in Warsaw at this time, and many exhibitions and debates from those years confirmed the exhaustion of the prevailing design model, the chronic failure of centrally planned construction and the need to look for new approaches to architecture. These developments in the architectural profession in many ways mirrored the social ferment of the sixteen months of the (first) "Solidarity" movement. Publications from this period reflect how the maladies of those years were perceived and what remedies were considered for them. The author provides a detailed analysis of 5 designs and completed projects highlighting the dominant shift towards local and native architecture, decoration, and features of urban life considered on different scales and involving a variety of connections. They raised important issues and (partly) proposed solutions to them, which remain valid up until the present day. The general plan for Gniezno (authors: Janusz Gospodarek, Manfred Pletz, Ewa Pletz, Maria Kaczmarek et al.) was preceded by an analysis of the connections between the functions of the city and the shape of its space – in particular traffic intensity and the frequency of interactions between people – based on what were at the time pioneering computer models. The reconstruction of the Old Town in Elbląg (architects: Wiesław Anders, Szczepan Baum and Ryszard Semka et al.) planned in conditions dominated by the postulates of typification and prefabrication, required a special way of outwitting the geometric "system" if the designers wanted to recreate the city’s diversified urban tissue. Thus, the architects devised an original method to connect those parts of buildings where these differences were in evidence, i.e. the frontage of the housing, with the majority of the cubature of these quarters, which would be rebuilt using a modular system in their courtyards. The original typology was created, combining historical solutions (new cellars or entire tenement buildings were also incorporated into the new tissue) with a modern, economical and systemic solution for the interiors of the quarters. Another, alternative approach to residential architecture in Poland at that time came in the form of modular wooden systems developed for the independent construction of single-family houses by the architects Zdzisław Lipski, Andrzej Owczarek and Jakub Wujek. These units were designed to be flexible enough so that they could be built in a variety of sizes and with different interior layouts. They provided the basis for a genuine cooperative movement in residential construction, and thus, without much fanfare, they achieved a major breach in the system, by


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achieving relative independence from state agencies. In addition, they as it were automatically absorbed those elements of domesticity introduced by those who built them. Another issue that remains relevant today – and one which at the time was only partially solved ‒ was the need to renovate public spaces in small towns. This policy concerned in particular the Recovered Territories, which had suffered from underinvestment for decades, and was launched (1975) by Lidia Śniatycka-Olszewska, appointed to the post of artistic director for Jelenia Góra Voivodeship, as well as by interdisciplinary teams of designers dealing with each town and city. These projects (partially completed) were isolated interventions, but had a well-thought-out impact on the whole. Even a partial improvement in the utility standard was conducive to the creation of a much desired shared conviction among the first and second generations of Polish inhabitants that a sense of stability had been restored in these provinces. The last project discussed in this article is the (never implemented) Study on the Humanization of the Automatic Lathe Factory in Chocianów (1977-1978) by Oskar Hansen and his team. It included the reorganization of the workplace itself, aimed at restoring the recreation area, as well as original designs that involved adding greenery in the form of vines growing on overground grids (to protect against dust and noise), thereby creating almost futuristic motifs, albeit on a small scale. What is evident here, as a product of Hansen’s social sensitivity, is the pursuit of a modernist "total design", and thus an endeavour to design the lifestyle of the entire community. Although purely utopian, the concept was proposed on the basis of questionnaires, consultations with users and analyses at the micro level, and with no desire to establish some arbitrary order. Hansen-modernist sympathised with the ideas of Christopher Alexander set out in A Pattern Language, which was first published during the same period (1977); he also referred to the categories proposed by Kevin Lynch in his text: The Image of the City, adapting the latter to the needs of his own analysis of an industrial area; he merged various criteria and strategies to exceed the utilitarian level of tasks, to improve the social and spatial situation on many areas, focusing on the individuals forming the community, not on the statistically captured crowd. The case studies presented in the article show how, despite the oppressive "cultural logic of late socialism" it was still possible to break through the system gradually. This breakthrough was achieved both by architects and urban planners as well as by people who wanted to build their own homes. Since postmodernism was first defined in Western Europe and America, it was the specific character and specific problems of these regions that served as the starting point for both social criticism (in the spirit of the Cultural logic of late capitalism – to use the term coined by Fredric Jameson in his book) and criticism of architecture. Polish conditions gave rise to a somewhat different variant of complexity. In turn, increased contacts with the West in the years 1980-1981 gave rise to a situation where Poles adopted the language in which this criticism was expressed, while at the same time, somewhat paradoxically, importing ready-made solutions from the West, and thus standardising them.


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The final article in the second part [4.b), item 10] concerns the scholarly endeavours of Bohdan Lisowski. He was the author of, among other texts: Systematyka architektury XX wieku ‒ (A taxonomy of twentieth century architecture) ‒ a text modelled on biological taxonomies, with a division into categories of lower and lower orders. The taxonomy was supposed to be universal, encompassing all types, creative directions and trends in architecture, defining their connections with earlier and later counterparts, their temporal and territorial scope, the conditions affecting investors-patrons, data on representative architects as well as examples of buildings. This intention was undoubtedly fuelled by the modernist-inspired desire to embrace and organize the totality of a phenomenon according to a single, yet expansive and multi-criteria schema. On the occasion of an annual academic session dedicated to the memory of the professor, whom he knew, the author of the article identified in his thought and projects – especially his later designs ‒ the characteristics of an evolution: not so much towards postmodernism, of which he was a strong opponent, but rather towards a broadening of the criteria applied in architectural analysis and towards a broader understanding of the contributions made by medical, psychological and sociological research to architectural design and thinking (e.g. studies on residents’ preferences with regard to the types and furnishings of the apartments they desired). This indicates a willingness to follow the changes resulting at that time from the perception and deepening of the interconnections between the different problems constituting architectural knowledge and design. It also highlights the personal energy and inventiveness he showed when helping create these new situations. Lisowski claimed that "the pluralism of modernism, which forms the core of the phenomenon referred to as postmodernism, grew out of more than twenty years of severe criticism of the errors of modernism, errors arising from the intuitive, unscientific solving of rational problems". Broadening the descriptive and analytical criteria brings the conceptualization of architecture closer to the structure of the local problems that exist within this domain and (to some extent) safeguards against the danger of borrowing a global language that highlights other problems and different ways of solving them. The third part consists of articles about architecture (mostly foreign) and the types of architectural complexity resulting from the processes of globalization at a time when it was a direct topic of debate. The first article [4.b), item 11] concerns three books published in the Netherlands in the late 1990s which launched a new trend in the way architecture was written about and presented. Its publication coincided with changes that occured in architecture under the impact of mass culture and the requirements of a globalizing market (especially in the most advanced countries), which encouraged a tendency towards self-promotion. Each monograph is an extensive collection of the writings and designs of architects who enjoyed "superstar" status at the time: Rem Koolhaas and his OMA studio and a number of ‘rising stars" who have clearly modelled their ideas on Koolhaas: Ben van Berkel and the firm MVRDV (Winy Maas,


