Obory, a village belonging to the municipality of Konstancin-Jeziorna in the Mazovia province, will be home to a new museum built by the Starak Family Foundation. Pritzker Prize winner Renzo Piano is responsible for the design of the project, which includes the revitalization of a 17th century palace and manor complex and the construction of a new museum facility.
Objects built in Poland according to the designs of Pritzker Prize winners can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Just in the last century, the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, designed by Arata Isozaki, was built in Krakow, while already in the 21st century, two Norman Foster projects were erected in Warsaw - the Metropolitan office building and the Varso Tower skyscraper. In 2022, during the refugee crisis associated with the outbreak of war in Ukraine, pavilions erected according to Shigeru Ban's design were being built in Chelm. Krakow would also have nearly missed the construction of the Academy of Music buildings, designed by Frank Gehry, whose concept won the 2017 competition. Now this group will be joined by architect Renzo Piano, who will design the Staraks Museum in Obory, in the municipality of Konstancin-Jeziorna.
Renzo Piano
Photo: Cirone-Musi © CC BY-SA 2.0 | Wikimedia Commons
Renzo Piano will design a museum in Obory
On October 17, 2024, during one of the Sessions of the Konstancin-Jeziorna Municipality Council , specialists of the Starak Family Foundation presented plans to revitalize the Obory Manor, owned by the foundation since 2020. World-renowned architect Renzo Piano will be responsible for the project. As representatives of the Starak Family Foundation reported at a subsequent meeting held on October 30, the choice of Renzo Piano as the lead designer of the new museum in Obory is no coincidence - the 1998 Pritzker Prize winner has designed buildings of similar scale and setting, including a building for the Menil Collection in Houston and the Beyeler Foundation Museum in Riehen. The architect agreed to work with the foundation after already visiting the site where the new museum is to stand.
Interiors of the Manor House in Obory
Photo: Jadamta © CC BY SA 4.0 | Wikimedia Commons
The Manor House in Obory is a late Baroque residence built in 1681-1688, probably according to a design by Tylman of Gameren, a Dutch architect responsible in Poland for such buildings as Krasinski Palace in Warsaw, Branicki Palace in Bialystok and St. Anne's Church in Cracow. In Obory, the palace was commissioned by Jan of Wielopole coat of arms Starykoń, the governor of Cracow. In the centuries that followed, the park and palace complex, which included the manor house, outbuildings, brewery, stables and granary, passed into the hands of the Potulicki family, who managed it until the end of World War II. During the communist period, the House of Creative Work of the Union of Polish Writers Association operated in the Manor House in Obory, and in 2015 the property was returned to its pre-war owners. In 2020, the Manor in Obory passed into the hands of the Starak family, which announced the revitalization of the space.
The park at the Manor House in Obory
Photo: Albert Jankowski © Public domain | Wikimedia Commons
What will be in the revitalized Manor House in Obory?
As conveyed by representatives of the Starak Family Foundation, architects Karina Konieczny and Marcin Grzelewski, the Manor in Obory will serve as a campus accessible to artists, residents and visitors. To this end, it is planned to revitalize the already existing buildings and erect a new museum facility. The new functions will be assumed by the buildings, including the stables, granary, Old Brewery, outbuildings and swanky house.
The new museum building is to be located in the southern part of the complex, on the site where the industrial buildings and granary are currently located. In order to bring the building in line with the scale of the other buildings and to better integrate it with its surroundings, Renzo Piano proposed breaking the museum's body into four smaller parts with one above-ground floor and one underground floor. Inside will be a permanent gallery, a temporary gallery, an auditorium or conservation and workshop studios, among others. The whole will be surrounded by a considerable amount of greenery, and exhibition functions will also be carried out in the building of a nearby granary.
Work is also planned in the spaces between the buildings. The historical park, which is under conservation protection, will undergo only minor modifications, involving the creation of additional entrances accessible to visitors. In front of the museum building, on the other hand, a small square with plenty of greenery is to be created for open-air exhibitions, events and outdoor activities. Meadows will also be developed for recreation, and a linear park with playgrounds and a wooden observation tower will be created. Architects currently working on the revitalization have also planned four small parking lots for visitors. Renzo Piano, in creating the initial plans for the Obory Manor, decided to enlarge the ponds located in the northern part of the establishment.
