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The histor y of the city of Katowice is closely tied with the themes of heavy industry and mining. They have left behind distinctive artificial landscapes, industrial complexes, and buildings and are anchored in the collective consciousness as an unmistakable cultural heritage endowing a sense of identity. The museum is located on the premises of the former “Warszawa mine,” directly adjacent to the city center. The design uses interventions that are nearly imperceptible from the outside and is based on the idea of creating an expansive museum with diverse offerings. Borrowing from, and as homage to the former function of the terrain, the spatial program was placed entirely below ground. Only the abstract glass cubes, which provide daylight for the exhibition levels below—one of them houses administration, development, and climate control—are visible from the outside and meld harmoniously in the ensemble of existing historical structures. The newly created network of paths, squares, and green areas gives rise to a gracefully built public recreational area. Through the addition of a lift, visitors can access the existing hoist frame and obtain a view over all of Katowice.
Riegler Riewe
“Our architecture is not an architecture of "built images" but creates structures which are open and precise at the same time: frameworks for the complex flow of images of utilization". Since its foundation in 1987 the office Riegler Riewe Architects‘ approach has always been focused rather on the process than on the product - led by the belief that well-conceived and usable architectural concepts that are limited to the essential facilitate an economic and unobtrusive realization. Riegler Riewe are particularly interested in the confrontations and interrelations of a sociocultural approach to architectural and urban planning issues. For Riegler Riewe, in this experimental field, architectural-conceptual strategies definitely have priority over formal considerations. In their effort to incorporate sophisticated architectural design with innovative technical concepts, Riegler Riewe understand the process of designing a building as an interdisciplinary task bringing together leading specialists in their respective fields for reaching a high degree of sustainability as well as cost efficiency. As a consequence Riegler Riewe’s projects do not only recieve national and international attention for their design but moreover prove to be highly effective and efficient in every aspect of everyday use.
