MODERNIZACJA RYNKU W ZBĄSZYNIU

The municipal authorities of Zbąszyń, a picturesquely located small town in western Greater Poland, recognised that they are compelled to create a new image of the city centre in order to attract tourists and people with initiative. The year 1998 marked the inauguration of an investment programme pursued within the historical premises of the town, entailing a project for the modernisation of the market square, the result of a previous competition. The article discusses select competition conceptions and the realisation project devised in 1998-2000. The predominant project objective was to discover a contemporary spatial and functional formula for the historical market square, which for the past half a century was used predominantly as a parking lot. This is the reason special attention was paid to all available historical sources, iconography, and facts from the town’s past which pertained directly to the market square. Modernisation was inaugurated in the spring of 2001 by embarking upon recommended archaeological research on the site of the non-extant town hall. Certain restraints were imposed by insufficient financial funds. Nonetheless, consecutive stages of the modernisation ran a smooth course, especially considering that they were supervised by the author and conservators, making it possible to preserve the majority of the aesthetic nuances contained in the project.