Mocak, the new Museum of Contemporary Art of Krakow, built on the site of the former Schindler’s Factory, with a project poised between memory and future, opens a new major chapter in the cultural life of the city.
The industrial mark, evoked by the typical saw-tooth roof of the buildings to preserve, has represented the icon that has inspired the whole project. A10-meter high wing of crude, industrial concrete acts as manifest and junction between the main road and the meandering sequence of itineraries and exhibition pavilions that leads the visitor deep into the area. A new architecture, weightless and gleaming, the dark fibre concrete cladding and the saw-tooth roof in titanium-zinc embrace the existing buildings and the new pavilions and combine them in a unique organism.
The building is diffuse and not monolithic, characterized by the harmonious sum of many requirements, such as the need for strong overall visibility and the aesthetic and functional integration of the existing structures.
In fact, a choice was made for a building that did not surpass the height of the existing buildings, entering instead into a dialogue with those structures through the common denominator of the factory roof reference.
The new building unfolds on two levels, the ground floor (height 390cm) and also, by necessity, a lower level (height between 450 and 600cm). It is completely independent from the existing buildings for reasons of safety and static load.
The disposition of the spaces is already clear from outside the complex, highlighted by the anthracite grey wall in resin-cement which gestures from the entrance plaza, drawing the visitor into the museum itself through the glass facade to the south.