TOYA DESIGN has designed the Ceramics Museum in Bolesławiec.
We are honored to participate in the greatest qualitative change in the history of the Museum: the transfer of the collection to the former Pückler Palace.
The Ceramics Museum in Bolesławiec is an institution with over a hundred years of tradition. It was established as a municipal museum, presenting the customs of the city and the region - amongst these, of course, their main cultural wealth: ceramics. It is already for over 50 years that the institution has been operating as the Ceramics Museum. It has so far occupied two locations.
Bolesławiec is the City of Ceramics and the idea of expanding the exhibition and moving the collection to a new, larger and more representative space fits perfectly with the city's image. The facility has over 2.000 m2 of usable space and its scale provides much greater opportunities to present the impressive collections of the Museum, allows for its continuous development and furthering its mission.
TOYA's designers understand this mission not only as taking care of the works of regional heritage, displaying monuments of material culture for related educational, scientific and publishing goals, but above all as making the general public aware of what ceramics is, how it is made, what is its function and what it means to all of us.
The Building
The project not only revitalizes the historic building, restoring its former splendor, but also introduces functional solutions that transform the palace into a modern exhibition facility. A new staircase connects the ground floor and the first floor, which are both housing the main exhibition, with the attic, which is the Museum's working space.The attic itself was transformed into one large open room. The new staircase has its axis in the elevator. The facility has now conference and workshop rooms and a new souvenir shop.
Exhibition
The historical content (context, explanations) is enriched with exhibits, graphics, multimedia and is clearly separated from the main ceramics exhibition. Compositions from artifacts (e.g. ceramics' shells) are placed behind a glass covered with a gradient with transparent cut out windows, often also containing quotes from history.
The main Ceramics exhibitsare placed in large display cases, where the division of thematic sections is made with the help of smaller shelves. Just as for the historical content artifacts, also here the frames are highlighted with transparent traces cut in the gradient-covered glass.
Motifs / visual icons: A different visual symbol has been repetitively used in every exhibition room. Each of these icons is a scaled graphic motif resulting from the analysis of the ornaments on the dishes, their color, recurring patterns. The symbols were applied on elements such as framing, a frieze under the ceiling, a margin complementing the composition, etc.
The use of the color on the ceilingwas meant to create a dominant background, with a strong reference to the content.
All the typography is in the form of a scaled letterbox, in which the initial, the title and the text have equal compositional weight.
The gradient on the glass emphasizes the character of the exhibition, highlighting the detail and at the same time hiding the infrastructure of hardware fittings, locks and lighting. It is a carrier of visual information and builds the foreground of the exhibition's narrative.
The surrounding
The palace has an open-shaped courtyard and a garden with a lapidarium - ideal places for meetings and events. There is also a newly designed large parking area.
The new sign of the Museum
The main element of the sign is a signet: the graphic motif borrowed from the stamping method most characteristic of Bolesławiec ceramics. The dynamic and consciously "peripheral" location of the traditionally hand crafted "stamp" in the cobalt circle is meant to signify that the Museum goes beyond the presentation of regional values in favor of the continuous expansion of research areas in an ever wider context and carrying out the Museum's mission within the European cultural heritage.
This graphic symbol directs the viewer's attention from local to global values. Such is the idea of a new image of the Museum: an expression of change and continuous development of an institution that ambitiously creates a new cultural quality derived from the regional tradition, finding in it universal values applied to the European scale.
TOYA DESIGN is the author of the project of the palace's reconstruction, interior design and the exhibition itself. The studio was founded in 1994 by Tomasz Wojtkowiak and has since been involved in projects such as the reconstruction of the Great Hall of CK Zamek in Poznań, the design of the Archaeological Museum in Ostrów Tumski, the renovation of the iconic Muza Cinema in Poznań and the interior design of the IBB Hotel Długi Targ in Gdańsk.
