The design proposal for the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (MMAW) by Camilio Rebelo results from the fusion of two themes always present in the history of Art expression: nature’s figurative and abstract representation. The museum demonstrates an amalgam of distinct realities, diverse cultures, and simultaneously a neutral setting as well as hold a unique and magnetic identity: Mutant Nature. More images and architects’ description after the break.
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 environment by its irregular geometric pattern.
We are not interested on the MMAW as a critical presence regarding its contextual and physical surroundings, nor as a challenging “David and Golias” style attitude towards the dominant volume of the Palace of Culture and Science. That confrontation could weaken the new museum, reducing its autonomy and disabling its character and identity. We chose to present a strategy that relates the new museum with the green park ensuring a continuity and balance that interacts simultaneously 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 imprints 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 colors and the perpetual duality between abstraction and realism.