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Jacob van Rijs, Nathalie de Vries). In this article, the author discusses a number of features common to all these books: their way of documenting professional achievements using drawings and photos from all design phases. They also share a similar tendency to confront architecture with randomly collected visual materials from the countries in which the architects practised their profession. In addition, they all feature graphic layouts comprising collages of texts and illustrations. These books provide a record of the profession’s confrontation with a globalizing world and are testimony to the first wave of expansion made possible by an enlarging free market and global economic growth in the 1990s. At the same time, they include various theoretical reflections, although not in academic text from but rather through the vehicle of essays, business-plans, diagrams, simulations, etc. ‒ dealing with such topics as the evolution of plans for New York skyscrapers (complementing what Koolhaas had already written about them in his book Delirious New York), population density in the Netherlands and the strategies for coping with this phenomenon in the future (FARMAX) as well as the impact of digital technology on architectural design (Move). In the latter sphere, attention is drawn to the remote and analytical approach to the emphatically underlined (especially around the turn of the millennium) aspiration to constantly "broaden the possibilities" that information technology was expected to bring to people’s lives. Ben van Berkel, who was already designing "digital architecture" during these years, remained at the same time aware of the possibility, need and even the necessity of stepping back from solutions that were at the time seen as a desirable novelty. The laconic formula "from blob to box and back again" and the two diagrams accompanying it show a smooth and two-way transition from what in the 1990s seemed a complete novelty (blob) to a historicizing interpretation of the first avant-garde performance, which in many of its spatial manifestations represents a box. The second article from this part [4.b), item 12] includes a proposed theoretical understanding of the process of globalisation in architecture, focusing on the architectural component of those problems, which sociologists, political scientists and philosophers (including Zygmunt Bauman, Dean McCannell and Lester Thurow), identified as new and important to this process. This spatial component – in reference to architecture, the applied arts and the entire mass iconosphere – is undergoing a process of standardisation. This process is being driven by the principle of “aiming sideways” ‒ i.e. a shift towards models and patterns which do not pretend to be more perfect or claim to represent unique values, but rather are simply more vigorously promoted and popularised. This approach clearly diverges from the universalising tendencies of the past, which were justified by the common striving of world centres and peripheries towards some – more or less transcendental ideal, which has been described as “aiming upwards”. The article was written at a time when globalisation offered considerably more benefits for the developed world and exported its threats to the ‘global south’. Although today these dangers are returning, accompanied by a broader consciousness of global dependencies, and despite the fact that the globalisation


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brand has been somewhat tarnished, the article shows how its consequences for architecture offer an opportunity for culture. The author discussed the strategy of promoting a productive link between architectural motifs, materials and characteristic spatial structures originating from various cultures as well as the meanings conveyed by them so as to harness these unifying forces for a different purpose than their own. This goal would involve creating a form of hybrid architecture admittedly, but one that would merge its heterogenous motifs into formations that identify localness through a unique juxtaposition of global motifs. As examples of this approach the author discussed the Louvre Pyramid in the Cour Napoleon (designed by Ieoh Ming Pei, 1983-1989), Le Grand Arche de La Défense (Johann Otto von Spreckelsen, 1983-1989) and the Arab World Institute (Jean Nouvel, 1981-1987). Examples of buildings with a Polish connection include the Manggha Centre of Japanese Art and Technology designed by Arata Isozaki in collaboration with JET Atelier (1990-1994), the competition design for the EXPO 2000 pavilion in Hanover prepared by Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Łatak (1999) as well as Marta Klajn’s graduation design project prepared in the Faculty of Architecture, Cracow University of Technology and inspired by the requirements of the YOUROPE student’s architecture competition for a joint embassy representing all the member states of the European Union in Beijing (2001-2002) – in line with the plans of member states at that time to coordinate their foreign policies so that single institution could represent them before third countries abroad. „The architect constantly teaches others, through both words as well as designs, how to create architecture.” (...) The architect must be both an interpretor and propagator of new ideas that benefit human life” – such was the role envisaged for the future architect in 1948 by Maciej Nowicki – one of the first Poles to confront the challenges facing his profession in a global dimension. Since he took his profession seriously and treated it in extremely broad terms for those times, the "interpretation of beneficial ideas" must have meant in his eyes the interpretation of human cultures through their spatial forms. This was four decades before Zygmunt Bauman assigned contemporary writers the role of ‘interpretors’ who explain the world for the benefit of others (Legislators and Interpretors). The idea of a single building absorbing multiple impulses originating from numerous historical and contemporary ideas, which in turn lead to the creation of a new quality based on them, is further developed in the case study of the pyramid in the Louvre courtyard (1983-1989) designed by Ieoh Ming Pei [4.b), item 13]. The pyramid is presented against the background of the Louvre’s own history as well as the trends and themes present in the designer’s work: Pei’s earlier projects, based on the use of extended rhythms comprising large numbers of identical elements as well as on the monotony of small modules, refined connections and the creation of buildings with simple geometrical shapes and an "American scale". Such large, simple contemporary public interiors become anonymous in their own way. In this light, for example, the functionally efficient distribution of visitor flow achieved by means of the pyramid’s location on Cour Napoleon, not only makes the layout of the museum’s


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different sections more legible, but also generates mass chaotic movement the space under the pyramid that is characteristic of railway or airport lobby. Thus, not only geometrically regular architecture, but also movement and noise serve as a background against which the user perceives him/herself and many others as part of a unified world, coming in pilgrimage to this global temple of art. The article also draws attention to the similarities in the ways in which space is shaped in contemporary architecture, in the palaces and gardens of the French Baroque as well as in traditional Chinese architecture (though not in Chinese gardens). Despite the incommensurable character of the constituent elements, they observe a similar principle, namely that of composing huge entities out of a large number of smaller parts repeated again and again and arranged geometrically into constellations with local centres that are also repeated many times over, sometimes on an almost holographic basis. The simple spatial structure, characterised by an unusual technical complexity that combines motifs from Chinese and American architecture, which constitutes the entrance to this (historical) temple of French art creates a complex repository of content and ideas, impossible to conceive of in conditions other than those of globalization. The next article [4.b), item 14] expands on the above issues from the perspective of the relationship between traditional Japanese architecture and modern global technology, whose patterns of use in architecture were first developed in America and in Europe. Shin Takamatsu's buildings are presented against the background of experimental "technological" projects from the first half of the twentieth century as well as in the context of remarks regarding the ability of Japanese culture and art to absorb foreign formal influences and the relative independence of the ideological content of this art from such borrowings. This review of Takamatsu's work also covers two buildings discussed earlier in the article about the presence of the past in new-modern architecture. The others constitute the second part of the account, which is somewhat symmetrical with regard to the study of the Paris pyramid. They concern the mutual reception in a globalized world of influences exerted by individual, traditional architectural motifs (the torii gate, the kara senzui garden, the tatami mat module) and approaches to solving certain problems (such as the special building designed for the business practice of "brainstorming" in a Japanese corporation), as a consequence of which these interwoven themes and actions, acquired a new meaning. Hence, the seemingly simple division or joining of space, its extension or contraction, as well as the opening or closing of this dimension, serves to synthesize the content of high culture and habits that combine to create the culture of everyday life. The fourth part is a collection of three articles on the theme of revitalisation, written prior to the enactment of a new statute legally regulating this issue in Poland. Although these articles analyse revitalisation in a way that coincides with the Act, they do not discuss in detail the conditions for its implementation. Instead they focus on its objectives and proposed spatial solutions, analyzed from the


