We publish more student works selected in the preselection in the competition for press reportage on architecture. We invite you to read the text by Maja Górczak entitled. "New antiquities - how historical museums are designed today?".
Maja Gór czak - a student of Interdisciplinary Individual Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the Wajda School in Warsaw.
New antiquities - how are historical museums designed today?
Designing for cultural institutions is both an extraordinary honor and a huge challenge for architectural firms. The task becomes even more difficult when a modern building is supposed to hide secrets from centuries ago. Architects designing contemporary historical museums must find a universal language to tell the story of events and figures from the past. Increasingly, interactive centers commemorating a key historical moment do not store tangible exhibits, but human stories and memories.
Among the most interesting such facilities are Warsaw's POLIN, the Warsaw Uprising Museum, the Palmiry Memorial, the World War II Museum in Gdansk, the European Solidarity Center, the Emigration Museum in Gdynia and the Opole Village Museum. These are both purpose-built edifices for exhibition purposes, as well as revitalizations and conversions of old buildings.
Opole Village Museum
Apart from the Museum of Polish Song, Opole boasts the most modern open-air museum in Poland. How is it even possible to combine innovation with a complex of rural buildings? The key word to describe the Opole Village Museum is balance. Modernity here does not compete with historic exhibits but blends harmoniously with the surroundings.
Opole Village Museum
photo: Maja Górczak
The Opole Village Museum has been in operation since the 1970s, but it was not until 2005 that it was decided to build an edifice with an administrativeand reception function, which now houses cash registers and conference and educational spaces. The competition for the project was won by a young studio from Opole - db2 Architects. They distinguished themselves primarily by referring to traditional wooden buildings, into which they breathed new life.
Opole Village Museum
photo: Maja Górczak
The dominant material here is grayish acacia wood, which, due to its hardness, is difficult to process mechanically. However, the undeniable advantage is that, like oak wood, acacia wood is very durable and is rarely damaged. The building is punctuated with glass surfaces that illuminate the interior and reveal the open-air museum space. The wood used is not uniform, and its shape changes depending on the
depending on its location and function. It is both a roof covering, walls, louvers, a partitioning element of the rooms or, finally, an interior decoration.
The form of the building is reminiscent of the rural cottages that can be seen at the open-air museum, but is not a faithful reconstruction of them. At first glance, its shape resembles a huge barn, since in plan it is a simple rectangle. The layout of the rooms in the new Opole Village Museum building itself is taken from old houses. The space is divided into a more private area (offices), and an economic, staff area.
Opole Village Museum
photo: Maja Górczak
The Opole Village Museum is proof that sometimes courage lies not in being revolutionary but in being traditional. The museum's main building was one of the first projects drawing on folklore in Poland after 1989¹. Returning to the roots, together with a look at the achievements of the past, allows innovation to resonate better. Just as the Opole Village Museum's esposition allows visitors to take a break from busy reality, the main building allows visitors to distance themselves from the ubiquitous concrete, corten and high-tech realizations.
Opole Village Museum
photo: Maja Górczak
European Solidarity Center
Gdansk, after Krakow and Warsaw, is the most visited Polish city by foreign tourists. It impresses not only with its beautiful old town, but also with its fascinating recent history. The European Solidarity Center is dedicated precisely to the events of the 1980s.
European Solidarity Center
photo: Maja Górczak
The ECS is not just a museum telling about the past, but first and foremost a space for sharing experiences and discussing the need for solidarity in the modern world. Such a multifunctional institution therefore needs an equally multifunctional building.
European Solidarity Center
photo: Maja Górczak
The design of the Gdańsk-based FORT studio included space for exhibition spaces, educationaland conference rooms, souvenir stores, a bookstore, several food and beverage outlets, the Solidarity archive, a playground, a chapel and even a symbolic office for Lech Walesa in the extremely spacious edifice. All these spaces are hidden in a building with multiple meanings.
Looking at the silhouette of the European Solidarity Center, a number of associations come to mind. The sloping slabs of the rust-colored edifice remind some of ships being built in a shipyard, while others see them as squeezed workers on strike in front of the gate. A common interpretive clue is to look for comparisons to the shape of the Solidarica and to associate the corten blocks pushing against each other with the letters of the famous font².
European Solidarity Center
photo: Maja Górczak
Regardless of what the architects' original inspiration was, it is worth noting how they used the Framptonian concept of regionalism. British architect and critic Kenneth Frampton wrote that modern architecture must never dominate local traditions. According to his strategy, it is crucial to maintain a balance between innovation and the use of technological advances and nature. Therefore, the main hall of the European Solidarity Center is filled with greenery in the form of an inner garden. The green color contrasts with the reddish-brownhues of the walls in a particularly beautiful way.
European Solidarity Center
photo: Maja Górczak
The European Solidarity Center building is one of many museum buildings using weathering steel. Before the opening, some Gdansk residents thought the rust visible on the facade was the result of poorly done work, rather than a deliberate artistic effort. The steel, which looks as if it has already corroded, punishes reflection on the condition of solidarity both as an idea and as an institution. Radoslaw Gajda, host of the program "Architecture is a good idea," in an episode devoted to the European Solidarity Center, pointed out the site where this compelling building was erected. The ECS edifice is surrounded by wasteland and remnants of the buildings of the original, historic Gdansk Shipyard. This fact makes an interesting comment on the attitude towards history and the future. The place where historical change took place is deteriorating so that a new building can tell the story of the same event next door.
