“THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN WARSAW” The scope of the International Design Competition for the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, aims for the regeneration of a broader central urban space. The urban strategy proposed by the authors of the masterplan foresees programmatic diversity for the Palace of Culture and Science’s surroundings, promoting this area to become the new cultural hub of the city of Warsaw. The new Museum of Modern Art of Warsaw –MMAW - will be one of the several buildings envisioned for the area, as museum structure, as well as the development of an outdoor area intended for a public cultural park. From the given brief we will focus on two main issues: The Museum while cultural venue that stands out with its complex identity amongst the other programs, in particular along side the existing tower, and a complementary strategy for the exterior adjacent areas, claimed as programmatic extension to the museum art exhibition area. The contemporary museum should be a mixture of distinct realities, diverse cultures, and simultaneously a neutral setting as well as hold a unique and magnetic identity: Mutant Nature.
CONCEPT Our design proposal results from the fusion of two themes always present in the history of Art expression: nature’s figurative and abstract representation. We have overlapped the image of a shrub of the adjacent park, as well as other local species of the vegetation, with a dynamic and complex mosaic of abstract character. The result is a unique flexible mesh that simultaneously merges with the surroundings, due to its dense mass covered by vegetation, but also stands out from the strong character of the environs by its irregular geometric pattern. We chose to present a strategy that relates the new museum with the green park ensuring continuity and balance that interacts simultane¬ously with the tower without being competitive for territory, wrapping it in vegetation. This intention results from the intense cultural and social relationship between the city and the surrounding vast green spaces, in a constant dialogue between the natural and the artificial, as a balanced relationship between both parts. The Museum body becomes a kind of ‘new nature’, contaminated by the adjacent park, but also an artificial boundary that inprints itself with a new silhouette.
MUTATION We are not interested in a contemporary museum with a permanent and perennial image. Its conception must reflect its temporal mutant condition, evoking the rotation of the exhibitions’ content and collections. The yearly seasons must be perceived in its image, generating a “changeable result”, and reproducing characteristics of art itself: distinct colours and the perpetual duality between abstraction and realism.