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perspective of architectural theory, in which revitalisation is treated as a new quality (diverging slightly from previous notions regarding the conservation and revaluation of monuments). The attribute of complexity makes itself felt somewhat automatically in both the process and long-term effects of revitalisation, due to the spatial structure which, as the building’s original function becomes distorted over time and contemporary functions are introduced, undergoes change. The upshot of such a scenario is that a revitalised structure functions in the eyes of the local community as the fulcrum for the complex identity of a place, one that encompasses several periods and many events. In the first article of this part [4.b), item 15] the author notes the timeliness of the category “after-art”, a term coined in the 1970s by the aesthetician Stefan Morawski in response to a wave of strident declarations made by the second avant-garde at the time regarding the “twilight” , “end” or “death” of art. The parameters of „after-art”: ”creativity, exploration, participation and heightened perception. None of these are identical with the concept of art itself, although they do constitute its conditions or manifestations”, which turn out to coincide with the goals of contemporary revitalisation, when considered in terms of their social and cultural effects. Successful urban renewal instils in its users the feeling that they have their own place in this world, a place which had been weakened by a neglected or abandoned area in their neighbourhood. This contemporary process of decay affects many buildings and areas of a city. It concerns both their “technical death” (when they lose their raison d’etre for functional reasons) as well as their “moral death” (when the ideology that had inspired their construction has collapsed or been eclipsed), although these issues very often overlap. The author analysed these problems on the basis of the following examples: Przemo Łukasik and the Medusa Group’s conversion of the lamp room in the Orzeł Biały mine in Bytom into a private single-family home (Bolko loft, 2001-2003), and Norman Foster’s modernisation of the Reichstag building (1995-1999). In the latter case, of key significance was the desire to preserve traces of history using conservation techniques: the fire in 1933 and inscriptions on the walls bearing witness to the Soviet Army’s capture of Berlin in 1945. The problems posed by the complex, cultural constituents of „new quality” in landscape architecture are highlighted in the redevelopment of a coal gangue dump and its conversion into green space by Janusz Bogdanowski and Zbigniew Myczkowski and their team as part of a park project in Bieruń Nowy (beginning in 1994). The problems of revitalisation in urban planning are portrayed in just one sketch by Oskar Hansen – a silhouette of Warsaw city centre and the Palace of Culture together with the surrounding area. It illustrates the ideological notion of „outmaneouvring” the Palace of Culture in its initial role as the only monument in the area, towering above all other surrounding buildings restored after the war and that still preserve old city centre buildings in its former “Warsaw scale”.


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Similar issues emerged during the revitalisation of a square on Aleja Róż in Nowa Huta. The square, which had fallen into neglect after 1989, was restored in 2001 according to a design by Piotr Gajewski (Aarcada studio), which observed a degree of architectural restraint, alluding neither to socio-realism nor to its collapse. Local residents also demanded the restoration of the rose-beds that had earlier been removed to make way for a statue of Lenin. Given the amount of greenery already existing in the area, these demands could not have been motivated by a practical need for another park or public garden. According to researchers of the Nova Huta community and the local press, they were driven by nostalgia, but a nostalgia directed towards a building and a place without ideology: a nostalgia for „the roses before the time of Lenin”. As such they indicated a number of formal and ideological planes on which the complex process and effects of urban renewal should be considered in order that they yield the maximum positive effects, including in terms of the integration of the local community. The second article in this part [4.b), item 16] is thematically related to its predecessor. In line with Rem Koolhaas’ essay, it describes the story of an open-air swimming pool built in the foundations of the would-be Palace of the Soviets in Moscow (Władimir Gelfreich, Boris M. Jofan, Władimir A. Szczuko, 1933-1935) and thus the paradoxes of the architecture of socialist realism. The possibility of being able to freely bathe in a place where Stalin had planned to make arbitrary decisions on the fate of whole populations, thus created a paradoxical interweaving of ideological, social and architectural factors in this place, which Koolhaas termed „virtual architecture”. The goal was to ensure in a virtual way the existence of the palace in the form of a swimming pool that would enable some of the palace’s declared propaganda goals to be realised while preventing the authorities from achieving others. It exposed the awkward fact that the swimming pool owed its very existence to the forced abandonment of plans to build the palace for technical reasons, i.e. the flooding of the foundations with water from the nearby River Moscow. Without entering into historical and hydrotechnical details, this way of establishing an architectural presence is not simply a rhetorical idea. Brian Massumi argues that: „Nothing is more destructive for the thinking of the virtual than equating it with the digital.” Obviously, in the vast majority of cases, the virtual sphere grows out of the digital. Nevertheless, it is just as productive to treat the virtual state as an intermediary between the non-material thought, the idea, and its recorded form in a material design and its implementation in an equally material building. This approach makes it possible to study the permanence of our memory of the features of the original design when it represented a distinct idea with the help of an unequivocal form. In this way, identifying the original „matrix” in its subsequent reverberations and disturbances occurring en route, etc, ‒ including beyond the digital world – may prove useful in the theoretical conceptualisation of non-existent spaces, which, moreover, have also become an object of study in the history of architecture (e.g. Robert Harbison, Jarosław Trybuś).


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Following Koolhaas' depiction of the problem, the author presents a second case study, this time concerning downtown Helsinki, where Alvar Aalto and his design studio proposed, in several urban planning variants, a series of fan-shaped pedestrian terraces leading towards Lake Töölö. In 1992, as part of his design for the Kiasma museum Steven Holl proposed a canal that would „feed” the lake with water flowing from the swimming pool in front of the museum, which would pass right along the contour of one of Aalto’s planned terraces. Neither of these ideas saw the light of day: in the first case – on account of protests from city residents – it was decided to preserve the semi-wild character of the lake and neighbouring park; in the second – for more mundane reasons, i.e. the course of the railway siding (despite the fact that it was unused) as well as the fact that the canal was planned on a site not at the disposal of the museum’s investors. The accumulation of numerous plans and concepts envisaged for this particular place in Helsinki’s urban fabric (where the orthogonal layout of built-up districts gently „opens” out into nature) as well as the social ferment arising from the discussions surrounding them, brings to the fore paradoxical connections regarding the (non) existence of the terrace in the form of a canal, similar to those noted earlier in the Moscow case. The subject matter of these buildings was supposed to be completely different; the recreational functions intended for the local communities were very similar, while the resources and materials required for the architecture of these buildings, gardens and urban layout were intended to complement one another. Holl returned to this place many years after Aalto’s designs were rejected, although not forgotten; he was conscious of the swimming pool designed between the foundation walls of the would-be Palace of Soviets and used by Moscow residents. The preservation, recovery or creation of a virtual matrix understood in this form can be treated as a social goal of urban renewal at the planning stage, one that positively reinforces local identity (where public awareness is suitably disposed). In a situation where larger contemporary urban complexes have long ceased to be pre-conceived artistic wholes, but simply patchworks, the presence of a cultural component in architecture in the form of “after-art” constituents or motifs preserved in a virtual matrix, provides a path that can provide residents with experiences, which in historical cities – smaller and developed urban areas devoid of spatial or ideological conflict – have produced buildings and open spaces that have developed over the course of many centuries and are universally regarded as beautiful. In turn, the „virtual half-life” of the original model as a matrix for a later design or building constructed with different materials is possible, regardless of whether this occurs in a totalitarian regime or in a democratic state observing the rule of law. The third article of the fourth part [4.b), item 17] deals with an urban renewal project for Plac Defilad in Rzeszów, which was the thesis project of Urszula Hałabuz prepared in the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology, and for which the author of the article acted as co-promoter (2004). The candidate made some on-site observations of the neglected state of Plac Defilad and the possible future functions of the place. She also conducted surveys and


