I’m not uncritical as far as the whole concept of building the New Centre of Łódź is concerned. For me, the most important part of the enterprise is the idea which hopefully will transform into something concrete, i.e. the design of a cross-town tunnel under Łódź and hiding the Łódź Fabryczna station underground. I sincerely hope it can be achieved.

When it happens, everything will be clear. We will stop wondering if the tracks start or end here. Łódź will become the
transportation centre of Poland and Europe and its former importance as a railway hub will be restored. The number of connections with Warsaw at any time of day will increase. I’m really happy about it since I fully support the idea of creating a tight spatial connection between Łódź and Warsaw.

The idea of relocating the station and tracks underground is by all means correct as it makes a huge area in the city centre accessible for investment. The trend of relocating railway tracks underground started being popular in most important European cities already in the 19th century. Ground-based station facilities stop fulfilling their primary functions and become cultural centres, malls or galleries. Even though it’s 60 years behind the whole world, we finally start heading in the same direction. We start pursuing the same approach as is followed in civilised and developed countries. This is a good start. An underground station solves a number of other problems, e.g. vehicular transportation enhancement, merging railways with coach and bus/tram transport, etc.

Relocating the station underground is vital for one more reason. According to the most pessimistic forecasts, the number of citizens of Łódź is going to decrease substantially in the next 30 years. Whether it happens or not depends on actions taken by the municipal authorities. However, it is the right moment to start acting in accordance with global trends based on economic and pro-ecological logic. These trends consist in developing cities towards their centres, to compact their structure until it's packed to capacity. This happens in London, Barcelona and other reasonably run cities where the trends of mindless outward expansion and adding new satellite towns were abandoned a long time ago. The more common approach is to carefully alter the urban and architectural structure, to compact the centre and remove selected external layers (e.g. districts) in order to return a given area to its natural state. In Poland, however, this tendency is reversed thanks to unfortunate decisions taken by architects, authorities and planners. Moreover, outward expansion is costly as new roads and installations must be constructed.

A city centre offers lots of space for both minor (e.g. filling the gaps between old buildings) and major enterprises. Additionally, we have factory buildings ready to be used; not to mention the fact that they create the value of Łódź. The development of Łódź must be targeted at making its centre denser, which is achieved by this design. The underground station and the new centre are going to fill this void in the middle of the city currently dubbed as ‘the railway area’. It’s worth mentioning that in 1944 Germans elaborated a general plan for Łódź which assumed that within the limits of the ring railway line, i.e. within the very city centre, a million people would live. There have never been so many people in Łódź, but it still has expanded its territory fivefold. That is why I’m really impressed by the town planning assumptions for the centre of Łódź made by Rob Krier. They are non-modernist and yet speak the language more modern than the architectural language spoken in the 1970s, i.e. small scale, dense structure of small streets. Such compaction of the city centre around the station will do a lot of good to Łódź, which now has a broad street grid, large quarters and explicitly perpendicular streets.

Since antiquity, the concept of a city as an agglomeration of people has resulted from the mental and economic necessity to live in large groups. A city functions better if it provides a more diversified offer and possibility to take various actions within a small area and in a short time span. That is why the very centre of a city must include a station. Some cities were unable to provide enough space for a modern station in the centre so it was necessary to move it aside, e.g. in Berlin. This solution is inconvenient. We should be happy that the Łódź Fabryczna station will be crucial for the activities in the city centre. It will become a destination of much bigger importance than the Łódź Kaliska station, which, having been connected by the cross-town tunnel, will become a crossing for important arteries. The station-city interconnection is visible in the Łódź Fabryczna station. Most passengers will get off their trains here, as a massive cultural, business and, hopefully, residential centre will be located over it.

One must ask about the fate of the current Łódź Fabryczna station building, with its neo-renaissance, eclectic facades. It has become an inseparable part of the map of Łódź and lots of people, just out of sentiment, don’t want it to disappear. In my opinion, the facades are very interesting and it is worthwhile considering their preservation. However, from the technical point of view it’s going to be extremely difficult. In fact, it will be necessary to pull them down and recreate them from scratch. One must not forget that the building’s internal structure has been fully rebuilt. There is nothing left from the original design. It would be beneficial if its elements could be incorporated in the new structure but if it has to go, let it be so. This sacrifice is incomparably insignificant in comparison with what we get in return. I’m saying this despite being a person who is always unconditionally in favour of monument preservation. For example, I think that old sheds or other utility buildings are as important as tenements, not to mention factories. However, if the old station disappears, nothing will change. Within the last 15 years, much more valuable buildings have been mindlessly demolished.

MAREK JANIAK

Marek Janiak is the chairman of the Piotrkowska Street Foundation, an architect, professor at the Technical University of Lodz and a member of the Łódź Kaliska Group