The world is constantly changing, and with it the next generations. Sociologists (and behind them marketers) are outdoing themselves in classifying successive generations, trying to define their specific needs, character traits and outlook on the world. Must the distance between seniors and representatives of younger generations lead to mutual misunderstanding and communication difficulties? The new Center for Intergenerational Activities in Warsaw, is an architectural platform for intergenerational understanding and a place where older people meet younger adults, teenagers and even preschoolers under one roof. The experimental facility, which houses four institutions, was designed by {tag:pracownie}.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw.
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
four institutions on two floors
The Center for Intergenerational Activity on Korotynskiego Street in Warsaw is a building with two floors above ground, consisting of three segments with bases in the shape of an extended rectangle. The wings meet with their shorter sides and are situated at 90 and 115 degree angles to each other, creating a sheltered space of the inner courtyard. The second story of the east wing has been set back relative to the outline of the perimeter walls, allowing the creation of spacious terraces, accessible to the users and users of the CAM in Ochota.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw.
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
In designing the Center for Intergenerational Activity, the architects faced an extremely difficult task of fitting four institutions intended for groups of people of different ages and with very different needsunder one roof. This is because one building housed the Center for Intergenerational Activities, which serves mainly seniors, a nursery, a Child Care Center and a Community Self-help Center, where people with multiple disabilities will receive support. Despite the limited space and layout inherited from the 1960s edifice, a set of solutions has been found for each, allowing for seamless coexistence.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw.
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
As Dorota Sibinska explained at the 2021 Architecture Weekend in Gdynia, some challenge was the physical separation of the institutions. Although the idea of the Intergenerational Activity Center includes the integration of different social groups, each institution has specific needs, separate staff, administration and utility consumption. The divisions became apparent not only in the functional organization of the building's interiors, but also on its faces.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
architecture with many faces
For CAM is a building with many purposes and many faces. The facades have been strongly differentiated, in some places fulfilling specific functional needs, in others signaling a change in the use of particular parts of the building. Although it appears in the records under a single address, viewing it from different sides, one gets the impression that it is not one building, but a whole complex of them. Some sections of the walls are glazed, while others are finished with light wood-colored HPL panels and dark fiber-cement cladding. On individual parts of the building, the design team provided spaces for painting compositions, while others feature abstract sculptures.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw.
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
The fifth elevation has been developed in a special way. According to the author's team, greenery has been planned on the roofs, both low - extensive - and high, intensive. From the perspective of the pro-environmental aspects of the building, the latter is particularly important, whose representatives sequester significant amounts of carbon dioxide, and the deep layer of soil that sustains them alive is capable of storing a significant amount of rainwater. Greenery also flows down the vertical walls of the buildings.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotynskiego in Warsaw.
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
integration in the open air
There is also plenty of it around the Center for Intergenerational Activity. The building was constructed in the vicinity of the Forty Korotynski park, with which it naturally connects from the north and east.
It was very important for us to connect the view and space of the unusual, embanked park with the building as seamlessly as possible. The fault façade overgrown with greenery piles up towards Sierpinski Street. The first floor elevation of the nursery reveals a view of the park from the first floor. The whole is complemented by old, tall trees, which are the greatest treasure of the plot. The lowering of the playground area gives the impression that the nursery is extremely low, even from the higher parts of the park we can peep into the inner courtyard.
- write the architects about their realization
From the south, where the inner courtyard was located, the area was developed in a comprehensive way with a division into playgrounds, activity and rest zones. The traffic layout has been planned in such a way as to allow the free mixing of different user groups, while maintaining zoning that promotes the separation of more intimate spaces. According to the Warsaw City Hall, a whole lot of activities have been planned here - in front of the CAM building there are, among others, outdoor gyms and a pitch for the increasingly popular game of boules in Poland. The fun and games in the open air can be watched from a café terrace, which looks right into the inner courtyard. The spaces between the activity zones are filled with the trees that grew here before construction, as well as new low and tall plantings, including 80 trees that make up the dendrological path. Representatives of the animal world will also find their place in the area around the Ochota CAM - the architects designed nesting boxes for swifts and a ventilated house for cats for the area.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego in Warsaw.
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
community center for seniors
The largest space here is occupied by the Center for Intergenerational Activity, whose mission is to activate seniors and senior citizens and integrate these people with younger generations. It is the only one of the institutions located in the building on Korotinsky Street to occupy spaces located on both floors, mainly in the middle wing and on the first floor of the east wing. The first floor includes public rooms, designed to invite as many seniors as possible, but also other people interested in CAM's activities. Visitors are greeted by a spacious hallway preceded by fully glazed elevations. Behind the green-tiled reception counter climb the wall-growing plants, whose vivid colors and organic forms contrast with the severity of the reinforced concrete ceiling.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw.
