Nina Juzwa Marcin Spyra Silesian University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, Gliwice, Poland 281
buildings would remain on the ground, the actual historic museum would be placed
underground; the museum of contemporary collection would be located in an elevated
structure above the mine.
The patronage and financial support of the local government of the region allowed
to conclude the workshop with a publication of a catalogue and an exhibition. A
public discussion about the presented concepts and the involvement of the media in
propagating the problem in the interested circles led to a wider support for the local
government’s project. A discussion and the visible effects of the workshop allowed
a clearer definition of the urban and programme conditions.
The teaching of design in architectural education - Understanding to explore the
human and space attributes for the integration of the new technical and technological
considerations into architectural design.
The educational process in architecture is mostly about transforming personal
experiences and the culture of a student into professional skills. To be successful it
has to deal with architecture in its context. The understanding of the form, physical
attributes and shapes of structural phenomena based on observation and studies is
mainly based on wisdom and intuition as essential components of synthesis, but the
practice of design permits a creative application of principles that leads to learning
more about them. Therefore, “real” experience in architectural studios of the teaching
staff engaged in the workshops is an essential element of such a teaching model.
The architectural design of a building is a process integrating knowledge from sev-
eral disciplines; it is also a result of collaborative function of intuition and intellect,
based on a series of decisions. The solution of the problem requires several steps.
During our five day workshop we divided the educational problem into four
steps:
- problem definition,
- understanding of the site and the city context,
- searching for a conceptual idea
- architectural solution.
Step one
Problem definition. Here we have questions about the functions and about the shap-
ing patterns of a museum building. Thus for the current paper, more interesting are
questions about the localization of the building.
The place – the Upper Silesia Agglomeration used to be among the greatest and
oldest historical coal mining regions in Europe. Since the 1990’s it is in economic
transformation, but until today the landscape is marked by old industrial buildings
and groups of historical workers’ estates. The towers of the coal mining shafts are
among the most typical landmarks of the region. Katowice (320,000 inhabitants) is
the main city of the agglomeration (Figure 1).
Step two
The site and the city context. The context is meaningful for the New Silesian Museum
but not easy for an urban project. It is a post industrial area, previously with the coal