Can a monument be harmed without directly interfering with its architectural fabric? One can. It is enough to put a building right next to it, which will effectively obscure it, overgrow it or create an unfavorable context. Such is the story of one of the monuments in Krakow's Zabłocie, which has been waiting for a better moment for years. Next to the Józef Górecki House, also known as Oskar Schindler's Villa in Krakow, stood an office building that turns its back on history.
For most of his stay in Krakow, Oskar Schindler lived in a tenement at 7 Straszyńskiego Street, at the foot of Wawel Castle, just beyond the border of the Planty Park. At some point , however, he probably took up residence in a villa rising on Romanowicza Street since 1898. The Józef Górecki House, designed by Władysław Kleinberger, initially served as an administrative and residential building for the Józef Gorecki Factory of Mesh, Furniture, Iron Structures and Wrought Iron Ornamental Products, where, as Barbara Suchy wrote, among other things, the structural elements of the cross crowning Giewont were made. In 1940, the building passed into the hands of Oskar Schindler, who took it over along with the factory operating on Lipowa Street. After the war, the building was nationalized, while in the 1990s it fell into private hands.
Oskar Schindler's villa in 2011
Photo: Zygmunt Put © CC BY SA 4.0
last chance
Since then, not much has happened in the building - the tooth of time has instead been gnawing at its architecture inexorably. When in 2010 the building' s owner offered to sell the structure to the city for 6 million zlotys, there was hope for the building. Sellers, commentators, and even the city itself, floated ideas that Schindler's Villa should house another museum or educational center in the area.
It's a building with an amazing history. The city could turn it into a museum. We would be willing to resell the villa to it
- said at the time Jacek Paryła, attorney for the owner of the tenement house.
Unfortunately, the city, burdened with other expenses in Zabłocie (including the renovation of Oskar Schindler's Factory and the adaptation of its buildings for the needs of the Krakow Museum) refused to buy the building. That one sold in 2018, and its new owner was Tee Investment, which imminently announced plans to revitalize the building, which was to take the name Schindler's House, and to build a new office building, designated by the term Schindler's Office.
Schindler's House and Schindler's Office
photo: Przemek Ciępka
What will be in the renovated Schindler's Villa?
According to the investor, the new face of the plot on Tadeusza Romanowicza street will be a complex consisting of two buildings - a renovated 19th-century villa, which will house apartments, and a slender six-story office building built on the west side of the plot, with underground parking, a green roof and a restaurant on the ground and second floors. The investment is to be an opportunity not only for the deteriorating villa, but also for the entire neighborhood.
The new part of the investment is to relate in character to the immediate surroundings and refer to the industrial identity of Zablocie.
- assures the investor on its website.
The historic villa together with the office part is to be a harmonious combination of tradition and modernity.
- he adds below.
Walking around Zablocie, we can already observe the first effects of the work, which has been dragging on since 2020, when Tee Investment received a building permit. Will the promises be fulfilled?
Schindler's House and Schindler's Office
Photo: Przemek Ciępka
nice bad beginnings
Even before the change of ownership, in 2015, there was a project prepared by the POLE Architekci studio, which envisaged the addition of a glazed office building with a cup structure on the west side, i.e. increasing its area with successive floors. In the original concept, the building was to be connected to the villa by a glass battening. The design, created in 2015, was strongly futuristic, but the glass lightweight block looked much less aggressive in relation to the historic villa than the current design.
Schindler's House and Schindler's Office
Photo: Przemek Ciępka
This one was created by Krakow-based studio STANDart Architekci and assumed, as with the POLE Architekci concept, the construction of an office building on the west side of the plot. This time, however, the designers opted for far less sophisticated forms. The designed building has five above-ground floors enclosed in a cuboidal, slender block. On the west side, by the Villa, the building is enclosed by a concrete blank wall, while on the south side its gable has been gently beveled.
Schindler's House and Schindler's Office
Photo: Przemek Ciępka
a difficult conversation
Dialogue with the existing historic fabric? Evidently there was a lack of willingness to have a level conversation here. In the current design, the connection between the two buildings by a connecting beam has been abandoned, instead the skyscraper has been brought as close as possible to the block of Józef Górecki House , or Oskar Schindler's villa, as the investor would like. However, it is not perfectly adjacent to it, so an unsightly "gap" has been created between the two buildings. The cuboidal body of the office building is also out of step with the traditional sloping roof of the 19th-century villa.
Schindler's House and Schindler's Office
photo: Przemek Ciępka
The buildings belong to two different worlds, and this is how they look. The original concept was to finish the office building with graphite tiles, and the tiles covering the roof of the renovated villa were also to be a similar color. Although the skyscraper is still in its shell, we already know that the roof topping the villa was covered with brick-colored tiles - so there is nothing of a color connection. The situation is no better in terms of spatial relations.
The office building is visible from several points - while from the side of Romanowicza street it hides behind the preceding villa, in its full "splendor" it reveals itself from the side of the pedestrian passage between Tadeusza Romanowicza and Ślusarska streets. You can see plainly that its slender mass has nothing to do with the line of buildings located in the northern part of the plot, where the buildings of Oskar Schindler's Enamelware Factory are located.
Schindler's House and Schindler's Office
Photo: Przemek Ciępka
disharmony legal
It's worth mentioning that the current situation is not just the result of the investor's and architects' imagination - the building was constructed in accordance with the provisions of the Local Spatial Development Plan, which in this very place stipulates the possibility of constructing a service facility with a height of up to 18.5 meters. At the same time, however, newly constructed buildings are required to:
to form a harmonious ensemble of contemporary buildings at a high level of architectural solutions.
As can be seen from the example of the office building on Romanowicza Street, harmony is sometimes a relative concept. There is still a long way to go before the end of the works, but it is already difficult to imagine that the situation will dramatically improve.