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interviews with its users – both the inhabitants of Rzeszow itself and outsiders travelling to the city. Before 1989, it had served as the culminating point for May Day marches and other state ceremonies; in 2004 it was being used as a car park and minibus terminus. The state of such urban space in the centre of the city and the fact that passers-by only noticed its existence after being made to reflect on it by the survey questions, indicates that Plac Defilad had suffered a "moral death". At the same time, however, its location on the edge of the Old Town, lying close to the intersection of many roads, shopping centres and transport hubs, meant that the place had a chance of a better future. The project provided for the reconstruction of the square, and envisaged the following: sufficient greenery that would remind visitors of the monastery garden that once stood on this site while at the same time not interfering with the contemporary dynamic of the area; the building of an additional pavilion for the needs of Voivodeship administration; the inclusion of existing small businesses in forms reinforcing the urban order while ensuring isolation from the nuisance posed by nearby roads, the construction of a BWA (Office of Artistic Exhibitions) gallery, and strengthening existing public institutions in the neighbourhood (which, besides the Voivodeship building and the seat of the public prosecutor's office, include a theatre, a library and a Bernardine church). The article is currently only of historical value, because in 2010-2013, a covered parking facility together with a garden arranged on a platform was built on the square, according to a design by Zbigniew Myczkowski, which in this area satisfied the needs that had been identified in the study outlined above. In tandem with identifying the theoretical categories of the virtual matrix (beyond the digital world) and the components of „after-art” in the context of revitalisation the author also sought other parameters for architectural structures and urban space. These are not statistical indicators measurable in numerical terms and involving one or two variables and the dependencies between them, but so to speak ”second degree parameters” – combining the qualitative features of analysed structures, of varying weight and spatial scope, which reveal their use in different situations and when these incommensurable elements are brought together within a whole that functions as a single entity. The starting point for these analyses has always been the creation of real space in which human needs find their expression as well as actions aimed at implementing those needs or that remain in the sphere of ideas and for whatever reasons are never implemented in real life. The fifth part of the cycle is a group of articles dealing with complex parameters on various scales – the metropolis, the village, spaces on an intermediary scale, i.e. the suburb, as well as, finally, particular houses and their details, which often combine the components of their predecessors in a way that causes conflict. The first article [4.b), item 18] analyses the features of metropolitanism resulting from the ways in which large cities function, providing amenities that residents expect ‒ especially those who help those cities obtain and maintain their


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metropolitan status. The author refers to the three indexes that Richard Florida formulated as conditions for urban development, However, the author presents them as the effect of favourable conditions created for the currently ongoing development rather than as factors that could initiate such development. In turn, Saskia Sassen introduced the category of "global cities" to describe the world’s largest metropolises, which, thanks to the accumulation of capital and political power and their attractiveness as generators of new ideas, affect the whole world, not just individual countries or continents. However, the globalized exchange of information allows even smaller cities to exercise such far-reaching influence, especially in narrower, specialized areas. Against this background the author (following Franciszek Czech) presents the distant and unobvious connections enjoyed by the city of Seattle in the State of Washington, USA. The author also identified the connections between the different constituents of metropolitan life in different areas of activity engaged in by different people, which either combine to produce a cumulative pro-development effect or generate negative consequences as a result of clashing interests and conflicts. Besides integration in public transport, a similar need for integration exists in the case of external communication systems. Communities of pilots and analysts of amateur and semi-amateur aviation (general aviation), draw attention to the benefits of having an efficiently operating second small airport in major cities. This concerns not only local, niche organisations (such as aeroclubs) or emergency services (such as the fire service, the police and air ambulances), but also one factor that plays an important role in maintaining such airports, if they are properly organised, namely air taxis as well as corporate and commuter air services. Such an issue, even when it concerns individuals rather than a large group of passengers is still an element promoting the integration of the transport system, and effective solutions in this area bring a city tangible benefits. Another parameter discussed by the author, one that is comprised of various incommensurable components, is a city’s image/profile as a metropolis, resulting from the perceptual potential of its panorama, treated not only as a conveyor of an historical and identity narrative but also as a one-time perceived and recognizable logo. Such a panorama is of course dependent not only on the shape of the city, but also on its nightly illumination, the presence of tourist attractions, the popularity of these points, urban customs and traditions in the form of events that take place there and which use this panorama as their backdrop and, as a consequence ‒ can fix the image of city in the memories of its visitors. The article concludes with a number of remarks on the role of buildings, especially public ones, as components of metropolises. The character of their architecture becomes a conveyor of information on the orientation of residents and the strategies of local authorities; and their successful promotion as icons of these cities bring benefits for the latter’s image more quickly and at a lower cost than efforts to tidy up and improve a city’s entire panorama. In an article on the elements of permanency and change in the space of the village [4.b), item 19] ‒ published two years after Poland's accession to the


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European Union ‒ the author identifies a number of parameters that link together heterogeneous components in a similar fashion, although literally in ways that are obviously different from their metropolitan counterparts. These concern, among other things, the visual, functional and meaningful effects of the use of certain building materials – both natural and artificial. His remarks on the architectural consequences of using particular materials help identify those features that often make them strange and artificial despite similarities with traditional solutions or precisely because of these similarities ( the formwork of elevations or covering them with siding slats, an overly massive stone wall used, for example, as a fence for habitat plots in one village in the Sudety Mountains). The increasing diversity of forms and materials in the Polish rural landscape in the years immediately following Poland's accession to the European Union resulted, among other things, from social changes, which in the article are treated as the background for changes in architecture. They also include new directions in emigration from rural areas. For many reasons, one destination for immigrants worth of note was Ireland ‒ a country that had only achieved economic success itself a dozen or so years earlier. Close-up experience of a strong local democracy governed by the rule of law and based on an economic model combining agriculture with technology that provides significant benefits on the global market, showed at that time (before the crisis of 2008) that Irish prosperity could also be achievable in Poland in a dozen or so years. The final article in the fifth part [4.b), item 20] focuses on the parameters of suburbs as areas of undetermined status, whose inhabitants are employed outside their place of residence (i.e. in the centre) and characterised by amorphous spatial features, whose components are of varying origin. Besides the oldest areas of modern, large cities, usually referred to as the "old town", the other parts of current urban centres were once suburbs themselves, which centuries earlier had been swallowed up by successive waves of expansion. Hence, the largely preserved course of old roads and sometimes surviving relics of suburban housing in areas that are today clearly lie in downtown districts, constitute a source of urban complexity at the level being discussed here. Another factor regarding today's actual suburbs, and which is reflected in their architecture, is the tension between the pace of life and the intensity of development of the centre in relation to the suburbs. The two are in a constant state of confrontation due to the everyday contacts between residents and spatial proximity, which often generates conflicts between them. Another interesting theme from the perspective of their complex spatial structure is that of suburban enclaves in city centres, which are not relics of former suburbs, but instead simply recreate architectural features specific to suburbs. Also worthy of note is the human behaviour shaped by this architecture. These undoubtedly include a slower pace of life or even a slower pace of movement locally, reduced noise levels, and space experienced on a more intimate scale in the neighbourhood, which itself is undisputedly part of the city centre and yet contrasts


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with it in these respects. This allows users to mutually confirm the informal autonomy of such an enclave through their own behaviour. The above general characteristics are discussed in the article using examples of intimate recreational spaces located in the city centres or in close proximity to areas of heavy traffic, and amidst historical and contemporary buildings, such as Place du Parvis de Nôtre Dame and the foreground of the Arab World Institute in Paris, Mariacki Square, the space between the Cracovia Hotel and the Kiev Cinema and the foreground of the Manggha Centre of Japanese Art and Technology in Krakow, the Dalum Tekniske Skole area (currently Kold College) in Odense, Denmark, and the foreground of the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki (discussed earlier on other occasions and located on the city’s main thoroughfare). The article concludes with a theoretical subchapter in which the author notes the potential of the suburb, with its attributes of disorder, its spontaneous initiative, but also its openness to change and its inclination towards something other than itself. The author also proposes ways of using this potential during the design and planning stages and preserving it in permanent structures ‒ in contemporary city buildings, in which some spatial measures allow for the recreation of features of suburban architecture that are beneficial to human well-being.

