24 Hours in Krakow
I went to Poland to look at windows, and came home thinking about frescoed vaults, medieval stone walls, copper flashing, pierogies, and the prayers of a quiet monk.
Yawal, a Polish manufacturer of high-quality aluminum windows and doors, is engineering and fabricating custom exterior window systems for Aggarwal Hall, the new home of the University of Virginia’s Alumni Association. In July, I traveled with our construction team to meet our Yawal counterparts and visit the factory where the components are extruded, finished, machined, fitted with hardware, assembled, and shipped.
When the factory visit ended, I stuck around Krakow for a day. I wandered the historic center in the middle of a heat wave, taking in its gracious central square and old market hall, past fortifications and university buildings, and along streets lined with centuries-old architecture. I cooled off with chocolate ice cream and watched the world go by in a café that served plum pierogies with lamb.
The heat drew me into Krakow’s churches and monasteries. I found thick masonry walls and cool, quiet rooms richly detailed with frescoes, tombs, vaulted ceilings, gold leaf, paintings, and centuries of alteration. At one monastery, portions of an older façade had been uncovered and preserved beneath later construction, making visible the building’s rich history. I just sat there enjoying the stillness – and the coolness.
But it was the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi that really stopped me in my tracks. Its richly colored interior seemed to shift and change everywhere I looked: deep blues and greens, glinting gold accents, floral motifs, and geometric patterns on walls and ceiling vaults so finely painted they resembled the finest Art Nouveau textiles or wallpaper. In a quiet side chapel, I observed a monk praying, which inspired me to contemplate the physical effort and the dedication needed to create incredible structures of outstanding beauty. The church’s colors, patterns, craftsmanship, ornament, and quiet spirituality also reminded me how architecture communicates through exquisite detail.
Back outside, the architect in me never went off duty. I photographed façades, brackets, masonry, windows, and a small dome being re-clad in copper. I examined flashing on banded stone and brought what I learned back to another project that I was working on at the time. The more I immersed myself in the unfamiliar, the more I was reminded that the age-old lessons of artisans and masons hold true for contemporary buildings, too.
I went to Poland to see windows; I discovered so much more.
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