Like an iceberg, Gdansk’s Museum of World War II by Kwadrat conceals more below. Poland’s largest historical museum is buried in a vast subterranean volume
Daniel Libeskind headed the jury that considered 127 architectural entries for a new museum at the edge of Gdansk’s Old Town, selecting a dramatic design by Studio Architektoniczne Kwadrat from nearby Gdynia.
The big idea of Kwadrat founder Jacek Droszcz was to represent the past underground, the present at ground level, and the future as a tower. The monumental tower has four trapezoid façades, three clad in red concrete and one fully glazed. The façades are inclined by up to 45 degrees, and two glass triangles form the roof. This geometry distorts perspective across the public plaza around it. Within its airy glazed side, levels 5 and 4 were designed for a café and a restaurant.
A second long, low office building broadens out to a loading bay. Its roof is angled and windows bays cut into its inclined side. Between the tower and offices, a full-length trench cuts down along one side of the underground museum floors, one side with gabion boxing filled with Gdansk’s wartime rubble. A bridge links the volumes, and a path descends into the trench. A tower façade rises nine storeys from it. Stairs from the wide public plaza lead down to the museum entrance at level -1. Heavy concrete staircases float down like ribbons into the deeper levels, as does daylight from the glazed tower façade. A vast bunker extends out under the plaza. Level -3 is the deepest and largest. It hosts a 115-capacity cinema, an elliptical-plan 303-capacity conference room, and temporary exhibition space. Interior design by Gdynia-based Loft is dark and austere, using concrete, black steel and oak, with copper-coloured elements such as lampshades and vitrine showcases.
However, the 5,000 sqm permanent exhibition space is darker still. A children’s section shows a Polish domestic space changing through World War II. The epic, emotional main exhibition with scenography by Brussels-based Tempora covers the rise of nationalism, the war itself and the Holocaust. 20 rooms lie either side of 140m-long axial corridor axis, the bottom of a great linear cut from a ground-level skylight. Sunbeams can fall across one sheer concrete side. The museum is nothing less than a masterpiece. Its trapezoid geometry and slicing of space echoes deconstructivism, and the massive subterranean concrete echoes brutalism. The drama and depth is profound, a metaphor for the crushing experience of war.
Museum of World War II
Studio Architektoniczne Kwadrat
Design team leader
Polish Ministry of Culture
Height and depth
40.5m to -14m