Conclusions The attached articles ‒ juxtaposed in the way presented and explained above – provide a platform for drawing common conclusions regarding architectural complexity during a period when it reflected an increasingly commonplace pluralism that encompassed many simultaneous yet clashing social, political, cultural and artistic tendencies in the contemporary world. Complexity as a common feature of many architectural phenomena and leaving its mark on the latter has undoubtedly increased in intensity ‒ both in quantitative and qualitative terms ‒ since it was first declared an important area of architectural analysis more than half a century ago. As a concept that predates architectural postmodernism and is more general in its scope, complexity is characterized by more attributes that go far beyond ‒ as it was coined on these pages ‒ "early postmodernism"; it describes both phenomena anticipating the revision of the modern paradigm as well as those present only in more advanced forms of postmodernism. The author does not deny the new and promising levels of complexity analysis provided by architecture and architectural design theory based on digital tools, nor the "complexity paradigm" developed in the natural sciences that some authors apply to architectural phenomena with the hope of gaining a new understanding while others use it to show the limited range of its applications; finally, also, there is the idea of applying neuroscience research techniques to explain the mechanisms of space perception at the level of the functioning brain. The analyses and partial syntheses presented below show that the pioneering approaches of complexity ‒ filled with ever richer content ‒ remain a promising theoretical framework for contemporary architecture research. Following a "centenary of the avant-garde" and


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at a time when so many problems are not only unsolved but also abandoned when they fall out of fashion, many cognitive benefits are to be obtained by developing and applying these pioneering approaches to more recent architecture (the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st). This creates an opportunity for developing a "late style", not only in works of architecture (in the same way as "late modernism", or subsequent stages of advanced deconstruction in architecture), but also in the form of "late" or simply more advanced theoretical approaches. Venturi's "double-functioning element,” and Jenck’s notions of "double coding" and "polyvalence", gained new fields in which they could manifest themselves, if only by taking into account more local factors affecting the shape of architecture and the overwhelming influence of global factors determining this shape in terms of technological solutions, ecological parameters, and, finally, more complex social structures in economically advanced parts of the world, where – alongside the relatively easy to define categories of "elites" and "the people" ‒ an internally diverse cognitariat has emerged. As "cognitarian culture" grows, the motifs of the old elitist culture are embracing more and more variants ‒ including an architecture that repeatedly employs coded references to old or contemporary, but nevertheless exotic models ‒ tailored to the interests and opportunities for participation of this growing social layer. The parallel phenomenon of the simultaneous "presence of the [whole] past", but now in forms of mass culture, is redirecting the "traditionalism versus modernism" debate – which Ada Louise Huxtable claimed was difficult (in the USA in 1980) to bring to life – into a field of multiple traditions, each represented by its own fragments (forms and ideas) detached from the original whole that they once created. The simplifying mechanisms of pop culture are powered by harmonizing technology. One of the many consequences of technical progress is that the criteria of standardisation has ceased to be obvious. There is no longer the – at first sight ‒ obvious monotony of identical products, such as the black Ford T (1908, produced on conveyer belts from 1913). Amidst the diversity of visual and spatial forms as well as the plurality of content associated with them, the message has today largely been standardised, thanks to digital media technology and its infiltration of the world of (let's use this term cautiously) non-media. Examples of this infiltration of actual architectural and urban space not only include ubiquitous mobile telephony stations and computer game centres, erected as separate buildings in Japan, but also colour-coded separate lanes on pavements (for people who have lost their instinct of looking around them non-stop when using their smartphones, so as to prevent them from bumping into other pedestrians) as well as warning signs before crossing the road (so they are not run over by cars). In this same space, the desire to ensure protection against air pollution may lead (as is already planned in Warsaw) to the use of enriched concrete in squares and pavements as well as titanium compounds capable of absorbing (at least partially) particles of suspended dust. The impact of such developments on the design of buildings and open spaces ‒ which until now have been significantly more stable than changes in


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modes of communication ‒ will increase the complexity of their relationship with the daily lives of their users. Designers are aware of the need to take this into account in their projects, regardless of whether these changes are visually spectacular or completely imperceptible. One way of capturing the impact of many incommensurable factors on architecture – with a considerable risk of creating confusion or subjective deformation ‒ is to combine them (provisionally) to form parameters describing qualitative characteristics at different levels of analysis, "derived parameters" or "second-level parameters". Jadwiga Sławińska once noted that "uprooting forms from the context in which they emerged is a natural and almost universal process. Hence, condemning this practice, even if somewhat justified, will not, however, stop this process." In the context of the theme of complexity outlined in these pages, it is essential to talk about the detachment of forms from their context, the way they are combined into new ones, as well as the simultaneous duration of forms in several different contexts. This phenomenon is illustrated by the evolution of a single axiom: „form follows function” coined by Louis Sullivan, through its polemical modification by Phillip Johnson who stressed the importance of visual factors and the influence of history: "Form follows the previous form, not function", which in turn was succeeded by Ralph Erskine’s pragmatic-ecological "forms follows climate", and Philip Jodidio’s pluralistic aggregate: „form follows function and history and environment, although not by any means necessarily in this order” (declared in a book reviewing the current state of architecture in 1995) and more broadly by Charles Jencks as “form follows world view, before finally being paraphrased by Christopher Alexander as „structure follows social spaces”. Within the framework of a more detailed plan, such an approach makes it possible to perceive and describe a simultaneous movement towards former opposites without falling into irresolvable contradictions ‒ tradition as a vehicle of modernity and modernity as a vehicle of tradition, the local vs. the universal ‒ already recognized (in embryonic form) in Polish inter-war architecture and its accompanying discourse (and could be recognized also in other types of modernism, following the idea of “multipled modernities” by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt). The current state of all-embracing complexity and the multitude of meanings and aspects in which it manifests itself shows – in each case based on examples taken from architecture ‒ the successful revision of the modern paradigm. The forces of modernity are operating today (for better or for worse) on post-modern principles ‒ just like the number of so few “options” available in devices used very day. Although the reverse is true in the sphere of culture: all the potential inherent in transgression, rebellion and individualism ‒ if it finds imitators ‒ is being commercialized by the entertainment, cultural, construction industries, etc., thereby making it uniform, and as a consequence eliminating or weakening complexity. The calls in the 1960s for the "inclusion" of binary opposites (both-and) have already been repeatedly implemented. Issues that had once appeared


