During a conference held on May 5 this year in the meadow in front of the Design Pharmacy, Krakow Mayor Aleksander Miszalski, Krakow Chief Architect Janusz Sepioł, lead architect and Master Plan coordinator Bartłomiej Kisielewski and other people who are part of the design group presented the Master Plan for Wesoła. What will the new cultural heart of Krakow look like?
Reminder: In 2019, Krakow bought back from the University Hospital 9 hectares of land located within the historic Wesoła district, right in the center, east of the Old City limits. Over the past six years, the idea of developing this valuable area, for which cultural functions were planned, according to the results of a public consultation, has gradually taken shape. In practice, however, not much was happening. The breakthrough came in December 2024, when the city announced the preparation of a master plan for the former University Hospital site:
Its foundation was public consultations and a participatory process led by the Krakow Festival Office, including workshops, meetings with residents and activities in the Wesoła space. It was complemented by debates and expert events, including, among others, sessions organized as part of the Krakow Architecture Biennale. The information gathered — supplemented by urban, scenic, environmental, functional and transportation analyses — served as the basis for the masterplan concept.
— design group responsible for Master Plan for Wesoła
After several years of waiting and four months of intensive work by the design team, we finally got to know the first concrete details. What will Wesoła look like in the future?
Masterplan for Wesoła — a bird's eye view from Grzegórzecka Street
© courtesy of the task team creating the Master Plan for Wesoła
post-hospital revitalization
The historic buildings located on Mikołaja Kopernika Street will be developed and, in part, rebuilt. At its western edge there will be a so-called „Culture Quarter”. There, in the buildings remaining from the former St. Lazarus Hospital, it is planned to locate the House of Literature and the headquarters of the Krakow Festival Office and the Malopolska Institute of Culture. The largest of the post-hospital buildings, the administration building of the St. Lazarus Hospital at 17 Kopernika Street, will house the long-announced Culture Incubator, a coliving designed for artists. Just behind it, at Kopernika 17a, where the hospital kitchens were once located, the masterplan envisions space for the Urban Forum. The monastery buildings that once belonged to the Discalced Carmelites will become a cultural and social cluster, while the so-called „Red Surgery” (21 Kopernika St.) and the building of the Clinical Psychiatry Department (21a Kopernika St.), located at the eastern end of the developed area, are earmarked for innovation and education. One of the buildings of the Infectious Diseases and Gastroenterology Clinic at 5 Sniadeckich Street will also be adapted to house a Community Cultural Center.
Masterplan for Wesoła — entrance from Śniadeckich Street
© courtesy of the task force creating the Master Plan for Wesoola
New buildings in Wesoola
New volumes are planned in the hinterland and on the southern side of the developed area. A new Design Pharmacy building will be constructed just behind the monastery, which will spatially fulfill the function of a pedestal for the Carmelite buildings, while at the same time becoming a viewing terrace looking out over the meadow in the center of Wesola. This will involve the demolition of the building that currently houses the Pharmacy. In the southern part of the area under development, in place of the current parking lot and the larger of the buildings of the infectious disease clinic on Sniadeckich Street, two new facilities will be built — the Mediateka and the Center for Theater Practices. As revealed at the conference, these will not be tall buildings — they are to be lower than allowed by the local plan, with a height of about three stories. Right next door, on St. Lazarus Street, a place has been designated for service and residential functions, and at the southern end of the site, on Grzegórzecka Street, there will be a restaurant.
Masterplan for Wesola — bird's eye view of the focal point with the lake
© mat. provided courtesy of the task team creating the Masterplan for Wesoła
Wesoła – blue and green!
Although the planned construction projects arouse the most emotion, undoubtedly the most important element of the new vision for Wesoła is the greenery, the topography of which was one of the main factors considered in shaping the masterplan. As the team responsible for developing the documentation assures, the heart of the entire complex will remain the meadow located at the back of the Design Pharmacy. However, this one, in addition to serving an event function (hence the name — the Event Meadow), will gain completely new blue elements. On its southern side there will be a small pond, over which a footbridge will run. On the side of Sniadeckich Street, between the planned buildings of the Mediateka and the Center for Theater Practices, it will turn into a shallow water mirror. The whole assumption will take on the character of a scenic axis (called the "water axis"), starting from Jana and Jędrzeja Śniadeckich Street and ending with the silhouette of the monastery buildings.
Masterplan for Wesola — view from the bridge over the water and the monastery
© courtesy of the task force creating the Masterplan for Wesoła
Green spaces also face changes. To the east of the Event Meadow will be a contemplative space and a park, within which two playgrounds are planned. A third is to be located in the gastronomic zone on Grzegórzecka Street.
A deep integration of architecture and vegetation will take place in the case of the new Design Pharmacy building. Its green roof will serve as a terrace garden, preceding the rear elevations of the monastery buildings on Mikołaja Kopernika Street. The premise is planned as a herbarium composed in the form of a quatrefoil garden of the Italian type. Revitalization of already existing hospital gardens is also planned, including the garden behind the administrative building of St. Lazarus Hospital at 17 Kopernika Street.
