Either a nightmare or a masterpiece. Opinions about the new MSN headquarters are dominated by extremes. The reality, however, is more complicated and ambiguous. And where there is uncertainty, there is the most emotion. It is worth explaining them to ourselves.
I've been, I've experienced, I know more, but I still don't know much about the new building of the Museum of Modern Art. Two things, however, I can say for sure. First, an authoritative assessment will be possible in a decade or so. Second, this I already know, the new MSN edifice is based on the logic of a shopping mall: it is waspish on the outside and friendly on the inside - ambiguous, yet correct (there is no question of a masterpiece here). I wrote about why waspish in my September column. Let me remind you: regardless of good proportions and decent workmanship, concrete cuboid buildings with compact smooth walls (with a small number of windows) will almost always be perceived as oppressive and judged as a "soulless box." Especially if they stand where, as is sometimes the case in the urban fabric, we expect differentiation, rhythm, a good interior-exterior relationship. MSN stands in a battered area of Warsaw that even cries out for these urban qualities, but - nothing of the sort. And anticipating the polemic: no, I wouldn't want the Museum to pretend to be a series of different tenements or office buildings. I'm not dreaming of a fussy icon and a "wow" effect. I'm only talking about a friendly impression transposed to a museum object, which is given by a diverse urban development or a striking building.
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
Because, according to what both experience and the latest brain research tells us, smooth concrete walls give rise to different feelings: aversion, desire to escape, boredom. Culturally, they fall into such friendly categories as prison, fortress, warehouse, silo, supermarket. Yes, it happens that we appreciate the good proportions and masses of such buildings, especially from afar and among the greenery, but we stay right next to them without pleasure. This also happens with other fortified museums (just walk a kilometer to the National). It will probably be so also with the MSN, which objectively has decent proportions and scale, interesting facade divisions, but subjectively can nevertheless repel, which I can understand, because - so far - I feel the same. I understand, but I'm unlikely to love it.
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
In addition, like much of modern art, MSN requires a bit too much explanation to understand where this or that is coming from, despite objections. One has to explicate, for example, that with its austere smooth form Thomas Phifer deliberately opposed the totalitarian cake of the Palace of Culture. In theory, everything is fine. He countered in concert, only that in a similarly arrogant manner. He also created an Edifice with a capital G, very serious, literal, almost temple-like, despite the asymmetry and free composition of the facade. If someone associates contemporary art with puffery, MSN's exterior will confirm this partly unfair judgment. Yes, I know: the MSN was not meant to appeal universally from the very beginning. But let's think whether it was worth accepting this ostentatious whim of the architect, if at the same time we hear MSN's openness to the viewer, dialogue, mental ferment and transparency pronounced by all cases. When we look at the dead verticality of the hollow chimney of the "cinema tower," the dissonance is downright acute.
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
Ostentation also smacks of a situation in which the MSN, which is dry on the outside, does not in any way let us know that on the inside it is much more interesting and consistent with the declared character of the Museum. For whatever incantations the designer and investor might use, the arcade encircling the entire building, nearly six meters deep and providing a glimpse of the public first floor space, does not encourage people to enter. This view is full from the west and north through the all-glass walls, and partial from the south and Marszalkowska Street, with which MSN will probably have the most difficult relationship.
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
At the opening of the MSN, Phifer claimed that this intermediate space would encourage interaction and encounters. It is difficult to share this optimism. First, the arcade is single-spaced, but it is divided by massive perpendicular pillars into a kind of semi-open interiors that presumably require constant monitoring (what kind of urban life would take hold in them?). Secondly, although tall, it was shielded from the outside half by the overhang of a massive facade. The overhang seen from the street is therefore less than 3 meters high. One might even get the impression that the massive wall will slide down to the sidewalk, cutting off access to the building. Only in small areas of the entrances does the wall "guillotine" rise, showing the full height of the first floor.
