Synthesis of culture and nature

The architecture of the Stelmach & Partners Architects is to be only the simplest and most contemporary, minimal “box” for activities and a programme enriching the local community. The architecture which makes a new contribution to its surroundings and the social environment in which it is created seems to enjoy a much better understanding today than it did two decades ago. After winning the architectural competition of the Association of Polish Architects in 2017, our Architectural Office Stelmach and Partners signed a contract with the SGH Warsaw School of Economics for the creation of construction and executive design projects which would allow for the selection of the contractor in a tender, in accordance with the Public Procurement Law.

CONCEPT

The winning concept assumed that the building located at Batorego Street, next to the central SGH campus, in its programme and spatial shape, would be a synthesis of culture and nature (as Romano Guardini wants it in his Letters from Lake Como). The spatial context of this facility is the nearby Pole Mokotowskie – the most extensive city park in the centre of Warsaw and the SGH campus, with legendary student club “Stodoła” located on the adjacent plot. This context has fundamentally affected the way of thinking about this place and, as a result, the shape of the structure and its relationship with the external space. The teaching building of the Centre for Innovative Space (CPI) differs from similar university facilities erected so far. A commendable, unsurpassed exception is the Library of the University of Warsaw (BUW) in Powiśle authored by Prof. Marek Budzyński.

In the programme of competition work, we proposed that the CPI building should be a combination of teaching and coworking spaces but also including recreational spaces. The structure of the building was conceived and designed in such a way that the teaching and scientific areas intermingle with recreational spaces (restaurant, café) and coworking spaces. These, in turn, will become – due to the gardens next to the side of “Stodoła” and along Batorego Street – part of the city public spaces intended for students and researchers. It is an important element of raising the rank of the capital, increasing the attractiveness of its space, and consequently a significant impulse for the development of the city, especially its academic dimension. These areas open in terms of programme and space are located on the entire ground floor. This concept, unique on the Polish scale and found in the West, was accepted by the SGH authorities, as the Rector and Chancellor in particular had seen models for this building in Milan and Singapore. In the programme discussions between the architects and the investor, there were specific solutions that should be included in the Centre for Innovative Space. Simply put, we thought that the new building should be a combination of teaching space, restaurants, cafes and exhibition and coworking spaces.

We must also not forget that architecture is the art of space transformation, so we were seeking for beauty, which for us is the beauty of the structure of the building. The spaces of the building constitute an internal continuum – a multi-level, multi-faceted functional core of the building, containing MEP shafts. They are connected by a characteristic element – a green wall of living plants – which symbolically leads us to the roof. The roof was designed as an endemic meadow that would have been overgrown with windblown seeds if we had not built this house in this place. It is, of course, dedicated to students. A meadow of perennials and grasses on the roof is a “green” lecture hall, where you may not only relax in the open air during breaks between classes, but also conduct teaching classes. It can obviously be associated with the green roof, walls and interiors of BUW. These elements of meadows also appear on the perimeter of all facades, visible from the lecture interiors and study rooms. In turn, the brick red colour and slants of the facade appear as a reminiscence of the forms of other SGH buildings, the author of which is Jan Koszczyc Witkiewicz.

Of course, such a multifunctional and multi-layered, demanding structure needed extremely sophisticated and extensive installations, especially environmentally friendly, including low-voltage ones. All appliances, including air handling units, heat pumps, etc. of the designed MEP systems were placed under this roof, on the technical floor.
 

TO BE BEAUTIFUL… A HOUSE MUST MOVE AWAY FROM ITS FUNCTION

The construction of such a complex and services-saturated house in the centre of Warsaw is always a big challenge for architects, contractors and investors. In addition, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of war in Ukraine, and consequently, unpredictable determinants of the construction market in 2021-2022, it was obviously difficult for the contractor, but also for the investor, to assess the final budget and schedule of the investment, which, after all, affects the budget. The major problem on this construction site was to find alternative solutions to the designed ones, which were either no longer achievable because production was discontinued, or the waiting period made their use unrealistic. If not for the attitude and competence of the SGH Chancellor and Investment Office, it would be practically impossible to find such solutions. The contractor conducted continuous negotiations with the investor, which was reflected in the procedures for selecting subcontractors and suppliers of elements. The executive designs accepted by the investor had to be truly interchangeable, in accordance with the Public Procurement Law, so they had to be modified so as to fit into the budget and deadlines of the investment, without deteriorating the quality of the house space or its functionality. And this, as we know, requires additional time and energy (competence and patience) from the investor, contractor and architect. Against this unusual background, the investor fulfilled this difficult role with exceptional competence and commitment.

