The Museum of Modern Art
Warsaw, Poland

464,280 SF • WITH AEDAS

Davis Brody Bond collaborated with Aedas’ offices in the UK and Poland on this competition design for Poland’s first contemporary art museum. Sited at the base of the Soviet-era Palace of Culture in the center of Warsaw, the museum provides major exhibition facilities, maximum interaction between the museum and the city, and space for experimental media.

The museum itself is a natural centerpiece for a cultural district, where passersby have multiple encounters with culture and commerce. The design envisions the distribution of a museum program across an entire precinct, creating a cultural district in the heart of the city, with the Museum and adjacent Palace of Culture as the magnet. The site is bordered by a park and a dense commercial/retail development.

The museum itself is comprised of seven large exhibition halls, all separately accessible from a central lobby. They are vertically and horizontally connected in order to create a continuous museum space, providing maximum flexibility for curators. A series of voids punched into the museum connects the new plaza in front of the Palace of Culture with the park to the north. These connectors maximize interchange between inside and outside, city and museum. The museum’s “urban lobby”, located in the prominent northeastern corner of the plaza, is an extension of the City Hall that serves as an information center and public events space. Landscape elements include a linear fountain, a reflecting pool that becomes a skating rink in winter, and a grove of oak trees. The plaza will become a new center of civic life for Warsaw.