The end of one of Wroclaw's most distinctive buildings is coming. The Arkady Wrocławskie Shopping Center, designed in 2003 by the AP Szczepaniak studio, will be demolished, and demolition is expected to begin in the coming days. What did the Arkady become famous for? Could it have been avoided? What does the future hold for hundreds of Polish shopping malls?
Arkady Wroclawskie was built from 2005 to 2007 according to a design by Wroclaw-based AP Szczepaniak studio. Modern by the standards of the time, the building consisted of three interconnected volumes - a vast, five-sided base, a corner tower of more than 50 meters, and a spun, cylindrical volume on the northwest side. For years, the unusual forms have been among the most distinctive elements of the area around the intersection of Powstańców Śląskich and Swobodna streets. By the end of this year they will disappear from the city's landscape, as Vastint Poland, their current owner, is about to begin demolition.
The distinctive, wavy facade of the Wroclaw Arcades tower
Photo: Grzegorz W. Tężycki ©CC BY SA 4.0 | Wikimedia Commons
offices behind a glass screen
The technological solutions used in the Arkady were also unusual - attention was drawn primarily to the facade of the skyscraper, which was obscured by a wavy layer of glass. The double façade, with a height of 11 stories and a length of about 42 meters, consists of two layers - the outer, in the form of an undulating shell, and the inner, thermal insulation layer. The division into floors was maintained in the spaces between the glass surfaces, as required by fire regulations, while ventilation was carried out naturally, without the use of additional mechanical means.
As Marcin Brzezicki wrote in the World of Glass magazine:
The varied arrangement of closed and open louvers makes the facade interesting during the day. At night, thanks to artificial lighting, it gains a special charm. Fluorescent lights installed in the air corridor space emphasize the curvilinear geometry of the building, illuminating the individual modules of the facade from above. Artificial light refracts differently on the louvers' fins, and differently in places where they have been pulled up. The object becomes a lantern, an obvious signpost, and ultimately a striking advertisement for the shopping center.
Arkady Wroclawskie
Photo: NeonFor ©CC BY-SA 4.0 | Wikimedia Commons
jaws at the mall
Crowds turnedup at the opening of Arkady Wroclawskie, and the eyes were mainly attracted by the huge three-story aquarium, where, in addition to coral reefs, sharks took up residence behind the five-ton glass. Inside the mall, the more than 100,000-square-meter space provided room for 130 stores and service establishments, as well as a Multikino complex. A striking skyscraper on the northwest side has been set aside for 11,500 square meters of offices. The times of prosperity in Arkady Wroclawskie fell on the first years of its operation, although the building's previous owners carried out renovations almost to the very end to keep the building in good shape.
Arkady Wroclawskie in 2010
Photo: Penguin9 © CC BY-SA 4.0 | Wikimedia Commons
no happy ending
The end of Arkady Wroclawskie could be felt in the air for some time. Information about the change of ownership of Arkady Wroclawskie circulated among the public in 2023, when a preliminary agreement was signed between Develia, the Arkady's previous manager, and Vastint Poland, which purchased the shopping center for more than 185 million zlotys. The new investor's plans were clear from the start:
Our investment plans include demolishing the existing complex and replacing it with a modern, mixed-use development. A well-planned project in the city center will bring many benefits to the community, attracting residents and businesses and creating a dynamic, attractive space for living, working and leisure activities.
- Roger Andersson, managing director of Vastint Poland told Gazeta Wroclawska in December 2023.
As he announced, so he did - the last few stores closed on April 30, 2024. Demolition of the building is expected to begin in the coming days, which could take up to several months. Later, a new mixed-use building will be built on Świdnicka Street, but the investor is not revealing any details at this point.
Arkady Wroclawskie
Photo: Jan M © CC BY-SA 3.0 | Wikimedia Commons
Is this the twilight of shopping malls?
