COMINGOuT

Study design for the renovation of the historic area around Our Lady of Victory Church in Warsaw

Studio of Interior Design

> Sylwia Pogorzelska

During my course at the Faculty of Interior Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw I discovered how multidimensional the issue of design is. For me, working as an interior architect is not only about creating aesthetic and functional surroundings for humans; it also affects issues seemingly unrelated to architecture. In my designs I try to focus on a person who will stay in contact with a given space. Space can stimulate emotions and imagination. With measures used by an interior architect, attention may be directed to important themes and events. In my view, this, combined with attention to detail and aesthetics, makes a well-designed space.

> Professor Przemysław Krajewski

Sylwia Pogorzelska’s degree piece covers the renovation of the historic surroundings around Our Lady of Victory Church in the Kamionek neighbourhood in Warsaw, on the east bank of the Vistula River.
In the 1920s architect Konstanty Jakimowicz designed the distinctive body of the church, with a spire which has so far not been implemented. In a creative way the author refers to the architect’s idea, introducing in the place selected by him a vertical accent of a tower together with a very modern programme of space development. Along the thirteen-floor space of the staircase she vertically placed three thematically separate interiors:
- a small multimedia room with a lecture hall dedicated to the history of the place,
- an art gallery with a small terrace located on mezzanines and split levels,
- a closed space for prayer and contemplation on the top floor.
Her locating a panoramic elevator shaft outside the tower, on the side of Kamionkowskie Lake and Skaryszewski Park, is a particularly interesting idea from the author. Around the tower and apse of the church, in space with a C-shaped layout, the designer placed memorial sites, integrally connected with the Stations of the Cross, the form of which refers to the cloisters designed by Jakimowicz.
The value of the design lies primarily in its very subtle complementing of historically shaped space with a very modern approach to the project’s utilitarian and functional programme.
I wish to highlight the ethically mature approach of the designer, who has comprehensively and fully developed such a difficult and demanding subject, in both intellectual and artistic terms. This is due to three different strands merged into one piece. An appendix to the project in the Landscape Architecture Studio led by Assistant Professor Elżbieta Myjak-Sokołowska systematised the historic space around the church. A theoretical thesis entitled Commemorative Architecture as a Silent Communication of Emotion. The Role of Spiritual Places in Warsaw with Particular Focus on the Twentieth Century prepared under the supervision of Dr. Krystyna Łuczak-Surówka set the scope of the intellectual ambition of the author. And then finally, the development of the design subject, completed in our studio.