Beauty of Concrete - Yesterday
PKP Katowice — Yesterday is a photographic record of the final days of the original railway station in Katowice—one of the most distinctive examples of postwar Brutalist architecture in Poland.
Designed in the 1950s by a team of architects led by Wacław Kłyszewski, Jerzy Mokrzyński, and Eugeniusz Wierzbicki, the building was completed in 1972.
Its unique character was defined by sixteen monumental reinforced-concrete chalice-shaped columns spanning the main hall.
Known as the “Brutalist of Katowice,” the station functioned not only as a key transportation hub,
but was also regarded as a masterpiece of late modernism.
The series forms the core of the diploma project Beauty of Concrete and documents the final stage of the structure's existence — its raw aesthetics,
the dramatic chiaroscuro of leaking ceilings, and the subtle rhythm of everyday movement.
The photographs capture not only an exceptional architectural form,
but also the emotions accompanying the passing of a structure that shaped local identity for decades.
Beauty of Concrete - Today
PKP Katowice — Today presents the post-redevelopment station as a space of contemporary functionality,
integrated with commercial uses and modern architectural language.
It portrays a place that has retained fragments of its identity while undergoing a profound transformation — both spatial and social.
This part of the cycle explores how architectural memory can function not in opposition to the present,
but in dialogue with it.
The original reinforced — concrete chalice columns were preserved, restored, and embedded into the new structure as a quiet testimony of continuity.
Although the Brutalist rawness has been softened by glass, light, and neutral materials,
the echo of the original construction still resonates within the new station — like a note played at a different tempo, yet in the same key.