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contradictory have been reconciled. Today, a bigger problem than contradictory character of such criteria (an issue that has been thrashed out on both a theoretical and practical level for several decades now) is their incommensurability, which creates a complexity that is less conflict-related, but at the same time more incoherent, where the difficulty lies in trying to coordinate divergent components. Since the various disciplines of science, which provide ‒ in accordance with the postulates declared at the beginning of the postmodern era ‒ thought patterns for understanding architecture in its cultural role, furnish at the same time many competitive patterns, it is the relatively persistent and non-linear character of one object of research ‒ buildings as spatial structures ‒ that facilitates their fruitful analysis and diagnosis. Even fragments of these schema prove to be useful. They are effective tools in the search for answers to specific research questions, without settling anything between them (similarly to the models once developed by Christopher Alexander they are to be applied according to the size and nature of the construction task, although each is simultaneously associated with many others, which transcend the plot, building or neighbourhood they directly concern). It is easier to notice exceptions to the norm than to operate effectively among many parallel standards. It is also easier to announce a breakthrough than to follow a gradual process of change. Today, recognising a carrier of cultural complexity requires drawing it out of an environment in which complexity is also dominant, except in a version that is a product of market pluralism, the averaging of the effects of thousands of individual choices (e.g. in the case of single-family houses from a catalogue), and still present, late-modernist standardising tendencies. This is especially the case with the investments of large corporations, even when unification occurs in a picturesque version (for example, some shopping centres). Venturi recognised the value of the "forgotten symbolism of architectural form" in 1966. While there is an excess of symbolism today, it is not very legible. The vehicle through which symbolism conveys its impact has been devalued by its use for commercial purposes, attracting our attention as an incentive to buy, rather than as an existential proposition. The individualism of artistic expression has made its meaning illegible to a wider audience. What is legible nowadays are signs/messages in the form of logos, and thus referring to unambiguous content. To what extent this complexity is "optimal", to what extent the whole is "difficult" ‒ both for the designer as well as for the user/recipient/viewer – and what criteria are crucial for their evaluation – all these factors will depend on the particular case. It is impossible to provide a general prescription here. "Every place has its own history" ‒ this is the title adopted by the authors of a 2001 handbook for tour guides and operators, encouraging the latter to look for unique potential in monuments of local importance and promote their village centres on the tourist market with their help. Does this mean that every place also has its own future? At the level of theory, the path to such an architecture remains open – an overabundance of concepts offers many interpretive keys. The task of designers with ambitions to create culturally significant architecture is to act or refrain from


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acting so that this future may turn out to be individual, specific and not uniform, so that there will be a further stage of creativity rather than one that is an effect of imports, duplication or copying. The series of articles presented below serves to capture some of the issues that a contemporary architectural designer and researcher will encounter along this path. Possible applications of research results The study does not include one theoretical proposal, serving the analysis of the architecture of advanced postmodernity, but shows several research profiles through the present and the possibility of complementing them ‒ especially in buildings analyzed several times from different perspectives (e.g. Kiasma museum in Helsinki). Thus, it is an "indirectly practical" proposal (as Maria Gołaszewska described her "empirically oriented aesthetics"). The findings contained in the attached works are a proposal to enrich the description of spatial problems (both theoretical ones and those affecting everyday life) ‒ especially through the complex/derived spatial parameters included in the Fifth Part, combining sets of human needs, motivations, actions and their effects on shaping of newly deisgned architecture and the ubiquitous processes of changes and revaluation to buildings (even when they do not fully meet the criteria reserved for the revitalisation category). Such use of language also indicates the effort to reconcile contradictory concepts and theoretical approaches of modern architecture, after withdrawing their claims as to the exclusivity and based on a specific local situation. It thus indicates the manner of formulating architectural issues, which is promising from the point of view of taking the matter’s complexity into account (e.g. in the tasks set for participants of architectural competitions). The paper also points to areas of architects’ interdisciplinary education: both by presenting the content of possible links of existing buildings in many cultural, social and aesthetic contexts, as well as by sensitizing one to the complexity of the subject of one’s own activities (up to their consequences in micro scale in the form of changing the living conditions of users that occur in the course of space changes). The author conducted discussions on this topic with students, especially graduates, and found out that the issues raised on this occasion were later introduced in their design works. The paper also points to areas of educating the general public, to raise general awareness of the number and complexity of links between architecture and everyday life, and between everyday life and space. Such education should help local communities to defend local values (in the course of discussions on the development of public spaces, voting on civic budgets, etc.). This awareness should be obvious, but deficiencies should be found in this respect in the light of making designs incompatible with needs and without predicting the effects in the form of ways of using space in contemporary Poland. This is particularly evident in the lack of recognition and destroying the value of architectural solutions from the recent past (especially inter-war architecture, often not subject to effective protection).


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5. A presentation of the author’s other academic-research archievements In addition to studies and publications that became the basis for the above conclusions, the author also raised works regarding different, though closely related issues. Their common core involved the analysis of space ‒ its shaping and use, the related aesthetic and artistic content, reflecting social situations and their changes in space. 5a. One issue was the further development of the PhD thesis research area, concerning the presence of (building, media and proecological) techniques in contemporary architecture and cultural contexts of its presence. The experience gained while conducting classes in the course Designing Industrial Forms, was used here. The course was conducted during one semester for a group of students at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Cracow University of Technology. Another factor was the author’s participation in meetings organized by Société Européenne pour la Formation des Ingenieurs (SEFI): two annual conferences (Academy of Mining and Metallurgy and Cracow University of Technology 1997; Helsinki University of Technology in Otaniemi/Espoo 1998) and one work seminar (Ingeniørhøjskolen Odense Teknikum in Odense 1998). These events allowed getting to know the interdisciplinary approach to setting tasks and solving problems in engineering activities in various design disciplines and issues of social and ecological responsibility for effects; they also provided opportunities for getting to know in situ architectural facilities in Finland and Denmark, and interviewing architects (Raili Pietilä, Tuomo Suomalainen) and architecture theorists (William J. R. Curtis, Timo Keinänen, Roger Connah). This area of interest is represented by:

1. Piotr Winskowski, Modernizm przebudowany. Inspiracje techniką w_architekturze u progu XXI wieku, Universitas, Kraków 2000 (redrafted version of the PhD thesis).

2. Piotr Winskowski, Forms of Space as Factors of Engineering Education [in:] Entrepreneurship, Management and Engineering Education, SEFI Annual Conference 1998, Lifelong Learning Institute Dipoli ‒ Helsinki University of_Technology, Espoo 1998, pp. 205-210.

3. Piotr Winskowski, Industrial Design and Architecture ln Post-industrial Societies [in:] Design: the problem comes first. Programme and preliminary proceedings. International Seminar on Design in Engineering Education, lngeniørhøjskolen Odense Teknikum, SEFI-CDWG (Société Européenne pour la Formation des_lngenieurs ‒ Curriculum Development Working Group), 22-24 October 1998, Odense ‒ Denmark, pp. 30-31.

4. Piotr Winskowski, Przestrzeń budynku szkoły ‒ laboratorium kształcenia architektów [in:] Teoria i praktyka w kształceniu architekta, materiały IV_Sympozjum „Teoria a praktyka w architekturze współczesnej”, Politechnika


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Śląska w Gliwicach, Komisja Urbanistyki i Architektury PAN O/Katowice, Gliwice ‒ Rybna 1999, pp. 217-225.

5. Piotr Winskowski, Kiasma ‒ Natura i Kultura w centrum Helsinek, „Archivolta” no. 3 (3), 1999, pp. 12-16.

6. Piotr Winskowski, "Machine Aesthetics" in Architecture and Industrial Design [in:] Preservation of the Engineering Heritage, eds. Waldemar Affelt, Zbigniew Cywiński, International Conference, Technical University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk 2000, pp. 249-256.

7. Piotr Winskowski, Dziedzictwo techniki kosmicznej w krajobrazie, „Sprawozdania z Posiedzeń Komisji Naukowych, tom 43, nr 1, styczeń–czerwiec 1999, PAN Oddział w Krakowie, Kraków 1999, pp. 168-169.

