The concept of the Katyn Museum surrounded by caponiers in the Warsaw Citadel
The City of Warsaw
The major idea for shaping the museum space was to create a landscape operating with symbolic forms and compositions, thus communicating with a spectator in an indirect and equivocal way. The landscape is an attempt to evoke a specific mood, which is quintessential for a unique character of the Katyn Museum.
The entrance square is the most important element of the symbolic landscape. Surrounding scarps, and most of all white stones with holes spread across the square, build a relation with mass graves.
Lowering the road by a meter to the level of the square strengthens the impression that the stones are put in layers.
The form of the road leading towards the Katyn Musuem resembles a crack. The composition is an allegory of fate of Polish nation. Winding and broken path allows to experience the stone landscape for a longer time. The museum building is the closure of the composition. It is where the truth about the crime will be revealed.
