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Wadislaw Konrad Smigielski (13 March 1908 - 26 December 1999), Born in Tarnow, Poland, was an urban modernist architect and a town planner. He is most notably recognised for his contributions to Leicester in the sixties and seventies, including Leicester's traffic plan in which he headed a committee to remedy issues with rising traffic in the city.

Education and early career

Graduating in 1935, Smigielski studied architecture in Warsaw at Warsaw Polytechnic, and then in Krakow at the Academy of Fine Arts. During the Second World War, Smigielski fought and was interned in Hong Kong, only to escape and fight in Free Polish Forces with the British in Italy. After the war, he worked as a Lecturer for Leeds School of Architecture and town planning. Smigielski's first major success in his early town planning career was winning second place in a competition funded and raised by the Roads Campaign Council, which was judged by William Holford, a prominent post-war town planner responsible for the Town and Country planning act of 1947 which established that ownership did not grant a legal right to develop land and that planning permission was also a requirement. Smigielski's idea would become the inspiration for his later task of tackling Leicester's roads and traffic.

Work in Leicester

After being denied a role as deputy to the chief planner of London County Council, Smigielski was appointed the role of City planning officer for Leicester in Spring 1962 from a pool of 33 other applicants. Being only the third city in the United Kingdom to have a devolved subcommittee outside of the city council based directly on city planning, Smigielski and his 49 other city planners and staff could have more autonomy on their projects, in which the first would be to tackle the rising problems in traffic and to design efficient transport links for Leicester. The main solution set out by Colin Buchanan was to convert traffic onto primary roads that ran around the city, and to pedestrianise the centre, known as "environmental areas".[1] The Buchanan report also stressed the importance of public transport. Making large roads wasn't a feasible option in an old city like Leicester. So Smigielski focused heavily on public transport, even envisioning a monorail system which unfortunately was never implemented due to the lack of efficiency as a mode of transport. Leicester controlled traffic jams through television cameras which monitored bus routes so congestion could be radioed in, and different buses or directions could be took.

Haymarket Shopping Centre

Smigielski oversaw the construction of the Haymarket shopping centre. Development started in 1966, and construction in 1971. The Haymarket featured a theatre which was replaced by the Curve in 2007.

Perhaps one of Konrad's proudest achievements was the conservation of major locations in Leicester, such as the Guildhall, New Walk and castle. Street benches along New Walk, a historic Georgian promenade and green space were restored and the house facades that ran along the walk were made more sightly. More of Konrad's achievements include a roof over the outside market, called the forecourt, and a housing action scheme focusing on Clarendon Park, which saw houses equipped with indoor toilets.

Later life and death

Following an argument with the city council over the listing of the Victorian Sun Alliance building, Smigielski was dismissed from the town planning committee. He retired and moved to Somerset with his wife Avice Ethelrelda Smigielski to author a thriller, Raphael Mystery (1993) and to paint. His wife, Avice died in 1991, and soon after, Konrad Smigielski died in 1999 on the 26 December.