Krakow Bridge Gallery Competition
Competition: 2004
Type: Culture - Gallery and Public Space
In collaboration with: Andrea Quagliola (morq* architecture, Rome/Perth)
This project challenges the literal rebuilding of a bridge on the site asked for by the competition brief. Instead, the proposal was to bring the urban fabric and life of the city to the river’s edge as well as to record the disconnection of the former Franz Josef Bridge over the Wisla. The bridge marked an important point on the journey taken by thousands Holocaust victims, as they were marched out of the city to concentration camps by the Nazi's. To rebuild this bridge would be to erase this history and significance of its path and destruction; to build nothing would be to ignore it.
By projecting the line of ul. Mostowa the gallery becomes on one hand, a monument or a memorial trace but on the other, a projection of Krakow's urban fabric and forms a new flexible platform to host contemporary art, culture and events. This projection is truncated to mark history's scar and making the gallery a balcony on the city's edge – a destination rather than a thorough fare to cross. As an alternative, the river’s edge, now charged with program and event, becomes a lateral bridge linking the existing river crossings.
