Urbs Artis Part 1 Project 2005 Ernestyna Szpakowska Cracow University of Technology | Poland Nowa Huta is a Cracow's district from 50’s, originally planned as an autonomous, socrealist, monumental, never completed, urban set. The project closes-up its unterminated north-south compositional axis with a visible dominant: the monument - beginning of the city. The building’s function (contemporary art gallery) continues the unaccomplished 50’s idea of setting by the Central Square a cultural building and should socially positively influence the slightly neglected place. The gallery's space consists of sheer abstraction and the poetry of Piranesi’s labirynths. The play of volumes inside the cube interacts with the play outside. Three urban interiors become the grand scenery for art continued by the fourth one, large meadow of the former river’s meander, forming the infinite gallery. The nomination for Urbs Artis of Ernestyna Szpakowska was granted for appropriate implementation of the project into its urban context and creating the architecture both - attractive in form and appropriate in scale i.e. enclosing the axes and frontages of the Central Square. Especial attention should be focused on the composition-decompositional play of architectural structure exposed by the author. Particularly worthy of noticing are both: author’s remarkable drawing and painting skills and sensibility as well as her ability of translating pretext into the final shape of the Monument – the beginning of the city’s space. Tutor(s)