Menil Collection in Houston - proj.: Renzo Piano
Photo: Argos'Dad © CC BY SA 3.0 | Wikimedia Commons
Starak Family Foundation
The Starak Family Foundation was founded by Anna Wozniak-Starak and Jerzy Starak in 2008. From the very beginning, its goal was to popularize contemporary art, which was accomplished in various ways. The Staraks, a married couple of businessmen, ranked according to "Wprost" as the third richest family in Poland, have built an extensive collection of Polish art created after 1945. It includes works by such artists as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Igor Mitoraj, Tadeusz Kantor, Alina Szapocznikow, Jerzy Nowosielski, Wojciech Fangor and Andrzej Wróblewski. Over the years, the foundation has organized exhibitions abroad and at home, most notably at the Spectra Art Space in Warsaw, created by the Staraks. The Staraks also engage in educational activities by implementing the Spectra Edu project. The most recent activity carried out by the Starak Foundation is the "Craftsmanship" program, whose task is to support male and female artists of artistic crafts, including through the organization of competitions. For their activities, the couple was awarded the medal "Meritorious to Culture Gloria Artis" in 2024, awarded by Hanna Wroblewska, Minister of Culture and National Heritage.
Museum of the Beyeler Foundation in Riehen - proj.: Renzo Piano
Photo: Taxiarchos228 © FAL | Wikimedia Commons
Renzo Piano, architect of the high-tech trend
Renzo Piano is an Italian architect, winner of the 1998 Pritzker Prize, which was awarded to him for his extraordinary ability to combine architecture, engineering and the latest advances in technology. Renzo Piano is a versatile architect, creating both small, intimate buildings and huge urban assumptions, such as the floating Kansai Airport in Osaka. However, he has specialized primarily in museum architecture, and his most recognizable project with this function is the Pompidou Center in Paris, designed with Richard Rogers.
not without obstacles
The complex designed by the Pritzker Prize winner will be built on a site for which the Local Development Plan, dating back to 2009, does not provide for this type of development. The area of the Obory palace complex itself, on the other hand, is under the care of the Mazovian Regional Monument Conservator. In order not to disturb the historical layout of the Obory Manor estate, the Starak Family Foundation and the architects working on the project decided to locate the new development in the southern part of the complex, where the granary is currently located.
Photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra © CC-BY 2.0 | Wikimedia Commons
how to hide a museum?
Renzo Piano has experience with projects in difficult contexts - and these have not always been buildings that interact so strongly with their surroundings, as was the case with the Pompidou Center in Paris. The building that Renzo Piano designed in 1994 for the Beyeler Foundation Museum in Riehen, near Basel, Switzerland, is a case in point. Similar to the manor complex in Obory, the Beyeler Foundation Museum was built in a park near a late Baroque villa. Similarly sunk in the landscape is the exhibition pavilion at Château La Coste in Provence, or the Menil Collection in Houston.
A problem for a new building could be the Local Plan, dating back to 2009 and, hardly surprisingly in the context of the historic site, prohibiting the erection of new buildings in the area. Some of the land is agricultural. Integrated Investment Plans are expected to come to the rescue - a planning tool that makes it possible to override the provisions of the Local Plan by enacting a new plan containing two developments - the main one and a complementary one.
What particularly distinguishes ZPIs from ULIMs is the obligation to guarantee the municipality, in connection with allowing the investor to carry out a certain investment (the main investment), certain benefits, whethereither in the form of an obligation to implement a complementary investment, or in the form of other benefits stipulated in the law and established in the urban planning agreement, or both. In this sense, the MIP procedure more strongly addresses the needs of the municipality, reducing the risk of adopting solutions that will benefit only the investor.
- Pawel Pucher said during an interview with Anna Diduch.
What kind of complementary investment the Starak Family Foundation will propose to the municipality remains a mystery for now. Further meetings on the future of the Manor in Obory are expected to take place early next year.
