Miedzianka, the story of disappearing

An architectural and urban concept is inspired by the history of slow degradation of a small mining town located in the Lower Silesia in Poland. By set of open questions, design process asks about the durability and transience of architecture, which is a local problem with a global presence.

Here, a spatial emptiness meets a collective memory of the society, a growing interest in the place and alive nostalgy. As the response, the main intervention is based in the hearth - on the old Market. The proposal perversely reverses intuitive mining associations: the cubature is placed on a steel structure above ground level. In the urban scale project works as a new development catalyst: with a cable car as an publicly available attraction. Based on the hill, it is an experimental attempt to merge the urban layout into the one building. The relationship of the old church and the new architecture is based on the subtle play of forms. Topography displays remains of ruins and a reconstructed, brick outline of pre-existed buildings. We can read Miedzianka as the Palimpsest, as the architecture with layers. The assumption looks for the balance between the past and future, between the earth and air. Materials used are identical with the place: old brick, copper, which inscribes the process of time signs in the aesthetics of the building and contemporary steel. The industrial aesthetic, mineshafts and mine carts are reinterpreted. The project responds to the nomadic movements of our time, the temporality of forms and the passing building functions. The plan is simple and flexible, with funcional hybrids, the steel structure can be recycled one day. The added element of a cable car becomes a fully-fledged part of the architectural assumption, following the educational path already defined by the residents and enthusiasts. The proposed tour from a bird's eye view becomes a living reportage, 'changing the perspective' of perceiving the town. The work is inspired by the book debut of Filip Springer with the same title and festival of reportage 'Miedzianka Fest'.