Małgorzata TOMCZAK

Gdansk

I have a cool bond with Gdansk. I like to go back there, walk the streets, imagining that my ancestors once walked them, then stop for a while, be alone with the city, with the texture of the wall, the color of the brick, the smell in the air. I like to sit somewhere off to the side, staring ahead - at the people, buildings, windows, doors, gates, doorknobs. And feel that something. It's something that I think I can only feel there.

I also like to observe how Gdansk is changing. Under the presidency of Pawel Adamowicz, the city has undergone tremendous spatial and architectural changes. He steered it towards development and change, breathed the spirit of modernity into it. There was the tenderness of a resident and the efficiency of a politician.

Gdansk is certainly still in good hands. And it certainly, like any city or urbanized space, has its problems, as Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, the current mayor of Gdansk, writes in the editorial for this issue, as well as the architects we invited to talk about their city. It seems that the challenges facing Gdansk in the near future are diagnosed. Meeting them is not easy, it takes time and determination, but both architects and city politicians are looking in the same direction. There is a kind of solidarity of thought. One probably wonders how it is with this solidarity in Gdansk. Do the people living there have something of the movement that started at the gate of the shipyard? Is the idea still alive and lingering in the hearts and minds of those who make up this city? Go to Gdansk (or maybe you live there?), talk to the people of Gdansk, the people who live there, create, design (or maybe you do?), read the statements of the architects invited to this issue and the mayor of Gdansk. And judge for yourself.