The Maritime Museum in Szczecin

Competition design: March 2011

Authors: Ph.D. Arch. Marek Kozień,Ph.D. Arch. Magdalena Kozień-Woźniak, M.Sc. Arch. Katarzyna Kozień-Kornecka.

Cooperation: Magdalena Habrat- Rączka, Michał Rączka, Ewelina Krok, Jakub Kornecki, Beata Tokarska, Dawid Gizicki

Orderer: The Maritime Museum in Szczecin

Plot area: 0.86 ha
Development area: 4 512 5m2
Building area: 7 182 3 m²
Nautical exposition room: 1 652 m²
Exposition room – The Wave Museum: 1 350 m²

The building of the Maritime Museum is expected to evoke the atmosphere of a shipyard object through the character of the technological exposition as well as the architecture itself. It ought to restore the mood and climate of an industrial object. That is why a structure referring to the encased space of a graving dock with its characteristic opening and creation of a machine with an external system of "gangplanks" and scaffolds was adopted in the expositional zone as the most appropriate in the ideological sense. Hanging the object above the boulevard gives the impression of moving freely across this place.

The accepted urban guidelines fastening the object on two clearly marked compositional axes are of elementary significance for the dislocation of the functional zones. The intersection of these axes demarcates the zone of the external Forum – an important square for the urban composition. It also makes the groundwork for the adopted functional convention. The visitors' encounter with the Museum begins and ends here. The entrances to the object lead from this vast roofed space. It is also the first contact with the exhibits arranged above the water level – the first glance at the exposition zone in the nautical room across the wide opening.