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
The repulsive impression only disappears once you step inside. There's a surprising amount of daylight coming in through the glass walls of the first floor, the panoramic windows on the floors and the rooflights of the top floor. The ubiquitous whiteness enhances the effect, as does the well-designed artificial lighting, which is in tune with the daylight. As intended by the architect, MSN is a bright neutral frame for art. Large windows on the floors on the west side frame interesting views of the neighborhood; smaller windows on the street side frame the East Wall (with its signs and advertisements). Insights into city life are also provided by the glass walls of the first floor. In general, the MSN acts a bit like a pair of binoculars: the city seen from inside it seems closer and friendlier than when viewed from the arcades or close by. One wants to be here. There is an imbalance in this: the museum benefits from the city, "drawing" it visually inward, with its bulk it offers Warsaw less.
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
The inside is also surprisingly diverse, not least thanks to an all-terrain staircase with two symmetrical flights of stairs. The first floor, which is meant to serve as a public forum, has been fragmented into intermingling enclaves, the most interesting of which are three: a friendly, wood-lined meeting and discussion area, a space for smaller exhibitions on the Marszalkowska side, and a café - on the north side. The floors, too, are divided into exhibition halls of various sizes, which somehow moves us toward the inflexible, traditional museum with its permanently separated spaces. The administrative part, on the other hand, looks the least interesting - with its windowless rooms and office open space.
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
Other aspects of MSN's operations, such as acoustics, ergonomics, functionality and logistical solutions, will also be evaluated in the coming months. It is already clear that the café lacks a freight elevator connecting the bar to the kitchen, and the museum's store equipment is of little use. Sometimes one gets the impression that the museum's representatives treated the designer like a demigod and did not dare to ask him for necessary or obvious corrections. It is also possible that they did not articulate their needs well enough before starting work on the project.
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
Anyway, we still have to wait for the February opening of the permanent exhibition. For now, we are talking about a museum without an exhibition, which is, after all, the essence of the place. Finally, we need to be patient while waiting for the slow transformation of the context: traffic calming on Marszałkowska Street and cutting it with zebras, the construction of TR Warszawa, which has been postponed until the end of the decade, and further, still barely outlined investments on the former Defilad Square. Also important will be next year's opening of Central Square, whose greenery will warm the museum's white iceberg. Just as the group of gleditsias already planted on the west side and the row of trees along Marszalkowska Street do. The luscious greenery is a great chance to tame the museum's "concrete" and hopefully calm the emotions associated with it.
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
For the feelings and opinions are far too extreme for an ambiguous and correct building. They probably result from great confusion. The human brain has it that it would like to categorize the image it sees into some familiar category, evaluate it, have peace of mind and move on to other tasks. In the spatial jumble around Parade Square, however, the mind goes crazy. Even if it sees "nice" buildings, nothing here belongs together, and if something enters into a spatial dialogue with something, it's more of a scuffle. And into the midst of this squabble enters the simple building of the Museum - all in white, elegant but waspish. With no talent for uniting the feuding parties. It sends the message: "You wanted me, here I am. But I won't mollify."
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
Meanwhile, from the critical comments about the MSN one can sublimate the disappointed hope precisely for spousalism. For a friendly facility that will begin to tame a difficult space. For something that will not so much fit into the context as begin to transform it on new terms. And here's the meatloaf. MSN fits into the chilly context of the modernist part of the urban galimathe - with the Eastern Wall at the forefront. It also subordinates itself to the highway, modernist in spirit Marszalkowska - as an acoustic and visual screen. Hidden behind it, a wooded plot with gledits is, after all, the functional equivalent of the Wiecha Passage in its original form.
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw - 24.10.2024, designed by Thomas Phifer
Photo: Jakub Głaz,Photo: Jakub Głaz
In essence, the MSN looks and operates according to the design we saw almost a decade ago. However, with the difference that it was a bit more subtle. "The box" was to be covered with an openwork of white mesh. The concrete came later. Anyway, it was already clear that we would get a classically, even academically modernist building. Protecting itself from the common desire for an "icon from a starchitect," it was enrolled in the safe club of 20th century architecture. It is therefore, like many specimens of modernism, minimalist, separate and doctrinaire, and therefore certainly not "modern" or "innovative," if we take modernity and response to modern challenges as determinants ofmodern challenges, we take flexibility, the use of low-carbon technologies, the sewing of renewable energy sources into the building and greenery, for example, in the form of green walls or roofs. At MSN, in keeping with its name, modern will therefore be primarily art. As long as it, too, does not already slip into rigid academicism.
Jakub Głaz
more: A&B 12/2024 - THIRD SITES,
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