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
Behind the hall, on the left side, there are, among others, a canteen and a cafeteria with a stage, open to the front of the building with large glazing and a wooden terrace. Those wishing to refresh their appearance will be served by a small barber shop. With open access, all of these functions are intended, first, to serve seniors, and second, to encourage younger generations to integrate.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw.
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
The first floor is the space for those who decide to stay a little longer at the Center for Intergenerational Activity on Korotynska Street. Thus, there are mainly classrooms and workshops, art, computer and therapy studios, a room for people suffering from dementia, and offices that can be used by NGOs.
Intergenerational Activity Center - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw - murals on the exterior facades designed and painted by Marcin Czaja
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
some privacy!
Although all parts are connected to each other by passageways, one of them seems much more separated from the others. We are talking about the Care and Education Facility, which is located on the first floor of the west wing. It is only communicated with the first floor part of the Intergenerational Activity Center by a glass connector, so the blocks of the two institutions' headquarters are physically separated from each other. This part is also separated from the rest of the users of the complex by vegetation - the glazing is preceded by a fence and tall grasses. The visual separateness is emphasized by the treatment of the facades, which have been covered with murals designed by Marcin Czaja, a lecturer from the First Studio of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. The compositions depict people in the midst of various activities - from playing instruments to sports activities to stargazing. All in the artist's characteristic synthetic, yet extremely colorful and fanciful, aesthetics.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotynskiy in Warsaw
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
Additional barriers are dictated by the specifics of the Care and Education Facility, which will be the only one in the CAM - Korotynska area to operate around the clock. Fourteen children aged from 10 to 18 will reside here. This is a remnant of the activities of Children's Home No. 9, which operated here since the late 1960s. According to legal regulations that were introduced at the beginning of the new millennium, the number of residents of children's homes had to be reduced to a maximum of 14 wards. It is their privacy that is taken care of by all the measures mentioned in the previous paragraph. The interiors included double rooms, educational rooms and common spaces, including a living room, kitchen and dining room.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw.
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
taste laboratory
Above the Care and Education Facility were the spaces of the Community Self-Help Center, whose activities are aimed at people with coupled disabilities. Here the wards have the opportunity to use, among other things, a culinary workshop and a dining room, where they learn how to use everyday objects. Workshops are also conducted in the ceramics studio, a physical exercise room and a space for calming down are available for users.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
walk through abstraction
A nursery has been located on the first floor of the east wing. From the south side, an unusual path leads to the entrance , hidden behind a row of kinetic sculptures of abstract forms, with a clearly astronomical origin. The spherical forms are reflected in the surfaces of the mirrored facades, leading toddlers to one of the nursery's six branches. The interiors are solutions well known from the Warsaw studio's earlier projects. The use of varied but relatively subdued colors, the choice of materials , imagination-stirring furniture, toys and hiding places, and clear visual identification are elements that determined the success of the Kindergarten Hut in Bydgoszcz. Now, although with a slightly smaller scale, probably due to the limited budget and multifunctional nature of the designed building, they complement the refined concept of the Intergenerational Activity Center. Outdoor play is encouraged by themed, zoned playgrounds.
Intergenerational Activity Center - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw.
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
Warsaw Intergenerational Activity Centers
The first Center for Intergenerational Activity in Warsaw was established back in 2018. The building at 25b Nowolipie Street in Muranów district, where the so-called Nowolipie Center, which housed the Center for Social Services and Training of Social Welfare Personnel, had operated for the previous 25 years, was chosen as its headquarters. The 1950s building, with details typical of Muranów's architecture, was renovated between 2016 and 2018 - it was there that the facility, where different generations would find a platform of understanding, was to be housed. The entire initiative took place within the framework of the international program "Innovations for Active Aging" - the center, which previously served mainly seniors, was redesigned to be attractive to younger people as well. The Artyści & Architekci Design Studio was responsible for the interior design. CAM Nowolipie includes computer and gymnasiums, art studios and office space for NGOs. The facility has been conducting activities aimed at supporting intergenerational activities - young people together with seniors participate in debates, lectures, art workshops or courses.
Center for Intergenerational Activity - Korotyńskiego Street in Warsaw
Photo: Filip Domaszczyński © xystudio
An experiment or the beginning of a new practice?
The success achieved by the Nowolipie Center for Intergenerational Activity led the city to announce the creation of three more establishments with a similar profile in the following years. This time, however, each was to receive a completely new building. The first of the new CAMs was built in Białołęka, at 9a Ceramiczna Street according to a design by Bujnowski Architects, who created the concept in the Design and Build mode. Next in line was the Center for Intergenerational Activity on Korotynskiego Street in Ochota, described in this text. The last of the three is being built in Wawer between Patriot and Antówcza streets. The winning, competition-winning design was prepared by BDR Architekci studio, and construction is expected to be completed later this year. At this point it is difficult to say whether the experimental form of arranging public facilities will be successful, but the good architecture that is being created as part of these investments will certainly not prevent it.
