Ryszard Piotr Jurkowski (born 28 May 1945) is a Polish architect and urban planner. He is noted for his contemporary and embracing minimalism design of residential, commercial, educational, industrial and civic buildings, and for his fight against the monotonous and dreary architecture of the communist era.
Ryszard Jurkowski was born in 1945 to a working-class family in industrialised Sosnowiec within the Upper Silesian agglomeration, where later, as factories and coal mines declined, the architectural identity of the Third Polish Republic began to take shape.
Jurkowski went to Bolesà Âaw Prus Secondary School in Sosnowiec, and in 1969 he graduated with a master's degree in architecture from Kraków University of Technology, subsequently obtaining the professional qualifications to practice under the title 'architect'.
During the communist era architecture was characterised by extensive housing estates, industrial halls, and administrative buildings in various styles â from the socialist realism to the prefabricated concrete panel buildings. To Jurkowski, and another young Silesian architect Stanisà Âaw Niemczyk, these buildings appeared monotonous, repetitive, and neglectful of basic human needs.
In 1969 he joined the Regional Municipal Building Company in Sosnowiec, but two years later began working for a large architectural firm Investprojekt in Katowice. It was there that in 1984 he designed Kokociniec residential complex, where buildings with high gable roofs, overlooking home zones and attractive, accessible spaces and environments for residents, radically differed from the typical communist-era housing estate. Owing to limited availability of adequate building materials and underdeveloped construction technology, the completion of Kokociniec, along with other projects by Jurkowski, presented significant challenges, and even the need for confronting representatives of the communist Polish United Workers' Party who deemed his projects to be capricious, beyond the bounds of standards, and too distinctive in their innovative appearance, but it was this architectural style that inspired peopleâÂÂs hope for economic and social renewal.
Jurkowski's philosophy, which emphasises context sensitive solutions, is illustrated by the school in Wodzisà Âaw, âÂÂskilfully designed into the hilly landscapeâÂÂ. He, and his team, Janusz Kapitaà Âski and Jan Pallado, were âÂÂsomewhat ahead of their timeâ when they designed the school in 1988, situated atop a hill and surrounded by parkland. The building has an irregular shape, classrooms cascade across the sloping terrain, while the school entrance is fronted by wide stairs and marked by a turret. Through these features, the school became both a landmark and a focal point for the entire neighbourhood, simultaneously distinctive yet hidden among the greenery.
In the mid-1980s the first legal gateway for the autonomyàof designers and investors opened. Architects gained the opportunity to set up cooperatives, i.e. legal entities freeing them from the work regime of state design offices, and finally gained design autonomy in 1988, along with the so-called âÂÂWilczek ActâÂÂ, which gave full freedom of economic activity. Thus, in 1990, Jurkowski left Investprojekt to establish, together with his wife, who also holds a degree in architecture, his own firm AiR Jurkowscy Architekci.
Between 1991 and 1996 he was a senior lecturer at Kraków University of Technology and in the years 1992-1998 and 2003-2006 the chairman of the Regional Commission for Urban Planning and Architecture in Katowice. He was also appointed a member of PolandâÂÂs General Commission for Urban Planning and Architecture in Warsaw and he played a significant role in creating the Act of 15 December 2000 on professional self-governing bodies for architects.
He was the chief coordinator of the professional architects' environments focusing on improving the standards of Polish architecture, and in 2000 was elected the president of the Association of Polish Architects, and held this position until 2006.
In 2009, after winning an international competition, he designed the Home Army Museum in Krakow. For the project,Jurkowski integrated modern elements into an old barracks built in 1911.
In 2018 Jurkowski orchestrated the publishing of the first Polish edition of On AdamâÂÂs House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History (Polish: O rajskim domu Adama: Idea pierwotnej chaty w historii architektury), a literary work on the history and philosophy of architecture written by the foremost historian and critic Professor Joseph Rykwert, and published under the patronage of the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning (NIAIU) with a foreword from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
He is also a member of the Polish Architecture Council, and of the Collegium of Architectural Design Competition SARP, taking on the roles of chairman or rapporteur of the Jury.
Ryszard Jurkowski is the winner of the SARP Honorary Award 1999, SARP Award of the Year 1987 and 2010 and of the 1st and 2nd degree Award of the Ministry of Construction (now the Ministry of Infrastructure).
He is the recipient of the 2011 and the Silver and Gold Cross of Merit in recognition of his achievements. In 2013 he was nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture / Mies van der Rohe Award for the Home Army Museum in Kraków. He is also the winner of Polska 2013.
In 2012 he received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta from the President of Poland "for his outstanding contribution to Polish architecture".