Work submitted for the competition
"Best Diploma Architecture".
The idea of the project is to create a memorial - born from memory, bringing hope, while cherishing memories. The project focuses on presenting the problem of discrimination, but pays special attention to the discriminated social groups living in Miedzianka, a ghost town.
situation
© Wiktoria Zarębska
The study area is located in a degraded area of a former mining town. The town, which was still vibrant in the 1950s, is now just a few houses, old walls and ubiquitous sinkholes. Among the most important sites is a church standing at the jumble of the adit network, which is the only one of the buildings left intact.
diagram
© Wiktoria Zarębska
The building, a community facility, unites all the social groups to which the project was dedicated. These were: the unclean - witches, suicides or unbaptized children, people considered a threat and a potential danger by medieval society, the exclusion of each was based on superstition; miners and political prisoners working in the uranium mine in the 1950s.The miners and political prisoners working in the uranium mine in the 1950s, forced to do hard labor that endangered their health and lives, all quietly so that no one would find out; the residents of Miedzianka, those who spent their entire lives here, one decision that affected their entire later lives - the opening of the mine that heralded the collapse of the town and its liquidation.
view of level -1
© Wiktoria Zarębska
One of the main objectives of the building is to create an exhibition space that will preserve the "wildness" and mystery natural to Miedzianka. The building was designed underground to be invisible, like victims of exclusion.
axonometry
© Wiktoria Zarębska
With reference to excluded groups in the village, the building was divided into three zones: "Mine," dedicated to miners and political prisoners; "Home," which is a tribute to the townspeople; and a symbolic cemetery serving as a memorial to "impure" people for whom there was no place in the cemetery after death. The designed underground pavilion added to the church consists of two underground floors. The lump visible from ground level remains invariably the church, the symbolic "House", and the memorial cemetery.
mockup
© Wiktoria Zarębska
The complex assumes a certain sightseeing scenario starting at the main entrance. The basement of the church has been given a new function - there are a Dialogue Center and an exhibition room. The user is introduced to the issue of discrimination prevailing for hundreds of years.
Dialogue Center "Eden"
© Wiktoria Zarębska
From the Dialogue Center, the user is led to the exhibition room, the "Mine." In this part, visitors are introduced to the first social group to which the memorial was dedicated - miners and prisoners working for the USSR. The asceticism of the form, sharp angles or collapsing walls allude to the obstacles these people faced during their daily work. At the end of the hall, a staircase to level -2 has been designed. It will lead the user to the interior of the "Mine", where the number of rocks, obstacles, as well as the increasing darkness is supposed to approximate the feelings of the mine workers. Exiting this area is a door leading to the symbolic basement of a residential house, which, according to residents' stories, served as a shelter during World War II or a private adit during the poverty that prevailed here after the closure of the copper mine.
"House of Remembrance", level -1
© Wiktoria Zarębska
Further down the staircase the user is led higher, to level -1. This is the "House" abandoned by the residents. Emptiness, stone furniture, an upturned chair, silence. These are elements meant to give the impression as if someone had just been there, didn't have time to clean up, finish his work, because - like the residents of Miedzianka - he was ordered to be evicted immediately. From the -1 level to the ground level one gets through the same staircase. However, the exit from the building does not mark the end of the story. The user is still in the house, where the main role is played by the staircase - "broken off", like the stories of the excluded, and an opening in the southwest wall of the building. To look into it, the user is forced to climb the stairs. The window shows the cemetery - a symbolic tribute to the last group of the excluded from Miedzianka. For the "impure," those who, even after their death, "did not deserve" a real tombstone.
"Cemetery of Silence"
© Wiktoria Zarębska
Wiktoria Zarębska
Illustrations: © Author
