This year marks a decade since the opening of the uniquely meaningful Katyn Museum in the space of Warsaw’s Citadel. The building documents one of the greatest tragedies in Polish history, but also appeals to visitors with its sophisticated architecture of silence and reflection. Ten years on, the museum remains relevant and moving, and its design is still regarded as one of the most outstanding achievements of contemporary memorial architecture.
“It was a very moving and powerful experience to come to Poland and find this place, which on the one hand is part of the city and on the other hand is a space of total seclusion,” – recalled Prof Aaron Betsky, world-renowned architecture critic.
Remembrance of the crime
The Katyn Massacre was the mass execution of nearly 22,000 Polish citizens, mainly Polish Army officers, officers of the uniformed services, scientists, doctors and clergy, carried out in the spring of 1940 by the Soviet NKVD on orders from the highest authorities of the USSR. The murder sites were scattered in Katyn, Mednoye, Kharkiv and Bykivnia, among others. For decades, the truth about this crime was falsified and concealed, and responsibility was blamed on the Germans. It was only in the 1990s that the Soviet Union officially admitted its guilt. The Katyn Museum has become one of the key places in Poland where the memory of these events has a material and symbolic dimension.
Architecture that does not age
The museum headquarters was designed by BBGK Architects in collaboration with Krzysztof Lang, who was the author of the exhibition, and Jerzy Kalina, the creator of the artistic elements. From the very beginning, the building attracted acclaim not only in Poland. Already in 2015, it reached the final of the prestigious Mies van der Rohe Award and won a number of national accolades, including the title of SARP’s Best Building of the Year, the Architectural Award of the Mayor of Warsaw and “Życie w Architekturze”. It is not, however, a project won by showy design. On the contrary, its strength is its economy of form and respectful approach to historical space. The architects deliberately eschewed dominant structures and emotional gestures in favour of reflective restraint.
“The design of the Katyn Museum in Warsaw shows how much architecture can be created from an existing space. […] Instead of designing a new structure, the architects at BBGK Architects in the winning competition concept proposed working with what is there,” – professor Betsky wrote in Architect Magazine.
Katyn Museum – a place of remembrance, not of display
The museum was built in the historic southern part of the Citadel. The 19th-century fortifications became a natural setting for the narrative of the Katyn Massacre. The authors of the project created a linear spatial arrangement – a path leading through successive stages of contemplation, in which each stop evokes the tragic experiences of an individual and a nation. The very beginning of the route, a square planted with a hundred trees to evoke the image of the Katyn forests, has acquired a symbolic dimension. The museum exhibition inside the caponry presents both the historical background and the individual fate of the victims. Further on, a concrete tunnel by Jerzy Kalina and the Avenue of the Absent recall the 22,000 murdered. It culminates in an oak cross, which is reached by a monumental cut in the Citadel’s brick wall – a visual and emotional culmination of the entire establishment.
Simplicity that speaks
Instead of dramatic formal gestures, the designers opted for ascetic materials such as concrete, brick and plaster. The architecture does not illustrate the crime, but creates the conditions for thinking about it.
“The project still stands up for itself. The selection of appropriate design and material solutions, but also an individual approach to the monument, meant that despite the passage of a decade, the architecture of the museum has not grown old,” assesses Michał Krasucki, Capital Conservator of Monuments.
In retrospect, authors Jan Belina-Brzozowski and Konrad Grabowiecki of BBGK emphasise that the museum was an attempt to create a place that not only tells history, but also empathises with it.
“With the Katyn Museum, the Warsaw Citadel has become a place of remembrance of the Katyn Massacre. The conception of the museum as a place of reflection, silence and remembrance, without the epicness of dramatic forms, has made it a timeless architecture.”
Katyn Museum: anniversary and remembrance
This year the Katyn Museum will not only celebrate its 10th anniversary. It will also soon host central ceremonies to mark the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Katyn Massacre and the 85th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre. This is a symbolic closing of the circle. The place that was created for remembrance is today becoming its most profound testimony.
Source: Katyn Museum in Warsaw
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