Onecan get lost in the policy of Wroclaw's preservation authority. On the one hand, the preservation office defends the historic character of the city center, allowing the demolition of postmodern seals, modifying elements of the designs of planned buildings, and even protecting post-German cobblestones. On the other hand, breaches are appearing in the restrictive policy, and one of them has been painstakingly exploited by the new development at Liberty Square, about which there has been increasing publicity recently. How did it happen and who is responsible for the project?
The latest of Wrocław's controversial investments is being built at Liberty Square. The exact address of the new building is 6 Helena Modrzejewska Street, in the northeast corner of the square, near the intersection with Zamkowa Street. The first plans for the development of the site could be heard of in late 2013/early 2014, when the city sold the corner plot for less than 2 million zlotys to Wrocław-based investor SPACE4U Development. A design was created for the representative plot by the Dziewoński, Łukaszewicz - architekci studio, back in 2015, but it took a long wait for its realization. In the meantime, the plot was bought back by HEA Developer, another architectural concept was created by GREG.architekci, but nothing happened on the construction site. Until 2023...
The new building at Wolności Square in Wroclaw
photo: author's archive
A macabre building on Wolności Square?
Two years ago, HEA Developer proceeded with its project. Using a vintage building permit, it erected a seven-story, roughly rectangular building with a diagonally setback façade on the highest floor facing Zamkowa Street.
The new building on Wolności Square in Wroclaw
photo: author's archive
As the building rose and began to take its final shape over the next few months, more and more Breslau residents began to have concerns about the aesthetic qualities of the new Liberty Square development. The curtain fell in early 2025, when the building's facades were unveiled from under scaffolding. Those of the Wroclaw public, to put it mildly, were not to their liking. On the side of Helena Modrzejewska Street, the outer walls of the building were divided into three two-story zones, which are crisscrossed by vertical white facade panels and windows of varying shapes and sizes. The logic of the façade divisions is disrupted by shifting its central part horizontally.
The new building at Wolności Square in Wroclaw
photo: author's archive
It's hard to call the new building at Wolnosci Square a high-end architecture. If the building had been constructed in another, slightly less exposed location, it would probably have been lost among the crowd of realizations of average aesthetics. In this case, however, we are talking about one of the most representative places in Wroclaw. This is because the HEA Developer building has an exceptional neighborhood.
non-accidental neighborhood
The building being erected by HEA Developer would probably not be so conspicuous if it were built in another part of the city. As it happens, however, it is being built in excellent company. Right next to the new building is the eclectic tenement house where Max Born, the German physicist-nobleman, grew up, while in front of it is the neo-Gothic building of the Parsonage of the parish of Saints Stanislaw, Dorothy and Wenceslas.
Across Castle Street are the buildings of the Royal Palace (Spätgen), which survived the war, designed by Lucas von Hildebrandt, the author of the Belvedere in Vienna. Behind Castle Square stands a three-story, 18th-century palace, accompanied on the south side by pre-war fragments of the south wing, built in the mid-19th century in Neo-Renaissance style according to a design by Friedrich August Stüler.
The new building at Liberty Square in Wroclaw
photo: author's archive
On the other side of the square, where Modrzejewska Street curves into St. Dorothy Street, the western façade of the Wrocław Opera is visible, and at the opposite end of the square since 2015 rises the red block of the National Music Forum, created from a design by Kuryłowicz & Associates.
Who is responsible for the unfortunate project, which was built in such an architecturally valuable location? It turns out that it is not known, or at least not entirely....
The author the same, and the project to change
The basic body of the building remains consistent with the original design, made in 2015, which was created by the Dziewoński, Łukaszewicz - architects studio. However, as it turns out, the architects had little influence on the final appearance of the Freedom Square building, as they announced late last year in an emotional social media post.
[...] at some point, in order to make it possible to untie this Gordian knot by having our Investor resell the plot of land along with the permit and our design (which was to be, according to the declarations of the then-candidate buyer, designed completely from scratch) - we signed an addendum to the contract in which we relinquished all copyrights, including subsidiary rights. We try never to do this, but here we decided that since it was to unblock the situation, and someone else would do a new design - OK [...].
- explain the architects.
As a result of further changes in the owners of the plot, the copyright to the project changed hands. Eventually, the transformation of the original design was handled by another design studio:
Unfortunately, it turned out that our visions of what the building should look like were so divergent that we were unable to cooperate and firm the solutions that the new Investor was pushing. We decided that it would be fairer if a new architect came in, took responsibility for the final shape of the building and could defend it with conviction against the criticism that was bound to arise.
We don't know what the building's facades were originally intended to look like - a snippet of a visualization released in 2023 by the architects reveals the shroud of mystery.
There is another important thread in this story - for the building is located near buildings under conservation protection. However, we do not have information on the conservation agreements for the façade of the modified project, we do not know who was responsible for them, or when they took place.
The new building at Wolności Square in Wroclaw
photo: author's archive
conservator's logic
Wroclaw has no luck with conservation decisions, which are criticized by residents and the architectural community on a regular basis. In recent years, the most strongly protested decision was the refusal to enter the Solpol building in the register of monuments, which, despite the nationwide uproar, ended with the demolition of the colorful relic of postmodernism from under the dash of Wojciech Jarząbek.
In its place was to stand a building selected in a competition organized by Noho Investment. In 2023, the winning concept was presented, prepared by Roark Studio. It didn't take long for it to turn out that it, too, was not compatible with the conservator's vision of Świdnicka Street - the Lower Silesian Regional Monument Conservator ruled then that the arcades were to disappear from the building project. the design of the building, the arcades in the ground floor, thanks to which the building was supposed to open up to the street and lead to an inner courtyard in the depths of the rather large plot, were to disappear. However, it turns out that Liberty Square, located a short distance from Świdnicka Street, is able to accommodate a building as strongly separated from the surrounding development as the one erected at 6 Helena Modrzejewska Street. Where is the logic here?
The Castle Street development in 2013. Not much has changed since then....
Photo: Danuta Bator © CC BY-SA 3.0 | Wikimedia Commons
rush street
The view from the southeast side is probably no longer salvageable.In the future, quite a lot may change on Zamkowa Street instead - so far, the HEA building is the only structure on its eastern side, which is currently "adorned" by outbuildings of tenement houses at the back of St. Dorothy Street that are falling into disrepair.
Numerous court hearings and ownership galimatias have meant that to this day, despite the passing of the Local Development Plan in 2010, no construction has begun. An office building at the site was planned by Wroclaw-based investor Tekton - the building was to fill almost the entire frontage of Zamkowa Street and become a corner building at the intersection of Zamkowa and Kazimierza Wielkiego Streets. The plot, which the city sold in December 2013 for just over PLN 6 million, is still covered only by a deep excavation and overgrown bushes, although the investor pledged to complete the work within 20 months of acquiring the plot. Will the continuation of this convoluted story finally take place and bring the area around Zamkowa Street and Liberty Square to order?
