Network
The European Solidarity Center Building in Gdańsk (ESC) is experienced as:
- A network that juxtaposes horizontal, slanting, and vertical lines. This creates a network visualisation. The network is chosen as the metaphor for dialogue and spreading of new ideas. - The network that grows as a landscape through the horizontal and slanting lines. Visually they end at the top in the winter garden and John Paul II’s hall that are directed towards the Road to Freedom (Droga do Wolności). The network formed by angles creates an icon of movement from ground level up towards the heaven of reflection and ideas. - The network arising through the juxtaposition of the crossing lines. The architecture is hereby experienced as a dialog between the different angles. The idea is inspired by the Solidarity movement and the fight for freedom and present dialogue as a contrast to the bloody revolution. The angles of the network illustrate a fusion of plurality of thoughts and tendencies that connect in the idea of freedom. - An open space of the network, where the stairs tie the floors together. The stairs are the uniting motive up through the floors and create a flow from the story telling of the exhibition space and the knowledge search of the library to the winter garden and the John Paul II’s hall as a reflection space.
It is a network created in dialogue between construction and function with a flow of stairs as a spinal cord of movement through the building. The architecture becomes an open and transparent structure where both the construction element and the internal relations of the functions are made into the main visual motive. This is seen in opposition to the idea of the totalitarian buildings that are formal and closed, and where uncertainty and the untransparent are used for governing population. The network idea of the project is to create a symbol of fight for freedom through knowledge and dialogue.
Main disposition of functions
The foyer, the multi-purpose hall, and the temporary galleries are placed at ground floor in a cross section of the building. It is planned as a multitude of out-turned functions that can open up towards each other. The exhibition is regarded as a transition of stories and as a place for collection of knowledge. The library and media-technology room (mediatech) are places for the research and transformation of knowledge. The winter garden and the John Paul II’s hall are places for reflection and thoughtfulness. Together the construction and the function planes create a complex and open structure that is generated as a dialogue between the two main architectonical themes.
Openness
The openness is architectonically divided into its visual and its functional aspect. The visual open network is illustrated by steel constructions, stairs, and the light facades. The functional openness concerns e.g. the possibilities for flexible interior design. The multi-purpose hall and the temporary galleries open up through a series of gates towards the foyer and the exterior of the building. A connecting experiential landscape is thereby created. To underline the motive of openness and the plurality of accesses to the building, exterior entrances are established as direct stairways to the winter garden. The reason is to provide more accesses, but partly also for expanding the visual motive around access and movement through the structure of the building.
Constructive principle
The constructive principle consists of steel constructions that create specific structures for floors, stairs, facades, and roof. The constructions are flexible formed after the dimensional demands on each floor, the formats of the windows considers e.g. wind pressure and the different stairways.
The exterior shape of the building
The building shape compositionally arises from the interface of the surrounding streets and thereby from the urbane situation. The roof shape is angled with the highest point above the winter garden, and from that point the rest of the roof is placed like a landscape. The building will thereby be experienced, not as a precise defined Euclidian volume, but like an open structure that grow and have eternity as its motive, where the dialogue continues.
