Masterplan roundabout / 2021

Aleja Jozefa Pilsudski, passing into Aleja Jana Pawla II,is the main communication artery of Jastrzebia Zdroj,to which most of housing estates adjoin. The mostly four-lane road with a green belt in the middle starts at Pszczynska Street in the east and ends at the border of Zdroj. Most of Jastrzebia’s important institutions, commercial and service facilities are located on these avenues. The proposed solutions constitute a sequence of characteristic points that facilitate the identification of places and orientation in space.

The roundabouts so far are very similar to each other, to the extent that visitors may confuse them even after visiting Jastrzebia several times. A large part of the project is working on breaking the green structure dominating in the city, in which high greenery is usually moved away from the edge of roads towards buildings. Meanwhile, at the speeds in force in built-up areas,trees outside road gauges and visibility cones are most desirable and do not pose a threat,as in the case of expressways.

Additionally, they shade roadways and sidewalks,hide traffic from windows,absorb dust and fumes,prevent soil drying,lower the ambient temperature – improving the city’s micro climate. The trees moved away from the facades of buildings are clearly visible from the windows and do not shade the apartments. Jastrzebia was designed on the wave of the garden city design in town planning in the middle of the last century. Planting communication arteries with trees is a continuation of this vision.

This roundabout is currently under construction. This facility is located in the immediate vicinity of the viaduct described above. High greenery flanking the initial section of Aleja Pilsudski in the vicinity of the roundabout, on the northern side is an almost homogeneous birch grove. The project envisages extending the grove with the inner surface of the roundabout and green belts around it. It is planned to plant about 60 birches in total, including 13 in the center. The central circle itself was leveled and hardened with small white blocks surface, and the trees were planted in circular holes – providing them with the necessary conditions for vegetation.

The holes inside are covered with white loose pebble surface. The frames of the holes were designed from architectural concrete prefabricated in white cement. They have a cross-section of an letter “L”. LED strips illuminating the holes are to be hidden under the upper surface of the prefabricated elements. After crossing the viaduct highlighted by light stripes, vehicles will around 13 luminous circles when entering from the east. The composition of the design is based on white colored materials in various shades and textures.

White concrete, white paving stones, white pebbles and white tree trunks. The planting of the birch trees in the holes covers the joint of the tree with ground, leaving pure white column of the trunk in views. The lighting in the center of the roundabout will be integrated into the street lighting system. The electrical design should provide for the correction of the cable routing in the central circle and the installation of a junction box in one holes, which will be used to illuminate occasional decorations.

Jastrzębie has not developed a traditional center in the form of a market square. Housing estates form complexes of separate urban. Aleja Pilsudskiego and Jana Pawla II form a range around which groups of buildings or individual structures are grouped – among which it is difficult to identify the most important ones. European societies have a strongly culturally coded need to indicate the focal point of the city. If you asked asked the inhabitants of Jastrzębie about such a point, the majority would probably point to the Central Roundabout. Meanwhile, this place is a contradiction of the traditional market as a public space separated by frontages of houses. The distance between the cubature objects scattered loosely around the roundabout is several hundred meters. In the absence of dense groups of tall greenery, this place feels like a hostile wilderness or at most a communication junction.

Design activities are aimed at filling this void. In the central part, there will be a colonnade of slender pillars connected at the top with a circle corresponding to the outline of inner greenery. The whole, although very openwork, is supposed to suggest a closed,transparent block. This impression will intensify after dark, when the greenery inside the colonnade will be intensely illuminated from the circle floating above the ground. The roundabout road is also to be illuminated from the same circle.

The second suggested action to fill the urban void is to introduce dense groups of tall greenery around the roundabout, which is easier to maintain,protects against overheating of both paved and unpaved surfaces, improving the city’s micro climate. Properly designed “blocks” of greenery frame selected parts of the views, and as you move, they overlap in perspective one after another, so that the image of the city is constantly changing.

During talks with the representatives of the office, there was a need to build a flagpole in the center of the roundabout. If such a place is to be a city-creating element, we suggest moving it to a place accessible to pedestrians, to the edge of the roundabout, outside the road. Still remaining in the “center of Jastrzębie”, the flagpole visible from distant perspectives would be erected on a square specially created for this purpose.

Hoisting the flag on the mast could be performed ceremonially, with the participation of the public, without the necessity to stop the traffic. The square would be separated from the noisy roadway by translucent acoustic screens, on which you can write content referring to the history of the Jastrzębie and workers’ strikes. The economic analysis during the technical design should show whether the transfer of electrical boxes located on the proposed square is justified. If the costs are too high, you can enclose the boxes with wooden platforms, which are used for rest or which are a kind of platforms for speeches.

A new layout of greenery in the central part is proposed. As in the previous case, the installation of water and electricity connections at the roundabout should be considered.

As in the case of Central roundabout, we are dealing here with an empty space. This impression is intensified by the fact that on the north, west and south sides the buildings are far away, dispersed and maintained on the scale of single-family houses. Further to the west, Aleja Jana Pawla II begins, where there are no organized block structures until the area of the old Zdrój, but only the Provincial Hospital, a sports, entertainment hall and two discount food stores. The purpose of introducing strong groups of tall greenery is to “tighten the space” and limit unwanted views.

The central part itself was made in the form of an earthen platform covered with flower meadow. In the event that the maintenance of the meadow is considered to be too laborious, it is possible to introduce other types of cover vegetation, e.g. in the form of decorative grass. It is important to keep the plants as homogeneous and low as possible, because the platform is to be a surface on which a dynamic link-bark structure, the so called Tensigrity.

The decision to choose the final shape of the composition can be made, which is beyond the scope of the concept, but the adopted formula offers a wide range of possibilities in this respect. The structure will be illuminated from the ground with spotlights of one or more colors. The dynamic, “weightless” structure will certainly constitute an attractive, distinctive and unusual landmark in Jastrzębie.
As in the previous cases, it is planned to install water and electricity connections in the central part.

The viaduct over one of the numerous ravines in Jastrzebie is currently under modernization. It is a typical bridge structure, not distinguished by special design solutions. As in many road structures of this type, for safety reasons the lanes are flanked with energy-consuming barriers “Barrier rail, H=1.3m H2/W2/D<0.4”,which are topped with a horizontal “C” section at the top. An intensive urban development begins from the viaduct along the avenue, it is proposed to emphasize this place with linear lighting in the form of LED strips hidden in the railings of the barriers. In reference to the colors of Jastrzebie, the colors of the stripes could be green and golden yellow.