8. Piotr Winskowski, Światło słoneczne jako kontekst kosmiczny architektury [in:] Architektura współczesna wobec natury, ed. Lucyna Nyka, Wydział Architektury Politechniki Gdańskiej, Gdańsk 2002, pp. 113-127.

9. Piotr Winskowski, Buildings–Skybridges / Budynki–przewiązki [in:] Contemporary problems in architecture and urbanism / Współczesne problemy w architekturze i urbanistyce, ed. Jacek Gyurkovich, Wydawnictwo Politechniki Krakowskiej, Kraków 2016, pp. 195-234.

10. Piotr Winskowski, A House Beneath the City / Dom pod miastem [in:] A House in a City. Properties of an Architectural Thing / Dom w mieście. Właściwości rzeczy architektonicznej, vol. 7, ed. Dariusz Kozłowski, Politechnika Krakowska, Kraków 2016, pp. 77-88.

11. Piotr Winskowski, Reinforced concrete as a ruin and as a ruin’s expression / Żelbet jako ruina, żelbet jako wyraz ruiny [in:] Defining the Architectural Space. Transmutations of Concrete / Definiowanie przestrzeni architektonicznej. Transmutacje betonu, vol. 3, ed. Tomasz Kozłowski, Wydawnictwo Politechniki Krakowskiej, Kraków 2017, pp. 87-99.

5b. The second extensive issue was the research program found by Komitet Badań Naukowych (Scientific Research Committee (grant no. PB 1271/T07/2000/18), titled Cultural Conditions in Architecture in Relation to Civilization Changes of the late Twentieth Century which the author directed in the years 2000-2001 (place of implementation: Cracow University of Technology, team of contractors: 9 people in total). It was implemented during the preparation of Poland's accession to the European Union, which is also indicated in the following sub-title: European Integration as an Opportunity and a Threat to the Cultural Values of Architecture. The task was accomplished through a broad identification of the relationships between social and cultural transformations, ocurring in societies moving from industrial to post-industrial, elaborated as theoretical foundations of architecture and reflecting the latter in new functional issues (such as commercial facilities, large-area retail, large office complexes) as well as a new way of raising known issues (such as hospitals, cultural facilities, commemoration spaces). The examples discussed concerned the architectural response to the challenges coming from many directions ‒ both tradition, locality and transnational factors, global capital and the predicted


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changes in lifestyle, approaches and demands for such shaped buildings and urban spaces. The grant resulted in a publication (under the same title) issued under the author’s scientific editing (2001), which was then awarded the Minister of Infrastructure Prize for the publication in architecture for 2002 (team award for co-authors: J. Tadeusz Gawłowski, Angelika Lasiewicz-Sych, Piotr Winskowski and Maciej Złowodzki). The author also received an individual distinction for the scientific editorial of this publication. A summary of the results of the grant was provided in the scientific session entitled Architecture during the Time of Globalization ‒ from “Global Standards" to “Local Identity", organized jointly by the Independent Design Institute of Industrial Architecture Faculty of Architecture, Cracow University of Technology, the Commission for Urban Planning and Architecture in Polish Academy of Science, Cracow Branch and the Ergonomic Commission in Polish Academy of Science, Cracow Branch, 2002.

1. Uwarunkowania kulturowe architektury wobec przemian cywilizacyjnych końca XX wieku. Integracja europejska jako szansa i zagrożenie dla kulturowych wartości architektury, ed. Piotr Winskowski, Politechnika Krakowska ‒ Wydawnictwo AND, Kraków ‒ Warszawa 2001, 466 pp.

2. Sprawozdania z posiedzeń Komisji Naukowych, vol XLVI/1, January-June 2002, PAN Oddział w Krakowie, Secesja, Kraków 2003.

5c. The above mentioned grant targeting the authors activity on theory of architecture towards a conceptual connection of specific objects and architectural phenomena with the concepts of space, developed in the area of aesthetics, pursued as a branch of philosophy and sociel sciences. This subject was reflected in the participation in Polish Aesthetic Conferences (with papers), in Polish Aesthetics Congresses (without papers) and the International Aesthetic Congress, held in Krakow (2013, with a paper) ‒ organized jointly by the Department of Aesthetics of the Institute of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University and by the Polish Society of Aesthetics, of which the author was one of the founding members (2001) and also the secretary of the board of the first term (2002-2006). Scientific initiatives of of the community of the Institute of Culture in Warsaw and the Institute of Cultural Studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań as well as the Department of International Cultural Studies of the (then) Institute of Regional Studies of the Jagiellonian University, creates another area of engagement in the above mentioned research topics. Seminars and conferences opened the discussion and exchange of interdisciplinary views with the representatives of the humanities and social sciences and architects interested in this subject. Such experiences have been (partially) recognized by the author for a fruitful use in design and didactic practice in architecture. This movement is represented by:


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1. Piotr Winskowski, Estetyka architektury a nowe media [in:] Piękno w sieci. Estetyka a nowe media, ed. Krystyna Wilkoszewska, Universitas, Kraków 1999, pp. 179-200.

2. Piotr Winskowski, Łukasz Stanek, ldea szklanego domu i przemiany dekonstrukcji w architekturze lat 90. [in:] Przestrzeń, filozofia i architektura. Osiem rozmów o poznawaniu, produkowaniu i konsumowaniu przestrzeni, ed. Ewa Rewers, Wydawnictwo Fundacji Humaniora, Poznań 1999, pp. 213-229. My contribution concentrns the general concept of the whole paper and the preparing of the half of the text. My participation: 60%.

3. Piotr Winskowski, lntercultural Relations of Architectural Forms [in:] International Congress: The Future of the Architect (Land, Mind, Society), ed. Josep Muntanola Thornberg, Departament de Projectes d'Arquitectura, Escola Tecnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona, Universitat Politecnica de_Catalunya, Barcelona 2000, pp. 126-127 (summary).

4. Piotr Winskowski, Architektura w reklamie [in:] Estetyka reklamy, ed. Michał Ostrowicki, Art-tekst, Kraków 2002, pp. 93-111.

5. Piotr Winskowski, Architektura jako przestrzenny zapis wartości. O pomnikach i_miejscach pamięci [in:] Aksjologiczne spektrum sztuki [vol.] 3. Estetyczne przestrzenie, eds. Piotr Kawiecki, Józef Tarnowski, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, Gdańsk 2005, pp. 125-153.

6. Piotr Winskowski, Architektura wobec kręgów tożsamości [in:] Kultura wobec kręgów tożsamości. Materiały konferencji przedkongresowej Poznań 19-21 października 2000, Kongres Kultury Polskiej, eds. Teresa Kostyrko i Tadeusz Zgółka, Wielkopolskie Towarzystwo Kulturalne i Wydawnictwo DTSK Silesia, Poznań ‒ Wrocław 2001, pp. 120-138.

7. Piotr Winskowski, paper: Architektura przełomu XX i XXI wieku. Między kreowaniem tożsamości a jej poszukiwaniem, all-Poland scientific conference Dylematy wielokulturowości. Tożsamość ‒ różnica ‒ inny, Instytut Kultury i Literatury Angielskiej i Amerykańskiej Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, Instytut Kulturoznawstwa UAM in Poznań, Ustroń, 2002.

