GALERIA KATOWICKA Katowice (Poland) - 2013

Contexte & enjeux

Sixteen raw concrete chalices built in the 1960s are now being reborn as the cover of Katowice station (as before, better than before…) and are launching a metropolitan project. At the foot of the embanked railway platforms, a destroyed island offered the gaping hole of an empty space, both a buffer and a square between the station and the city. The bus station occupied it.

By proposing to bury the buses and road traffic, we make room for the city in the obviousness and fluidity of a flat station area.

The architectural choices enhance, first of all, the strong identity of the station’s architecture, a unique example of Polish brutalist architecture. Beyond that, the Katowice gallery is attached by a hollow joint and offers the district a simple, designed architecture, whose organic curves echo the surrounding “Art Nouveau” buildings.

The flexibility of the forms, the undulations, the large glass surfaces (backlit at night) contribute to the momentum of a generous and luminous architecture.

They make it a singular object, a “flagship” anchored in the old urban fabric of Katowice.

Photographs: Erick Saillet