Architecture that builds community. Public space according to Inicjatywa Projektowa

The Warsaw studio Inicjatywa Projektowa, led by Piotr Straszak and Mikołaj Zdanowski, consistently returns to themes where architecture meets the life of the city: squares, community centres, shared spaces. It is an approach in which the design is less an object than a frame for residents' everyday encounters. The studio works across all types of architectural and urban design projects, with particular emphasis on multi-family residential buildings, public buildings and urban spaces.

Plac Grunwaldzki: organising the heart of the district

This sensibility is best seen in the concept for Plac Grunwaldzki in Warsaw's Żoliborz district, developed in 2015 during urban-architectural workshops organised by the Warsaw branch of SARP on behalf of the city. The studio — Jan Pawlik, Piotr Straszak and Mikołaj Zdanowski — proposed a compact, semi-circular frontage with arcades, with ground floors given over to services, and recurring events planned around it: bazaars, fairs and cultural attractions among the greenery along Broniewskiego Street, cafes on the square, and service premises in the new development on Rydygiera Street. The aim was to create a functional axis around which the district's social and cultural life would gather, linking the 'old' and 'new' Żoliborz.

Warsaw authorities liked the concept partly because it drew on pre-war solutions from Antoni Jawornicki's study; it was also recommended as the basis for drawing up a local zoning plan — so it did not end up as a striking presentation board, but entered a real planning process.

Twórcza Twarda: three buildings and an internal street

A similar idea is evident in the design for the 'Twórcza Twarda' community centre in the heart of Warsaw, awarded second prize in a 2018 competition — out of as many as 32 entries. The task concerned the site of a former school sports pitch at 8/12 Twarda Street, right next to the historic Nożyk Synagogue. Rather than a single volume, the studio designed three separate, clearly distinguished buildings — the Śródmiejski Community Centre, the Youth Community Centre and a multifunctional hall — arranged along a covered internal street. This passage, with a timber-block floor flowing seamlessly from outside to inside, was meant to connect the space in front of the planned centre for hearing-impaired children with the square in front of the synagogue. The jury praised precisely the clarity of the decision to split the programme into three separate structures. The layout deliberately echoed the pre-war urban fabric: a dense network of courtyards.

A recurring motif: opening up, not closing off

These two projects are not exceptions. The studio's portfolio also includes second prize for the urban-architectural concept of the Warsaw Uprising Mound and its surroundings in Mokotów from 2019, and first prize for the redevelopment of the Old Market Square in Słupsk from 2018 — further tasks in which the quality of public space was at stake. The same idea recurs in each: architecture as a tool for building community. Rather than closing off space with a single gesture, the studio opens it up — designing frontages with arcades, internal passages, spaces for markets and cafes, and sequences of squares.

This approach is close to a contemporary understanding of the city, in which quality of life is determined by the ground floor and the space between buildings more than by the form of the volume itself. For local authorities and investors thinking about the revitalisation of squares, market squares and district centres, Inicjatywa Projektowa's body of work is a practical example of how to translate a general need for a 'meeting place' into concrete urban solutions — ones that can later be written into a local zoning plan and built.