AN ARCHITECT ABROAD: ASSOCIATE RADEK WAKULIK’S TRIP TO POLAND
Starting out in Kraków, we got to stay in the Old Town Square (Stare Miasto) at a hotel that really practices what they preach when it comes to sustainability. Hotel Unicus Palace, operated by an independent Polish hotel operator, leads by example through their Zero Waste Practice. They do it all, everything from eliminating plastic, using biodegradable products, drying biowaste for fertilizer, and much, much more. Their headquarters also have beehives on the roof to provide a much-needed bee environment amid increasing human development.
Kraków’s Old Town Square is filled with history as it is the largest medieval town square in Europe. For anyone visiting, I recommend seeing Sukiennice, St. Mary’s Basilica, and the Wawel Royal Castle and the Wawel Hill, which are the most historically and culturally important sites in Poland. If you look hard enough and have enough patience, you will see a fire breathing dragon, from Polish folklore (I am not joking, we saw it for ourselves on our last night there).
Before leaving the Kraków, we also visited the nearby Wieliczka Salt Mine as well as the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. Both historically important sites that will impact you in their own ways.
Our next stop brought us to the city of Lódź. There, we saw phenomenal examples of adaptive reuse and historic preservation projects. Between Venna House Andel’s Hotel converted from a former Manufaktura spinning mill, a multi-use development repurposed from a former Monopolis spirits distillery, and Fabryka Wełny Hotel & Spa that used to be a cotton fabric production complex, we saw great examples of what our European counterparts are doing, and what a phenomenal job they are doing in preserving old sites, repurposing them, and doing so with incredibly thoughtful building systems.
Next, we drove to the southwest city of Wałbrzych. In Wałbrzych, we participated in an architecture conference in Zamek Książ, which is Poland’s third largest castle. We got to stay in rooms on the castle’s grounds, which was quite the treat for someone who grew up less than an hour from this site.
For our last stop, our hosts took us to Dąbrowa Górnicza, which is where Yawal has one of their headquarters and factories. We got to see Yawal’s showroom, showcasing aluminum glazed systems, some that we are not seeing in the U.S. market yet, but are really impressive. For someone who is endlessly curious and needs to know exactly how things are made, one of the best parts was walking through the aluminum factory and the window manufacturing factory. There’s no better way to learn how windows are made than by seeing it with your own eyes from raw aluminum to a whole glazed system.
In addition to this main event week, I had one more stop in Kraków, and afterwards I hopped on over to the southwest again, where in Wrocław I got to see a few more contemporary projects, and, out of great convenience, the impressive European Old Town Square Holiday Markets.
All in all, the trip was a treat. Between seeing great architecture, meeting phenomenal people, eating endlessly, and learning a great deal about manufacturing, European design trends, and construction technologies, this architect couldn’t have asked for a better, or more inspiring, trip.