The Last House Standing on Słodowa Island
For anyone walking across Słodowa Island today, the building at number 7 looks like an anomaly: a plastered, ornament-trimmed facade rising out of a stretch of lawns and riverside greenery. That solitude is not natural. For most of its history, the building was surrounded by a dense neighbourhood of houses, farmyards, and mills that gave the area its old German name, Vorderbleiche, meaning Front Bleaching, a reference to the local tradition of bleaching linen. The Second World War and decades of subsequent demolition cleared everything else away. The tenement at number 7 became, almost by accident, the sole residential witness to what this part of Wrocław once was.
From Wartime Ruin to Contested Landmark
The building came through the 1945 siege of Festung Breslau with its structure intact, though its facades bore visible damage from the fighting. It was not the only survivor initially; the nearby St Clare's Mills stood until 1975, when they were demolished despite vocal opposition from conservation advocates. Meanwhile, residents continued living at number 7 through the postwar decades, even as the building slowly deteriorated and the island around it transformed into a place for leisure and open-air gatherings.
As the tenement fell into deeper disrepair, a public debate opened up about its future. Community groups pushed for a cultural or educational space. The city at one point signalled it would fund a renovation itself, but eventually the property went to auction. In 2017, a bid of just over 9.5 million zlotys, submitted by Pro Design, a company connected to the Voelkel family and Poznań-based Concordia Design, was accepted. The sale covered the building and the right of perpetual usufruct of the land, not Słodowa Island as a whole. A private complex with offices, co-working areas, catering, and event spaces was planned rather than the community hub many had hoped for.
What MVRDV and Q2Studio Built Inside the Old Walls
Renovation began in 2018 under the direction of MVRDV and Q2Studio. The architects retained and reinforced the external walls, cleaned the facades, and restored missing decorative details. Everything inside, however, was stripped out. Internal walls, ceilings, the original staircase, parquet floors, stucco, balustrades, and the entire spatial layout of the 19th-century flats were removed, with the developer citing severe structural deterioration. In their place came a multi-storey atrium, exposed brickwork, and contemporary interiors. A new extension was added alongside the original shell, echoing the window rhythm of the historic facade but with far simpler detailing. A rooftop viewing terrace crowns the whole structure.
The completed Concordia Design Hub has been open since 2020, housing offices, co-working spaces, a catering offer, and exhibition and meeting rooms. The total project cost exceeded 46 million zlotys. It has received recognition from the architectural community and won several awards. As Mateusz Markowski reported for whiteMAD, however, the transformation is also a source of genuine ambivalence: the external shell survives, but the interior life accumulated by successive generations of German and Polish residents is gone permanently.
Why It Matters for Hosts
Słodowa Island already draws visitors for its riverside setting and open-air atmosphere; Concordia Design Hub adds a year-round programme of events, exhibitions, and co-working activity that brings a new kind of guest to this part of Wrocław. Independent accommodation operators and experience providers in the Stare Miasto and Śródmieście areas have a concrete reason to position themselves around the island's creative calendar. Highlighting proximity to a venue that blends heritage architecture with a live events programme can meaningfully differentiate a listing, particularly for guests travelling for work or design-adjacent tourism.
Details in this post were first reported by Mateusz Markowski for whiteMAD, published 17 September 2026. This post appears on the Qontaktly travel blog.
First reported by whitemad.pl.