"Flow" - Urban innovations in Gdansk, Poland

Abstract

The Diploma work focuses on the kernel in Architecture and the Art of City Planning, by creating a Flow of Movements through spaces of high quality. Flow in this work is both Inspiration, and Movement in Space/Time. This is the secret of the kernel.

A planning method is developed, by comparing, in the same scale, 500x500m of movement in great cities, and then implementing the results in Gdansk. The content of the Diploma Work involves a sort of urban humour, the sudden surprises of spaces, and memories of the Hansa City born from our uniting Baltic Sea. Towns like Turku, Tallinn, and Visby share a common Urban History with Gdansk from the Middle Ages - in this project a treasury of usable urban ideas. The work is a test for my ideas for a future kind of urban spaces, rooms of inspiration/darkness, and luminous green avant-gardens of human delight - even rooms for the anger in us: urban spaces of wild demonstrations.

The project tries to catch some shades of the Polish collective sub consciousness. The solidarity of Gdansk, the mysterious sound of the Tin Drum, the flickering light of an Andrzej Wajda film, the music of Chopin from an open window - flows.

The diploma work is a development of my proposal for The International Architecture Students Competition for "Targ Sienny i Rakowy", where the work was awarded with an Honorable Mention.