How a single block became a row of townhouses on the Old Market Square in Chojnice
They look like a row of historic townhouses, yet they were created from a single post-war volume. Here is how dividing one facade restored the scale of the market frontage — and why it works.
Before
After
One block instead of a frontage
At 11/13 Old Market Square in Chojnice stood a post-war apartment building — a single modernist block with a repetitive window rhythm and a flat facade stripped of detail. While its height matched the historic surroundings, the continuous, monotonous frontage broke the character of a market square whose walls had for centuries been formed by a row of narrow, individual townhouses.
In a town like Chojnice, the market square is defined not only by the open space but above all by the walls that enclose it. When one of those walls is occupied by a single uniform volume, the space loses its rhythm and human scale — even if the height and building line are preserved.
The illusion of several townhouses
Andrzej Ciemiński's design changed neither the structure nor the volume of the building. The entire transformation took place on the facade. The uniform front was rearticulated as a sequence of separate townhouses — as if several independent buildings from different periods stood side by side on this spot.
It is a purely architectural move, yet with a real urban effect: it restores the natural grain of the market frontage. The passer-by no longer reads one long block but a rhythm of gaps and individual facades — exactly what we expect from a historic square.
Colour, rhythm and roofline
Each "townhouse" was given its own facade colour, its own window rhythm and a distinct crowning element — from a triangular gable, through a parapet, to a cornice with classical detailing. Differences in colour and roofline height let us read neighbouring sections as separate houses, even though they share one wall.
It is the detail that makes the whole illusion convincing. Pilasters, window surrounds, cornices and varied gables draw on the language of the town's bourgeois architecture. Without them the division would be mere painted stripes; with them, it becomes a genuine restoration of the square's historic character.
An award and a lesson in urban scale
The transformation was completed in 2000 and the project was nominated for Poland's Modernisation of the Year 2000 award. Today, for many residents and visitors, the colourful townhouses are simply a natural part of the square — few remember that a single post-war volume hides behind them.
The project shows that regeneration need not mean demolition. Sometimes it is enough to read a place carefully and give it back the scale and rhythm it was missing. It is the same way of thinking we bring to contemporary refurbishments and extensions — starting from how a building speaks to its surroundings.