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Urban Syntagms: Reclaiming "The Park"
Name
Fatma Asude Erdogmus
Education degree
Kandidat
Fagfelt
Architecture
Institute
Architecture and Culture
Program
Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability
Year
2026
Urban Syntagms: Reclaiming "The Park"
Meaning Production Agencies in the Urbanscape of Katowice, Poland
Urban Syntagms gives us a lens to see urban space through collective spatial relationships that construct a narrative for the everyday city user. By positioning architecture as an indeterminate medium, the design proposal transforms an informal car park in Katowice, Poland, into a dynamic public sphere of superimposed relationships.
The proposal establishes a framework where space continuously generates meaning through movement, shifting interactions, and daily flux. Moving beyond mere physical access, this approach foregrounds an open, inclusive urbanism that decentralizes the production of meaning, fosters collective ownership over how the city is interpreted and experienced.
Urban Syntagms
syntagm in linguistics: an ordered, linear combination of words that form a meaningful whole.
syntagm in urban: the composition of urban elements that collectively produce a meaning for the city user.
Urban meaning emerges through the perceptual reading of built environments as they are linked in sequence through movement and position. Gordon Cullen describes the urban scene as art of relationships, emphasizing that the urban space does not arise from isolated architectural forms but from the relational linking of spatial sequences. Cullen proposes that existing urban condition can be consciously framed so that the urban experience is shaped into a coherent drama3. This coherent drama that Collen suggests is framed as urban syntagms in the project; the composition of urban elements that collectively produce a meaning for the city user.
Who has (had) the power to define the city and its landmarks?
The city was governed by several states throughout its history, and each political regime contributed to shaping the main public arena. Changing political, economic, and ideological priorities was reflected in the public space through architectural visibility and display. So, even the Market Square and Korfantego Avenue was at first appeared as a organically grown public space, in time, its development was constructed through deliberate planning and political intervention.
Where does urbanity remain when “icons” commercialise the public space?
Visibility in the urban realm operates as a powerful instrument and the grand narrative of Katowice and treats the city as a blank canvas to materialize the political-economic appropriation of those in power. It stops the city from being a shared platform, it positions its users as spectators rather than active participants.
Agencies of Meaning Production in Urbanscape
Architectural meaning is not produced only through the creation of the architectural object itself; it also emerges through perception and lived experience of the user within the broader syntagm of relations in which the object is positioned.
what behaviorology can tell us?
The concept of behaviorology illustrates how spatial meaning is autonomously produced by the user through the lens of architectural affordances. Rather than dictating singular meaning, this approach repositions architecture as an ‘indeterminate medium’ that gives flexibility to the user create their own meaning thorugh the multiplicity of ‘event’ and ‘motion’ within the “space”.
reclaiming "the park"
The existing informal car park at the end of Korfantego Avenue occupies a critical position in Katowice, where pedestrian and driver experiences intersect at the corner of the city’s primary vehicular axis and the Market Square.
The project proposes reclamation of this exsting car park The site is embedded within layered historical contexts and symbolic surroundings. It operates as a spatial node where multiple urban narratives are juxtaposed.
Within the urbanscape of Katowice, by introducing a new spatial syntagm through reclaiming the park, the thesis directly challenges the dominant, institutional meaning production agencies that dictate singular, monumental, and fixed meanings. Ultimately, the lens of urban syntagms reclaims the right to the city, returning the urban realm back to the collective bodies that inhabit it.
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)
