KWK Promes / Robert Konieczny — the Polish architect who wins global rankings
When, in November 2016, the World Architecture Festival in Berlin announced that the World Building of the Year title was going to a building from Szczecin, it was the first such award for Polish architecture in the history of the competition. The winning Przełomy Dialogue Centre was the work of Robert Konieczny and his Katowice studio KWK Promes — a practice that for more than two decades has been turning projects from Upper Silesia into cover stories in the world's magazines.
From Katowice to the international circuit
Robert Konieczny (born 1969) studied architecture at the Silesian University of Technology and in 1996 earned a certificate from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He founded the KWK Promes studio in 1999. He has been nominated ten times for the European Union's Mies van der Rohe Award and sits within the French Académie d'architecture. It is a rare case of a practice that built its recognition not on volume, but on individual, highly distinctive buildings.
Houses that became icons
The international brand was built above all on houses. The Safe House (Dom Bezpieczny) near Warsaw travelled around the world's media thanks to moving walls that turn the building into a concrete "safe". Konieczny's Ark (Arka) in Brenna, from 2015, won the Wallpaper Design Award for the best new private house in the world in 2017, along with an International Architecture Award. Quadrant House near Warsaw (2019), with a rotating terrace that follows the sun, received the Iconic Award 2021 and an Architizer A+Award. The studio's signature language: monolithic forms, moving elements and bold formal gestures.
Public buildings and the latest projects
The Przełomy Dialogue Centre in Szczecin (2016), a branch of the National Museum, won the European Prize for Urban Public Space on top of the World Building of the Year title. Galeria PLATO in Ostrava (2022), set in a former slaughterhouse with rotating concrete walls, was among the buildings recognised in the Mies van der Rohe Award 2024. The most recent success is Gambit Office — an office building that in 2025 collected the SARP Award of the Year 2025 in its category, a win in the "Public Buildings" category of the Pulse Award 2025 and the Office Building of the Year title at the Archello Awards 2025. It is a signal that the studio has carried its language over into the commercial segment.
Standing and body of work
In 2024, Images Publishing released the English-language monograph "Robert Konieczny KWK Promes. Buildings + ideas" by Philip Jodidio. KWK Promes remains an example of a strategy in which a consistent design language and individual, bold projects prove more effective than scale. For the premium market it is a model worth watching: architecture as a reputational asset whose value is measured by its presence in the global conversation about architecture.
An editorial piece by Method Press based on public sources (company reports, press releases, trade press). Produced independently, with no commercial relationship with the company described.