Profession: Architect - Free Tour in English

"Profession: Architect" is a part of the Warsaw Under Construction project, located in the Historical Museum of Warsaw.

One of the activities inherent to architecture is drawing. The reality of contemporary design, created with the help of modern software, has served as an inspiration for the arrangement of the exhibition by the 137 kilo studio. Visitors to the exhibition are always accompanied by a theme taken from the symbolism of technical projects. We are able to penetrate the black and white, computer-generated printout of a drawing thanks to the graphic symbols representing, for instance, glass, steel or stone. They have inspired the setting of the individual exhibition rooms (e.g.: the marking of the floor has been linked to the WSM’s public spirit, and insulation to the issues of professional ethics of architects).

Visitors enter the first floor of the gallery through the Museum Lapidary in Nowomiejska Street. They discover the fact that the Museum is located in eleven tenement houses forming the frontage of the market. During the post-war reconstruction of the Old Town, the slightly redesigned interior created a new spatial quality. A Museum of the City was thus created as a composition sewn from the fragments of its tissue. And although the architect in charge of the reconstruction, Stanisław Żaryn (1913-1964), was more of a conservator and a supporter of arranging the new museum with respect for the past rather than a modernist, the historical cover conceals the postulates of modern architecture heard in those times. The architect was surely far-sighted in his thinking about the reconstructed, but simultaneously, ‘improved’ city.

The Museum presented the history of material culture and spatial changes in Warsaw by its architecture and the surviving objects. Visitors were able to meet the figures of former residents by simply touching the staircase railing, admiring the silver tableware or inhaling the smell emitted by the beams of the apartment ceiling. A visit to the exhibition involved a physical sensation of architecture and the intimate nature of residential interiors. The Museum was a materialised manifesto of the reconstruction, and its 1953 opening coincided with the opening of the Old Town. Several architects worked on the arrangement of the exhibition. The main exhibition of the festival – “Profession: Architect” – dedicated to the architectural profession, takes on an additional meaning in this particular place.

Free, English guided tour around the exhibition PROFESSION: ARCHITECT is held:

-       Tuesday at 12.00 pm

-       Thursday at 6 pm

-       Saturday at 12.00 pm

Place: Historical  Museum of Warsaw: Rynek Starego Miasta 28-42