SILESIAN FURNACE

At first there was a furnace in a Silesian kitchen, with tiles. And a Silesian tenderness. A strong woman.
Then Jean Nouvel with his courage to make huge elevations came to my mind and he “sketched” very clearly the edges of “solid-commode”, a huge, massive commode.

Finally, by inspiration, appeared in my imagination a decollete, a necklace on a warm neck – a painting by Gustaw Klimta that I remember. And many paintings by Alfons Mucha. It appeared to me that those two painters reflected best the climate of Silesia, Katowice of the end of the XIXth and the beginning of the XXth century. The lines of Mucha and Klimta.

Next some zigzag and finally doubt – we should bear in mind that those buildings will outlast us and will be a kind of evidence of the state of our spirit.

RHOMBUSES

The idea is based on lifting the ornament made of bricks, mainly by enlarging it to the range of a solid. In this way we would add a new quality to this simple solid which came into being more due to function than composition.

We were forced to think over the solid by the necessity of acknowledging the existence of the solid as it is. We concluded that if it is so massive by its very nature, then we should even underline this massiveness and redefine it. Consequently we found the idea to treat the solid as a huge massive commode with glossy, sort of varnished, satine, shining panels.

The very solid would become a huge, noble piece of furniture and its corner location makes it even more conspicuous. The features of a conventional building would be of less importance here.
Such is the origin of huge few-level-ornaments – large rhombuses with subtly profiled (by means of steps made of bricks) edges.

Such a strong ornament would make the stripes of the wall between the windows, the outer stripes, become less significant.
In this way we would take away from the building its XIXth century facmade  - the arrangement of the windows would become only another (here even background) pattern.

High projections of the edges of those huge panels are supposed to make it seem even more massive but also solid in its mass.

Just here it is very important that the material used for the elevation should be suitable, which means that it must be “serious”, true, in a natural colour- and not “painted”.

Consequently the brick means red colours, colours of the earth which are so common among Silesian elevations. Here, as in no other place in Poland, one can see so many shadows of brownish, clay, yellowish, dark velvet.
The aluminium, anoded windows were supposed only to make the “heat” of the materials in the elevation shine. The colourful, yellow, ornamental panes of glass were to bear the relation to the tenderness in Silesian ornamentation, to the kitchen, to the hall.