Arkady Wrocławskie is just one of many shopping malls that have been closed, demolished or earmarked for demolition in recent years. Krakow is already slowly forgetting about the Krakow Plaza Shopping Center on the Dąbskie Pond, last year the Malta Gallery in Poznan was demolished, and in the same city the 10-year-old Galeria Dębiec is awaiting permission for demolition. Also slated for demolition is the Klif Fashion House on Okopowa Street in Warsaw's Muranów district.
According to a database prepared by the Commercial Galleries Magazine, there are about 800 shopping centers in Poland with a total area of about 12 million square meters. Are such spaces still attractive to Polish consumers? According to a report prepared by Proxi.cloud, the situation of shopping malls has been gradually deteriorating over the past year - in 2024, traffic in shopping malls dropped by 3.5% compared to the previous year, while the number of people visiting these places was 3% lower.
At the same time, the increasing dynamics in the market for investment in new retail spaces in our country is worrying. According to the annual report of the Polish Council of Shopping Centers, more than 190,000 square meters of new retail space arrived in the first half of 2024 alone. Most of them were built in small towns and on the outskirts of cities.
Malta shopping mall in Poznań on the last day of its opening.
Photo: msz2001 © CC BY-SA 4.0 | Wikimedia Commons
a bad deal for the planet
Will the construction of another shopping center prove to be a sound investment? Time will tell, while the erection of any new building involves not only a burden on the investor's wallet, but also a strain on the already severely damaged environmental resilience."The demolition of a technically efficient, huge reinforced concrete building 15 years after its opening is an exceptional waste of forces and resources," wrote Jakub Głaz on the demolition of another Poznan gallery. The waste in this case is not only the demolition of a brand new, still functional building, but also the investment of forces, materials and energy in the erection of another building in the same place. Is there any way to minimize the negative effects of this mismanagement?
Demolition of Galeria Krakow Plaza
Photo: Dwxn © CC BY-SA 4.0 | Wikimedia Commons
Do shopping malls need to be demolished?
In the face of declining interest in shopping in shopping malls, the most intuitive solution from the perspective of environmental protection is to adapt these buildings to serve new functions. In Poland, this type of realization is so far few, remaining in the realm of concepts or created as student works. Julia Kopanska and Maciej Marciniak cite as an example of such an activity their native Poznań's Okrąglak, built from a design by Marek Leykam in the 1950s as a commercial building, and adapted to serve as an office in 2012. In the United States, shopping centers are being transformed into...apartments, and a guidebook on similar practices has even been written in San Francisco. This is not a solution befitting the current legal regulations in our country (although the government planned in 2022 to introduce laws allowing the construction of apartments in galleries), and the premises created in this way are probably not the most convenient either, but such examples show that emptying shopping centers do not have to be doomed in advance to demolition.
If demolition has already occurred, it is worth considering the possibility of reusing the materials left over from the demolition. After the selection of the winning project for the modernization and expansion of the Museum of Architecture in Wroclaw, the debate about time has accelerated tremendously, but still practice lags far behind theory. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of tons of demolition waste end up in landfills every year - according to the JRC Technical Report, in 2021 it accounted for 25 to 30% of all waste generated in the European Union.
Okrąglak in Poznań has been adapted into an office building
Photo: Adrian Grycuk © CC BY-SA 3.0pl | Wikimedia Commons
the best form of treatment is prevention
There is no escaping the changes that are inexorably taking place in the lifestyles we lead - the primacy of the mail-order business is a fact, and the prevailing parcel-commercialism in Polish cities is making this phenomenon even more acute. Architects and architects designing new commercial buildings, of which, as indicated above, more and more are being built, should think about their buildings not only in the perspective of the coming years and potential commercial success, but also take into account the eventual demolition or change of use of the buildings. This is where the solutions used in adaptive and circular architecture come to the rescue, allowing buildings to extend their life already at the design stage. As the old adage goes, the best form of treatment is prevention - although it's too late for Wroclaw Arcades, a similar fate could still befall hundreds of shopping malls in our country, including those yet to be built.
