On July 31, 2004, the Warsaw Uprising Museum officially opened its exhibition to visitors – to this day, it is one of the most frequently and eagerly visited museum exhibitions in Poland – since its inception, it has attracted 10 million people of all ages. The co-creation of the project and the implementation of the exhibition was the responsibility of the authorial studio Nizio Design International, led by Mirosław Nizio.
The celebrations of the round 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising are ongoing, and in the building on Grzybowska Street in Warsaw its multi-threaded history is still being consciously told. The main conceptual assumptions of the exhibition, combining historical narrative with multimedia elements, paved the way for narrative architecture in the environment twenty years ago, and the Museum was one of the first interactive ones of its kind in Poland. And although today technology is advancing at an impressive pace, the exhibition still fulfills its universal function – it is to stop visitors and be as understandable as possible, both in the intellectual and sensual dimension, using images, sounds, texts and light.
Fragments of the permanent exhibition of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Photo: Nizio Design International press materialsFragments of the permanent exhibition of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Photo: Nizio Design International press materialsFragments of the permanent exhibition of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Photo: Nizio Design International press materials
The power of constructive simplicity
The tour path leads through individual thematic rooms, including the Little Insurgent Room, the Canal, Germany, and reflects the reality of 1944. However, it does not recreate a world that no longer exists, but shows it suggestively using various means, including individual exhibits that convey their brutal reality in specially designed austere display cases. The exhibition consists of about a thousand collected documents, maps, photos, letters, personal items, and weapons. The way the space is organized is simple, but at the same time allows for deep understanding of the subject, also in a broader, geopolitical perspective. Individual stages of the Warsaw Uprising arranged and shown
are in chronological order and from the perspective of the people who fought in it.
Fragments of the permanent exhibition of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Photo: Nizio Design International press materialsFragments of the permanent exhibition of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Photo: Nizio Design International press materialsFragments of the permanent exhibition of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Photo: Nizio Design International press materials
Realism tangible through contact with matter
The authors of the concept emphasized the drama of the events by using various finishing materials, including iron, steel, brick, wood, and granite pavement. The materials are mostly recycled, both from Poland and abroad, and literally remember the times they tell about in the Museum. Due to the small budget for the creation of the exhibition at that time, the studio visited many storage sites for materials from ruins and old houses to bring out the real narrative tissue and later personally assembled its fragments, including the aforementioned steel display cases. The exhibition is also connected by a steel monument running through all three floors, which together occupy over 3 thousand square meters.
Fragments of the permanent exhibition of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Photo: Nizio Design International press materialsFragments of the permanent exhibition of the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Photo: Nizio Design International press materials
A stop that delivers on its message
Architect and co-author of the concept, Mirosław Nizio, emphasises that in his opinion the exhibition has stood the test of time because it was not only the result of the imagination of those working on it, but its overriding goal was to consistently maintain a comprehensible narrative formula:
„I am proud and moved that in the 20 years since the opening of the exhibition, so many people with various personal, historical and cultural backgrounds have visited it. This shows that the direction of quality that we wanted to set as a team is timeless and has been in line with the needs of visitors. Despite the changes taking place in museums in Poland and Europe, it still retains its freshness. Working on the permanent exhibition at the Warsaw Uprising Museum has also laid the foundations for my philosophy of narrative architecture. Being in one of the quiet, darkened exhibition rooms on the eve of the anniversary, I had the feeling as if this place had only opened yesterday – it has retained the lively energy that I value so much in every project.”.
