A Polish chief architect for Westfield Hamburg — the ATP Kraków office
One of the largest city-centre developments in Europe has a Polish lead architect. ATP’s Kraków office is coordinating Westfield Hamburg — and almost no one in Poland is talking about it.
ATP Kraków is an integrated design firm formed from the merger of the IMB Asymetria studio (now ATP Asymetria) and the Tequm engineering office, and is part of the Vienna-headquartered ATP architects engineers group. It is this Kraków team that acts as chief architect on one of the most spectacular city-centre developments in Europe: Westfield Hamburg-Überseequartier.
419,000 square metres, 14 buildings
The scale is hard to grasp: the new district of Hamburg’s HafenCity comprises 14 buildings with a combined floor area of 419,000 sq m. ATP Asymetria (formerly IMB Asymetria) has been coordinating the project since 2018, with the planning team in Kraków led by Marek Borkowski. Over half of ATP Kraków’s contracted portfolio consists of projects in the DACH region — an office that delivers, from Kraków, developments that define the skylines of German and Austrian cities.
The 'quiet' chief architect
The most striking part is the contrast: Polish architects are co-creating one of the largest city-centre developments in Europe, yet Polish media barely mention it. The main 'Polish' story lives in English-language communications on atp.ag, while the studio’s domestic projects sit on a separate, archival website. To us at Method Press, this is a textbook front-office gap: the achievement and the content both exist, but they are scattered across two worlds and fail to build a position where they could.
We cover the Polish side of ATP Kraków’s portfolio — from the Novum apartments in Kraków to an award-winning hospital design — separately.
Editorial material by Method Press based on public materials from ATP architects engineers (atp.ag) and trade media reports (PropertyDesign, World Construction Network). Figures (14 buildings, 419,000 sq m, coordination since 2018) sourced from the company and the media outlets cited; subject to change.