Every design for Katowice

Have you ever tried explaining to an outsider that Katowice is a young city? It became a town only in the nineteenth century, grew around coal, steelworks and the Upper Silesian Railway, and turned within a few generations into the capital of the region and the centre of a conurbation of millions.

What makes it unique is how openly it shows that change. Worker estates such as Nikiszowiec and Giszowiec sit within the same city limits as the Archikatedra pw. Chrystusa Króla w Katowicach and the Silesian Parliament, two showpieces of interwar modernism, and as the Drapacz Chmur, the skyscraper of its day. On the site of the old Katowice mine, the Strefa Kultury gathers the Silesian Museum, the home of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and the congress centre, with the Spodek arena next door. The city that once dug coal now hosts Off Festival and the Intel Extreme Masters, and UNESCO has named it a City of Music.

And yet locals know it best through small things: the Pomnik górników KWK Wujek, a familiar tram stop, a grandparent's flat in Nikiszowiec. Whatever else changes, that is where home stays.