Scholarly record

TRENDS TOWARDS EXAGGERATION AS A FORM OF THE ZIPF'S LAW VIOLATION IN CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC BUILDINGS DESIGN

E. Trocka-Leszczynska, R. Tarczewski, J. Jablonska

Abstract

Public buildings have always been, and still are - especially in recent years, one of the most intensively realized groups of buildings. This allows to notice some trends both in the decision making process related to these buildings and in the applied design solutions. These trends can be generally referred to as “trends towards exaggeration”. It reveals in several aspects such as big number of those buildings or their excessive scale and standard. Among the numerous the reasons of emergence and prevalence of these trends, the important ones are strong local ambitions and peculiar rivalry between centers. It is characteristic that they usually obtain social acceptance. Another reason for tendencies to excessive realization of public buildings is recent increase of importance of architectural objects, which became a kind of “monuments”, local attractions, elements of prestige. The importance of the architectural work is often regarded as a substitute for the functions, which have been assigned to it. It activates a rivalry between cities. Effects of these processes can be also differentiated on those which seem to be obvious, and those which are not noticed during cursory analyze of the problem. In the first group are, first of all, exceeding costs of construction and – even more – exploitation. In the second group is a specific “inflation” of functions assigned to the objects. This effect is further amplified by problems with financing regular activities of located institutions. This process has a strong impact on decreasing ergonomic aspect of this implementation, effecting comfort of use or people safety.

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