The very heart of Wroc³aw is pierced by a street without content, a street that has nothing to communicate to passers-by, students or tourists. A street that has to be crossed quickly in one’s everyday city journey… This is Szewska Street, the street that connects the City Moat promenade with isles of the River Odra; the street with university buildings, the destination of numerous students, historically the place where the new city squeezed in next to the old one… Our task will be to create a tale of Szewska Street, a story that will be exciting, mysterious, compelling and beautiful… Let us draw this line anew…
The urban workshop involved students of Wroc³aw University of Technology (Faculty of Architecture), University of Wroc³aw, University of £ód¼, Silesian University of Technology, University College London – Bartlett School of Planning, Institut d’Aménagement du Territoire et d’Environnement de l’Université de Reims and Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus studying architecture, spatial planning, urban design, and historic building conservation.
It has been run jointly by academic teachers and professionals from design companies, both from Wroc³aw and abroad – the UK, France, Germany, Italy.
They combined experience with enthusiasm, knowledge with freshness, realistic calculation with exuberant dreams.
Today Szewska Street, despite its recent renovation, is a little-used city space devoid of vitality. It is not worth walking there, it is not a place for viable businesses, it lacks resting places. The workshop aimed at creating a plan for revitalising the street – a strategy based on sustainable development, defined as the balance of elements that are to bring back a sense and importance to this significant axis, to harmonise a whole spectrum of issues. That spectrum would range from a vision of development, through general urban and spatial solutions, to detailed explanation of key places.
The inspiration for the general format was an idea, voiced by Art Gallery ‘Design’, to adapt one of the courtyards, located next to the gallery, for exhibitions. The space lies between ¦widnicka and Szewska Streets, opposite ‘Kameleon’ the beautiful, modernist department store and only a short walk from the Rynek – medieval Market Square. Initial urban reconnaissance disclosed a number of such courtyards threaded onto Szewska Street and these too became the basis for our search for a new vision.
We would like to see these courtyards changed into ‘Gardens of Art’ that would provide a new impetus to Wroc³aw, as a City of Art, a city which exists in a creative balance between art and nature, a city which pursues perfection through seeking renewed identity and investing places with new meanings.
