Polish Military Museum / WXCA + Buro Happold
Textual content description supplied by the architects. The mission connects the historical past of the town, and the nation as an entire, with the modern city context. The museum web site occupies 32 hectares of the Warsaw Citadel, a hilltop fortress constructed within the 1830s by the military of the Russian Empire. The Citadel was utilized by the Polish army and has been a restricted space, till now. Buro Happold labored intently with WXCA to reinvigorate the positioning, which overlooks the Vistula River and is separated from the town by an embankment. The Polish Military Museum constructing, along with the Museum of the tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel and the Katyń Museum, stands alongside the soon-to-be-built Museum of Polish Historical past, collectively forming considered one of Europe’s largest museum complexes. The Polish Military Museum mission is a part of Buro Happold’s intensive, ongoing engagement with the altering city panorama of Warsaw.
WXCA’s design for the Polish Military Museum contains two buildings, with the finished South Constructing to be joined later by a second constructing on the northern facet of Gwardii Pieszej Koronnej Sq., in addition to the refurbishment of plenty of traditionally listed buildings. The South Constructing consists of eight blocks united by a shared inexperienced roof that echoes the pure atmosphere of the encompassing park.
The overall space of the constructing is greater than 12,000 sq. meters and supplies exhibition area devoted to the show of the museum’s everlasting assortment of Polish arms and in addition provides versatile area for short-term exhibitions and occasions. The museum constructing is constructed from cast-in-place concrete, as much as 7.5 meters in top. The façade is outlined by a bespoke formwork sample of chevrons that refers to army ornament, reflecting the positioning’s historical past over two centuries and its persevering with shut relationship with the army. This sample is repeated on the partitions of the galleries and different inside areas.
The easy orthogonal quantity of the South Constructing masks a fancy technical infrastructure. The technical necessities are built-in into the design, a relationship that required shut collaboration between Buro Happold and WXCA. MEP capabilities are solid in the principle partitions, and the concrete ceiling and the roof present a thermal mass that stabilizes indoor temperature. A low-energy system of year-round heating and cooling is created through a floor exchanger, comprising 91 vertical boreholes drilled to a depth of 150 meters, which work together with warmth pumps.
Buro Happold designed a brand new entrance tunnel, permitting for entry from the Vistula riverside and thru the embankment on the Citadel’s base. A post-tensioning structural system minimises the quantity of concrete required for the tunnel. A brand new entrance and just lately designed footbridge additional assist in circulation, intensifying the connections inside the Citadel and creating new hyperlinks between the Citadel and the town.