Building a house that is to meet all applicable regulations, investor requirements, and at the same time which would be a work of architectural art, is almost impossible in Poland. As Tadao Ando used to say, a house must move away from its function as far as possible in order to become a work of art. In a university building (applicable to all universities), which is represented in the construction process by a dozen or so people (supervision inspectors, inspectors checking designers, architects, advisors to directors and managers), such a move is simply impossible. The elements of space creation included in the competition concept had to change in the direction of their literal utilitarianism and compliance with the regulations in force in Poland (every place in the landscape is magical, every construction site is trivial – as Louis Barragan is said to have described it). Each inspector tries to protect their employer from potential threats, which means that the most unlikely black scenarios of use are indicated. An example to be quoted is the replacement of the Geze “Stelmach” door handle, made according to an individual design by Bolesław Stelmach, with a typical one, because “if the user grips it incorrectly, he can rub his fingers against the frame”. Although the handle and frames corresponded to the applicable regulations, and you can hurt your fingers in a hundred other places built, of course, in accordance with the regulations. One can imagine the effect of such a legal principle of avoiding any risk of using historic buildings. However, it was important that the SGH Chancellor and Investment Office, directly involved in the construction, always tried and always found a good solution through negotiations.
 

 A green wall of living plants symbolically leads us to the roof

SEEKING A COMPROMISE

The aesthetics to which the Stelmach & Partners Architects is faithful is the truth of structure and materials; noble proportions and textures. The house must be built with the simplest, reusable materials: concrete, steel, wood and glass. Equally important as this post-industrial aesthetics is our belief that architecture is to be experienced. Therefore, it was very important to choose and accept the textures of architectural concrete. Since level –1 houses lecture halls, student common spaces and coworking spaces, they required access to daylight. All this through gaps around the perimeter of the building, so that the glass ceiling lets in sunlight along the diaphragm wall. Thus, the diaphragm wall, with a hand-treated surface giving it the texture of “rock”, became the inner wall of the lecture halls. The contractor presented several variations of this texture, and the architect, with the participation of the investor, indicated which of the mock-ups (on a 1:1 scale – ed.) best suited them. Of course, it was necessary to look for a compromise between the sensorily and expressively strongest texture and utility considerations. The choice of architectural concrete textures that we designed in the common areas of students on the upper floors was similar.

Structural facades, designed from coloured architectural concrete, were also subject to similar architectural concrete acceptance procedures. The edges of the protruding green terraces overgrown with meadows, which run around the entire building, and the dynamic slanted beams, were coloured in brick red in accordance with the design. The colour of this house was to symbolically connect the new building with the entire historical complex of SGH buildings, whose facade colour is a recognisable sign in the landscape of Warsaw.

The subcontractor of the general contractor – Warbud Betony – knew our high requirements in this matter, because he was a supplier of prefabricated elements for the building of the Parliamentary Committees in Warsaw. He fulfilled his duties excellently, both in the Sejm building and as part of the SGH investment. After a dozen or so tests on the mock-ups brought to the construction site, workshop details of cornices and sweeps on the facades were determined. The biggest difficulty for the contractor was the architect’s requirement that the prefabricated elements should not have triangular corners, i.e. they should have corners at right angles and a texture as close as possible to poured formwork concrete. We wanted to avoid the quite often observed effect of “plastic” prefabricated elements, devoid of weight, materiality, and thus expression and experience of the built matter.

The next stage of these efforts and the architect’s work with the contractors was the selection of a mass coloured concrete mix, so that it resembled as much as possible the colours of other SGH premises designed by the pre-war master – Jan Koszczyc Witkiewicz and impregnations that would not spoil the final effect. This also applied to the impregnation of the facing surfaces of architectural concrete elements. 

Professor BOLESŁAW STELMACH, eng. arch., founder of Stelmach & Partners Architects