8. Piotr Winskowski, Przeszłość jako piktogram we współczesnej architekturze [in:] Przeszłość we współczesnej narracji kulturowej. Streszczenia, eds. Andrzej Pankowicz, Barbara Weżgłowiec, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Instytut Studiów Regionalnych, Katedra Teorii i Historii Badań Kulturoznawczych, Kraków 2010, pp. 68-70, http://www.ism.wsmip.uj.edu.pl/documents/3337228/ d73e872b-9f25-49b0-a88c-481e52f6f381 (pp. 38-39).

9. Miasto. Między przestrzenią a koncepcją przestrzeni, eds Magdalena Banaszkiewicz, Franciszek Czech, Piotr Winskowski, Wydawnictwo UJ, Kraków 2010, 396 pp. My contribution concerns the general concept of the whole book, the elaboration of 15 % of the text volume and 33% of scientific editing works. One article is mentioned as a part of scientific accomplishment (4.b), idem 20).

10. Piotr Winskowski, Game on the Border of Compliance with Rules, or_Deconstruction in Details / Gra na granicy zgodności z regułami, czyli dekonstrukcja w detalach [in:] Defining the Architectural Space. Games and


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Play of Architecture / Definiowanie przestrzeni architektonicznej. Gry i zabawy architektury, eds. Dariusz Kozłowski, Maria Misiągiewicz, „Technical Transactions, Architecture / Czasopismo Techniczne, Architektura” vol. 9-A (15), 2015, pp. 399-404.

11. Piotr Winskowski, Ambiwalencja ciężaru i lekkości w architekturze współczesnej [in:] Ciężar i lekkość w kulturze. Estetyka, poetyka, style myślenia, ed. Brygida Pawłowska-Jądrzyk, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UKSW, Warszawa 2016, pp. 153-183.

12. Piotr Winskowski, Szybkość (wokół) architektury [in:] Szybkość w_kulturze, ed. Agnieszka Smaga, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UKSW, Warszawa 2016, pp. 155-196.

5d. The above directions of research have gained a combined application in the analysis of the simultaneous impact of space on many human senses (taken not from the perspective of physiology, but from the architectural tools for shaping such spaces and the utilitarian consequences of such operations. These works concerned the dynamics of illusion and disillusion in which users of specially shaped spaces fall down. These phenomena have been recognized in existing sculptural arrangements and arrangements of museum exhibitions as important means of expressing artistic content. This movement is represented by the set of works:

1. Piotr Winskowski, Architektoniczne i rzeźbiarskie parametry środowiska, Rocznik „Rzeźba Polska”, vol. XI: Rzeźba ‒ architektura. Wzajemne relacje i strategie, ed. Monika Rydiger, Centrum Rzeźby Polskiej, Orońsko 2005, pp. 99-104.

2. Piotr Winskowski, Samo-wyjaśnianie zmylenia w procesie doświadczania przestrzeni, „Kultura Współczesna” no. 1-2 (35-36), 2003, pp. 139-157; English version: Self-explanation of Deception in Temporal, Spatial Experience [in:] Outis, volume one, Outis Project on Deception, The Society for Phenomenology and Media, San Diego CA 2004, s. 109-119; paper reprinted in: Deception. Essays from the Outis Project on Deception, ed. Paul Majkut, co-ed. Alberto J. L. Carrillo Canán, Society for Phenomenology and Media, Zeta Books, Bucharest 2010, pp. 292-307, paperback & electronic, pdf); enlarged version of the paper: Architektura jest inspirująca, gdy jest doświadczana / Architecture is inspiring when it is experienced [in:] Inspiracje architekturą. Interdyscyplinarna wystawa pedagogów Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Krakowie / Inspired by architecture. Interdisciplinary exhibition of pedagogues at Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, ed. Karolina Woźniak, Wydawnictwo ASP, Kraków, pp. 7-36; see also https://issuu.com/gaspkrk/docs/inspiracje_ architektur___ internet_1jkjkjk

3. Piotr Winskowski, Ciało w przestrzeni architektonicznej [in:] Kulturowe emanacje ciała, eds. Monika Banaś, Katarzyna Warmińska, Wydawnictwo UJ, Kraków 2011, pp. 73-92.


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4. Piotr Winskowski, The Body, Senses and Architecture [in:] 19th International Congress of Aesthetics "Aesthetics in Action". Book of abstracts, Wyd. Libron ‒ Filip Lohner, Kraków 2013, pp. 314-315.

5. Piotr Winskowski, Symbolic Space. From Narrative to Experience [in:] Symbols of Contemporary Culture, eds. Monika Banaś, Elżbieta Wiącek, Księgarnia Akademicka, Kraków 2015, pp. 23-49; significantly expanded Polish version: Między narracją a doświadczeniem ‒ aranżacja muzeum i pola bitwy [in:] Sfera publiczna – przestrzeń – muzeum. O zmieniającej się roli instytucji kultury, eds. Elżbieta Nieroba, Borys Cymbrowski, Opole 2016, pp. 159-205.

6. Piotr Winskowski, Wolność słowa zakonspirowana w przestrzeni publicznej, „Folia Litteraria Polonica” (paper accepted for printing).

5e. The next area ot the author’s research, concerns the architectural theory as a support for creative possibilities of other disciplines of arts (both visual and performative). This movement is represented by:

1. Piotr Winskowski, Architektura ‒ przestrzeń projekcji i powierzchnia ekranu [in:] Wiek ekranów, eds. Andrzej Gwóźdź, Piotr Zawojski, Rabid, Kraków, 2002, pp. 477-502; redrafted as: Światło w przestrzeni ‒ światło na płaszczyźnie, „Zeszyty naukowo-artystyczne Wydziału Malarstwa Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Krakowie” no. 6, 2005, pp. 197-227.

2. Piotr Winskowski, Bright Space, Whiteness and Grayness, History and_the_Future, „Kultura Współczesna” no. 4 (38), 2003, pp. 217-226 (Memory of the Shoah ‒ Contemporary Representations, ed. Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska, Narodowe Centrum Kultury, Warszawa 2003 (Polish version of the paper: Jasna przestrzeń, biel i szarość, historia i przyszłość [in:] Pamięć Shoah. Kulturowe reprezentacje i praktyki upamiętnienia, eds. Tomasz Majewski, Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska, Officyna, Łódź 2009, pp. 637-645 (2nd edition 2011, pp. 665-673).

3. Piotr Winskowski, Ethical factors in spatial environment, “Urbanistika ir_architektura / Town Planning and Architecture”, vol. XXXI, no. 1, 2007 (Vilnius Giedyminas Technical University ‒ Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Leidykla Technika), pp. 3-11.

4. Piotr Winskowski, Przestrzeń zgeometryzowana krajobrazu, „Architektura Krajobrazu. Studia i przezentacje / Landscape Architecture. Studies and Presentations” no. 4 (17), 2007, pp. 22-34.

5. Piotr Winskowski, Światło w pokoju Rembrandta, „Zeszyty malarstwa” no. 9, 2008, pp. 303-338.

6. Piotr Winskowski, Trzy zderzenia trzech reprezentacji z trzema świadkami [in:] Pamięć Shoah. Kulturowe reprezentacje i praktyki upamiętnienia, eds. Tomasz Majewski, Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska, Officyna, Łódź 2009, pp. 103-106 (2nd edition 2011, pp. 115-118).

7. Piotr Winskowski, Światło wracające do cienia [in:] Konteksty sztuki. Konteksty estetyki, vol. I: Tradycja i perspektywy estetyki, eds. Krystyna Wilkoszewska, Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska, Wydawnictwo Officyna, Łódź 2011, pp. 381-387.

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