Małgorzata Tujko, in charge of landscape architecture during the preparation of the Masterplan for Wesoła, stressed that it is planned to introduce as many ethnobotanical species as possible.
Masterplan for Wesoola — accommodation garden on the roof of the Design Pharmacy
© mat. courtesy of the task team creating the Masterplan for Wesoła
Architectural competitions in Wesoła
The new Wesoła also means architectural competitions. Two are planned in the near future. The first will be for a project to adapt the building of the former kitchen of the St. Lazarus Hospital at 17a Mikołaja Kopernika Street into an Urban Forum — a place for discussion of Krakow's spaces and the headquarters of the City's Chief Architect. According to Janusz Sepiol's assurances, it is to be tendered later this year. Next, the city intends to hold a competition for Mediatheka, which is to become the headquarters of the Library of Krakow. As assured during the conference, it will not be a huge building; it will offer about 8-9 thousand square meters of usable space.
That's not all, however — a significant part of the construction projects envisaged by the master plan for Wesoła are to be carried out on the basis of projects selected in architectural competitions. Thus, the city will hold competitions for the Center for Theater Practices, or the new headquarters of the Groteska Puppet Theater, and for the new Pharmacy of Design building.
Masterplan for Wesoła — entrance from the axis of the Center for Theater Practices-Mediateka
© mat. courtesy of the task team creating the Masterplan for Wesoła
According to the team responsible for preparing the masterplan:
Competitions for artistic installations and interventions in public space are also planned. They are to emphasize the creative character of the district and become indicative and symbolic elements located in compositionally dominant points.
Such projects have found their way to Wesoła in the past, including last year's Open City 2024 Festival.
Masterplan for Wesoła — view from the bike arcade
© mat. courtesy of the task force creating the Master Plan for Wesoła
Wesoła open to residents
An important element of the urban planning concept for the Wesoła area will be its accessibility, understood in several ways. As lead architect and task team coordinator Bartłomiej Kisielewski explained during the conference, the Masterplan for Wesoła assumes an urban „opening” of the district. Entrances to the study area are planned from Kopernika, Grzegórzecka, Śniadeckich and St. Lazarus streets. Two new squares are planned at the former, while a walking route will begin at Sniadeckich Street. As Bartlomiej Kisielewski explained during the conference, where possible, existing walls and fences will be demolished. It is also expected to be important to unite the new Wesola with its immediate surroundings — primarily the Botanical Garden and the Railway Park, which is still under construction, as well as university campuses, the Central Station and the Old Town.
Bartłomiej Kisielewski and Janusz Sepioł
Photo: Romuald Loegler
The transformation of Wesoola will become a success if people show up here. Therefore, while creating the spatial concept, in addition to a clear compositional axis emphasized by water, we proposed a number of attractive smaller urban interiors and a variety of functions in the area. Greenery and water are among the main elements of this composition
- points out Bartlomiej Kisielewski, lead architect and Master Plan coordinator.
Accessibility is also about adapting to the needs of different groups of people. In addition to creating a space devoid of architectural barriers, the master plan for Wesola also envisages reconciling pedestrian and bicycle traffic with public transportation — priority is to be given here primarily to pedestrians, for whom, in addition to alleys, a running loop is planned. Those who choose bicycles will probably benefit from an east-west pedestrian and bicycle axis, which will run from the city center to Warsaw Uprising Avenue.
Masterplan for Wesoła — view of Mediatheque with a lake
© mat. courtesy of the task force creating the Master Plan for Wesoła
Where will the money for Wesoła come from?
Where will the city get the money for all this? As president of ARMK Katarzyna Olesiak assured at the conference, the sources of funding will be diverse. Krakow plans to obtain funds primarily from European funds, obtained mainly from FEnIKS, Creative Europe, Horizon Europe, New European Bauhaus, KPO or SCT HUB programs. Cultural institutions (including Fablab Malopolska), universities and private entities are also expected to participate in the funding process.
The main members of the task team creating the Masterplan for Wesoła — from left: Malgorzata Tujko (landscape architect), Bartlomiej Kisielewski (lead architect and coordinator of the masterplan), Aleksander Miszalski (Mayor of the City of Krakow), Carolina Pietyra (director of the KBF), Katarzyna Olesiak (president of the ARMK), Agneiszka Staniszewska (director of the Library of Krakow), Janusz Sepioł (Chief Architect of the City of Krakow).
photo: Romuald Loegler
When will Wesoła be ready?
Krakow has been waiting for the metamorphosis of Wesoła for nearly six years. When will the district actually turn into the new cultural heart of the city? The program is scheduled to be implemented over the next decade, during which work will be carried out in 22 stages. Among the first to be planned are activities around the "Culture Quarter," a complex of three institutions located on the western side of the newly-designed Wesola. After four years, work on these facilities is expected to reach a high level of completion. They will be preceded by another round of extensive consultations, both among representatives of local government bodies, as well as experts and future users of the designed space. As assured by Krakow Mayor Aleksander Miszalski, the exact course of the planned work will be known in the near future.
