Pole Mokotowskie Park (Warsaw Central Park), one of Warsaw's largest and most beloved urban parks, has recently undergone a transformation that blends modern design with the preservation of its rich natural and cultural heritage. The architectural firm WXCA led the redesign efforts, revitalizing the park into a more accessible and sustainable space for the city's residents and visitors. The 70-acre park has a long history shaped by informal activities of the cities, thus forming deep-rooted habits, practices, and memories. The challenge of addressing this history alongside the ecological sensitivities led to an approach taken by the architects that could be termed 'Design Acupuncture.'
Spatial Acupuncture:
French sociologist Michele de Certeau wrote in his famed works about distinguishing tactics from strategies in the context of everyday social practices. One of the most vivid examples is the unencumbered use of pathways within public spaces. In particular, pathways that go around and cut across – in other words, the paths we form daily.
As one of Warsaw's most famous urban parks, Pole Mokotowskie is a tangle of beaten paths and, as the architects explain in this sense, a true social and cultural phenomenon of daily, informal user activities and practices, shaped by the grassroots and spontaneous practices as much as any design. Its forms and functions are unique, contributing to its popularity. This essential nature was carefully preserved by WXCA from the outset.
An Ecologically-Minded Design Response:
Also essential to the undertaking of the project was the coexistence between human beings and nature. The most significant change and complex technological challenge was the naturalization of the water reservoir, the park's most prominent attraction and a popular recreation spot.
The existing reservoir structure, built in the 1970s and lined with concrete, had to be refilled with water annually. In recent years, as the structure lost its watertightness, the reservoir was minimally filled to a level that allowed the amphibians living there to survive. The WXCA project envisaged its conversion into an all-year-round pond where – thanks to naturalization based on hydro botanical filters and aquatic plants cleaning the water mechanically, chemically, and biologically – the high quality and purity of the water will be maintained. For functional reasons, the main water reservoir was also enlarged and deepened, and over 16,000 m2 of concrete at its base was replaced with gravel and lined with insulation layers. The crushed concrete was used to build mounds in the newly created biocenotic garden and in the shoreline areas. The main reservoir was supplemented with mineral filters, reeds, and water plants that clean the water and provide shelter for aquatic animals.
The architects designed a new naturalized water system that will be additionally cleaned through technologies supporting natural cleaning processes, positively impacting the preservation of the ecosystem's stability. A closed system consisting of a spillway, a stream, and the main pond will ensure the water is in constant motion.
The modernization also included the area around the naturalized water system. The network of existing paths was developed further and their surface was replaced with permeable material. New urban furniture was designed over the main reservoir as a wooden deck with a terraced layout complemented by wooden bridges and small architecture for various forms of rest and leisure, including seating areas, lounger platforms, and picnic tables. In the northern part of the reservoir, designed as a recreation zone, seats were installed at three different heights, forming an audience area facing the lake. A separate regeneration zone – more natural and wild and reserved for plants and animals – was designated in the southern part of the reservoir.
In addition to modernizing the existing reservoir, connected stream, and spillway, the first phase of the project included creating ponds in designated zones for dogs and naturally sealed ponds in the biocenosis garden
The biocenotic garden was created in the central part of the park on land reclaimed from a former municipal cleaning company base. The formed mounds and depressions serve as rain gardens, and a wooden platform meandering among the greenery and gazebos was also constructed.
The designed biocenotic landscape of the entire park took the form of an arrangement of plant communities with a diverse profile: wooded nooks, flower meadows, orchards, reed beds, and sensory beds beneficial for insects. The selection of plant species was based on a combination of native species – arrangements of varied biotopes based on types of plant communities of a natural and semi-natural character, including plantings of trees, shrubs, and low vegetation.
'We noticed that the park's spatial structure has a network character comprising a water system, pedestrian paths, and social-functional networks. Our goal was to support and safeguard these existing connections – sometimes by intentionally refraining from any intervention, as in the case of areas for wild nature, where our action was limited to establishing functional connections for animals between individual areas. The place we dealt with is, in fact, a living organism,' explains architect Łukasz Szczepanowicz.
