Scenographies of the End. Between Disapearance and Regeneration of the Barycz Landscape
Project idea
The project begins with a landscape that the city has learned to keep at a distance.
Barycz, located on the south-eastern edge of Kraków, is a post-landfill and post-extractive territory shaped by salt mining, terrain subsidence, municipal waste, technical infrastructure and social conflict. It is not an empty degraded site, but a landscape of accumulation — a place where decisions, remains, matter and memory have been deposited over time.
The main idea is to transform this overloaded territory through a long-term urban and landscape regeneration strategy. Instead of proposing a single final image, the project works with time: withdrawal, ecological succession, material recovery, controlled access and collective experience.
The project asks whether the end of an exploited landscape can become the beginning of a new public, ecological and cultural condition. Architecture is not treated as the dominant answer. It appears only when it can support the transformation — as a threshold, a place of observation, a tool for education and a mediator between the closed technical landscape and its future public life.
“Scenographies of the End” proposes a new role for urban design: to create conditions in which a damaged territory can become legible, accessible and capable of further transformation.
Project description
The project proposes a phased regeneration strategy for the Barycz municipal landfill landscape on the border of Kraków and Wieliczka. The site is treated as a complex post-waste and post-extractive territory, where natural processes, industrial traces, technical infrastructure, restricted access and social memory overlap.
The design process begins with the “topography of traces” — an analytical method that identifies the spatial and temporal layers of the site: former extraction, waste storage, transformed landforms, water systems, infrastructure, access barriers, social conflict and ecological succession. These layers do not remain only research material. They become the basis for the masterplan.
The project is organized through five overlapping stages: withdrawal, revival, gate, community and regeneration.
Withdrawal reduces anthropogenic pressure by removing, transforming or reusing degraded infrastructure. Thaw initiates ecological regeneration through pioneer vegetation, riparian habitats, fourth nature zones and Miyawaki microforests. The Gate introduces a controlled threshold between the formerly closed landfill landscape and the newly accessible terrain. Community activates the area through education, workshops, observation and dialogue. Rebirth is understood not as a return to an original state, but as an open-ended process of further transformation.
The architectural intervention consists of pavilions of dialogue and experience. They provide spaces for learning, meetings, material workshops and landscape interpretation. Their role is not to dominate the site, but to support the regeneration process and make the hidden layers of the landscape visible.
The project redefines urban and landscape design as a time-based practice: not the creation of a finished composition, but the careful organization of conditions for ecological recovery, public access and renewed identity of the place.
Technical information
The project combines territorial planning, ecological regeneration, material reuse and reversible architecture. Its technical strategy is based on phased implementation, minimal disturbance of the existing terrain and the gradual transformation of a post-landfill landscape into a publicly legible environment.
At the landscape scale, the masterplan defines zones of withdrawal, ecological regeneration, controlled access, observation and public activity. Degraded technical infrastructure is selectively removed, transformed or retained where it remains necessary for monitoring and safety. Materials recovered from demolition are treated as local resources and reused in paths, surfaces, landscape elements and rammed-earth construction.
Water and soil regeneration are key components of the proposal. The design strengthens the role of the Malinówka stream, supports local water retention and introduces vegetation strategies adapted to different conditions of the landfill landscape. Pioneer species stabilize the ground, riparian vegetation supports wet areas, fourth nature zones allow spontaneous succession, and Miyawaki microforests accelerate habitat creation in selected locations.
The architectural intervention consists of modular and reversible pavilions. Their structure combines rammed-earth walls with a lightweight timber roof system. Rammed earth anchors the pavilions in the material logic of the site, while timber enables prefabrication, disassembly and potential reuse.
The spatial layout is organized around a gate-like threshold, framed views, filtered light and a sequence leading from material work to landscape observation. The project does not rely on one final technical solution. It proposes a system of gradual actions in which demolition, reuse, ecological succession, public access and temporary architecture operate together as instruments of landscape regeneration.
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