The timber Winna Góra estate — Chmielewski + Partners' winning concept

Chmielewski + Partners is a Warsaw studio run by Kamil Chmielewski. Its best-known achievement is winning the architectural competition for the Winna Góra estate in Środa Śląska — a project that was ahead of its time.

Timber at scale

What set the winning concept apart was the material: a prefabricated timber frame applied across an entire estate of more than a thousand flats. At the time the competition was decided, this was one of the first housing schemes of this scale in Poland built on timber — a theme that only became mainstream in the industry several years later.

An award as a starting point

A prestigious competition confirms class, but on its own it is not capital without a follow-through. Timber and prefabrication — today, in the era of hard ESG requirements, among the hottest topics in architecture — are a specialism the studio documented early, and one that still awaits full use in its communications.

For Method Press, Winna Góra is a good example of an underused asset: a strong, trend-ahead concept worth retelling in the context of today's debate on timber construction.