Stage 2. Exterior view showing the first development on the site.
Stage 1.5 The sites form responds to unexpected community influences. The evolution of the space will drive on how the community engages with the space over time.
Reinterpretation of vernacular roof structures
Industrial windows bring daylight into the core.
Drawing of the conglomerated building method, structures added over time as needed.

Huta Baildon — Ruins, Capital, and the Possibility of Conglomerated Commons

Kristian Jønson Schmidt
Name
Kristian Jønson Schmidt
Education degree
Kandidat
Fagfelt
Architecture
Institute
Architecture and Culture
Program
Taking Place, Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability
Year
2026

Katowice is transforming. But as capital claims its post-industrial ground, who is the city being built for? This project proposes a conglomerate of workspaces within the ruins of Huta Baildon, where former marginalised local businesses and established enterprises coexist, reusing what remains and minimising new materials, resisting the tabula rasa discourse of erasure and demolition.

Kristian Jønson Schmidt
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Stage 2. Exterior view showing the first development on the site.
Industrial windows bring daylight into the core.
Stage 2. Exterior sound rooms
Interior render of the second floor over the music rooms.

The conglomerate building method invites the city to evolve over time. Rejecting a tabula rasa approach, each of the four stages responds to existing conditions through ad hoc interventions that learn from and build upon what is already present. The diagram illustrates how each stage emerges from the previous one, revealing an incremental process of accumulation and adaptation.

Diagram of the conglomerated building methods aspect of time
Conglomerate time diagram
Drawing of the conglomerated building method, structures added over time as needed.
Conglomerate drawing

Local traditions and practical needs bring direction to the project's development. Local building traditions bring inherited knowledge to its architectural language. A conglomerated approach to building brings together multiple influences, creating an architecture shaped by the specific character and conditions of its place, informed over time.

3 images
The first-floor plan section presents the building in its entirety, showing the arrangement of the sound rooms and their integration within the overall plan.
The section drawings expose the building in its entirety, revealing the layered relationship between programs, circulation, and the spatial continuity that binds the different levels together.
The front sections illustrate the interplay between the music rooms and the circulation spaces, revealing how vertical connections organize movement across the building.

Informed by local building traditions, the immediate context is lifted onto the plateau of the existing structure, transforming the ground into a new architectural foundation and interweaving the surrounding urban fabric with the context of Huta Baildon.

Reinterpretation of vernacular roof structures
Stage 4. roof structure

The Royal Danish Academy supports the Sustainable Development Goals

Since 2017 the Royal Danish Academy has worked with the Sustainable Development Goals. This is reflected in our research, our teaching and in our students’ projects. This project relates to the following UN goal(-s)