European Solidarity Center

The Kontrapunkt Team awarded in the International Contest for the European Solidarity Center!

In the first stage of the International Contest participated 350 architectural teams from all over the world but in the last part only 58 projects were selected , The Kontrapunkt Team received one of the six awards.

The author’s urbanistic purpose consist of creation in the postindustrial landscape of the Shipyard of Gdansk legible configuration which attempts to reflect historical development of the area despite the radical change of its functional purpose.

Authors of the conception decided that the main urbanistic task of the contest, apart from creating a reference to the initial industrial use of the land, is to find the suitable correlation between its two most important objects- the shipbuilder memorial and the future Solidarity Center
Localization of the building as the completion of the vantage axis from the Shipbuilder Memorial in the north side was discarded as a competitive between this two elements. The authors chose the conception of architectural coexistence and interdependence of this two in question points. Location of ESC down the road to freedom and moving a part of the building cubature underground as well as diversity of height and leaning the solid in the direction of the Memorial gives the effect of continuation between the two objects and symbols.
The main expanse is a view from the Memorial to the Dead Wisla and the sea. This expanse was called by the authors “Fields of Freedom” and it is closed from the West by a lining road of ash-trees and from the East by ESC and its continuation- artificial channel which goes to the Dead Wisla. Finally the perspective is closed by a slowly rising northern bridge which unites “road to freedom” , “fields of freedom” and the historic hall BHP. Coinherence of thereof is the last of the main urbanistic ideas.

According to the main idea from the preamble , the authors of the conception decided to drop all the simple symbolic assumptions of a planned function and  the importance of the object and not to reflect them in an architectural expression. Although while it is true that the solid of the building is a reflection and a negative as well as the extension of one of the artificial channels of the Dead Wisla but this context want be legible for the average recipient.