One of the largest and most modern museum complexes in Europe has been built at the Warsaw Citadel. Composed of three blocks - the headquarters of the Polish History Museum and two buildings of the Polish Army Museum, together with a central square and a vast urban park, as well as the Museum of the 10th Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel and the Katyn Museum located on the grounds, it creates a place of culture, remembrance and recreation, redefining the modern museum space.
Rockfon Mono Acoustic Ceiling
© Pion Studio
Work on the architectural design of the Museum of Polish History at the Warsaw Citadel began in 2016. The project was commissioned from Warsaw-based studio WXCA – pracownia architektoniczna, which won an international competition in 2009 for the new headquarters of the Museum of the Polish Army, also located on the site of the 19th-century fortress. WXCA reached for the architectural language developed by the studio - sensitive to the social and natural context, with a simple and restrained aesthetic expression and strong materiality of the massing. Referring to the 18th-century spatial composition of the site, they designed a layout consisting of three blocks with the centrally located Museum of Polish History and two lower edifices of the Museum of the Polish Army enclosing the inner Gwardia Square from the north and south. A recreational urban park of about 30 hectares is also an integral part of the whole establishment. Thus, following the example of other European metropolises, the concept of a museum complex in Warsaw - the Citadel of Museums - was established.
Monolithic body
The architectural expression of the Polish History Museum building itself is determined by the physical and plastic qualities of the materials used and the craftsman's methods of working with them. WXCA architects designed it as a metaphor of history preserved in a monolithic mass that resembles a precisely cut stone block. The facade of the building was lined with marble slabs of varying patterns, which were arranged in horizontal stripes. Thus emphasizing the layered, stratigraphic structure of geological matter, the designers made a symbolic reference to history as natural, social and cultural processes occurring in succession.
Rockfon Mono Acoustic Ceiling
© Pion Studio
The symbolic complement is provided by architectural details in the form of ornaments, which are "quotes" from the architectural tradition. They can be interpreted as artifacts from different periods in an archaeological section. However, they are not literal quotations, but spatial graphics subjected to geometric transformations, being a reference to such patterns as, among others, the relief from the Gniezno Doors, the crystal vault known from the Gothic (among others.St. Mary's Basilica, Gdansk, among others), the decorations of Krakow's Sigismund Chapel, or the motif inspired by the Polish Pavilion in the Art déco style at the 1925 exhibition in Paris.
Modern museum center
The monumental building, which is undoubtedly the Museum of Polish History, covers an area of almost 45,000 square meters. In addition to the exhibition area and rooms for the storage and conservation of museum objects, it will include numerous spaces with cultural functions: a concert hall for 600 people, a cinema and theater hall, a library, conference and educational rooms, food and beverage outlets, and a terrace with a panoramic view of Warsaw. Its interior plan is designed so that moving between the various functional blocks resembles the experience of floating inside a stone block, entering the depths of history and discovering its multidimensionality.
Main hall - Rockfon Mono Acoustic ceiling
© Pion Studio
- The idea of the idea for the interiors is coupled with the architectural concept of the entire building, especially its facade. The museum, being a stone monolith, tells the story of history as a process. This allegorical story is continued by the interiors. We designed the interior plan so that one can meander freely between the various functional blocks, as if in a hollowed-out monolithic block. For us, this meandering, penetrating monolith is an allegory of a journey through history. You can be in this building many times, each time discovering it anew, " explains architect Krzysztof Budzisz of WXCA.
The acoustics of the open space
The first floor of the museum has taken an open form - without a straight, linear path for experiencing the interior. Thus, it allows users to flow freely in different directions. In many places, one can enter this building as well as leave it, each time rediscovering the meanders of history. Here we move between monolithic stone blocks, which are clad in the same material as the building's facades, namely marble. In this way, the architects once again emphasized the continuity of the historical processes taking place. Due to the utilitarian nature of the building, this required not only an interesting concept for the creation of the space, but also the use of materials and technologies that would ensure comfort for more than 500,000 visitors a year. It was essential to ensure proper acoustics, which, especially in such high interiors (about 8 meters, and in the central hall about 20 meters), has a major impact on the functionality of the space.
Interpreters' booth - Rockfon Mono Acoustic ceiling
© Pion Studio
Acoustically, the interiors are quite difficult, for the reason that we have reflective materials on the walls and floors, namely stone. In order to provide acoustic comfort to users, it was necessary to soften this effect by using damping materials. On the other hand, since we are moving within the aesthetics of large-scale planes in this interior, we also needed a large-scale element. Mono Acoustic panels, which allow ceilings to be finished to a single, smooth surface, turned out to be such a material that could convene with stone walls and floors and concrete, explains architect Krzysztof Budzisz of WXCA. - It was a synergy of aesthetic and acoustic properties that worked great in the case of our building. Acoustically the ceiling works, and visually we are still in the convention of a rather ascetic design, which is based on large-scale planes finished in the same materials. We don't introduce any foreign, in an architectural sense, gestures here, " he adds.
Piano nobile
Similar solutions have also been used on the upper floors of the building, where there is a 7,000-square-meter exhibition space and rooms with public and technical functions. After all, modern museums are not just an exhibition. It's actually a whole program of different, interacting, though sometimes also independent functions. At the Polish History Museum, the space for permanent exhibition and temporary exhibitions, despite its impressive size, accounts for less than one-fifth. However, it determined the arrangement concept of the entire space.
The banquet hall - Rockfon Mono Acoustic ceiling
© Pion Studio
Just as the lower floor allows users to meander, and the first floor is symbolically open, the upper floors, our "piano nobile", where the exhibition is located, by virtue of its needs is more introverted - focused on its interior with the exhibition. The only spaces that break out of this convention are the places we called "pockets" of the exhibition. This is where the restaurant, cafe and educational rooms were created, among others, " explains architect Krzysztof Budzisz of WXCA.
Given that the exhibition is 7,000 sqm, and that historical artifacts do not like natural light, it seemed very inhumane to us to deprive future visitors of contact with the outside environment for such a long time. So we designed a series of rooms, the aforementioned pockets of the exhibition, which have huge openings to the outside, to the park that surrounds this entire building, in order to give users contact with the outside world, the architect adds.
To maintain acoustic comfort in the building in the exhibition areas and in some of the rooms, including the banquet hall, restaurant, auditorium, acousticians' rooms and interpreters' rooms, also used Rockfon Mono Acoustic monolithic ceiling in gray and black. As a result, it not only blended perfectly with the stone wall cladding, but more importantly met the varying acoustic parameters for the different rooms.
Architect Krzysztof Budzisz, WXCA
© Pion Studio
Design of the Museum of Polish History - WXCA:
Szczepan Wroński, Paweł Grodzicki, Krzysztof Budzisz, Marta Sękulska-Wrońska, Katarzyna Billik, Rafał Boguszewski, Kamil Cedzyński, Anna Dobek, Małgorzata Gilarska, Beata Głaz, Marcin Jurusik, Michał Kasprzyk, Ludwik Kaizerbrecht, Marcin Kruk, Paulina Kucharska, MichałLipiec, Anna Majewska, Krzysztof Marciszewski, Adam Mierzwa, Mariusz Niemiec, Magdalena Nowak, Magdalena Julianna Nowak, BarbaraPłonczyńska, Zuzanna Rosińska, Michał Staniszewski, Łukasz Szczepanowicz, Kajetan Szostok, Krystian Tomczyk, Paweł Wolanin, Michał Żurek
Acoustic product: Rockfon Mono Acoustic
Certified Mono Contractor: Transtolbud-Piekutowski Sp. z o.o.
