Diving Bell

John Paul II Avenue divides two boroughs ?" Wola and Warsaw City Centre. On each of its side, on Solidarnosci Avenue 82 and 82a, there are two identical buildings within mirror architectural guidelines. The buildings are part of Muranow (a borough in Warsaw), formerly designed by Bogdan Lachert as a city-monument. Found building material was used to build a new borough to commemorate the destruction and revival.

The neighborhood came into being on the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto. The severity of Lachert’s concept was to be overcome by the variety of the architecture. One of the proposals was a project of two residential towers on the intersection of John Paul II Avenue and Solidarnosci Avenue. Instead of those, two shorter and semicircular buildings with monumental staircases were built.

Lachert’s project was criticized. Muranow was supposed to be a merry neighborhood. The buildings were plastered and decorated with classical forms.

Inspired by the architecture of the staircases in the two buildings on Solidarnosci Avenue, Jerzy Goliszewski decided to extract the forgotten and barely noticeable Compass rose. The motif was initially a figure on a map or nautical chart used to display the orientation of the cardinal directions, ?" north, south, east, and west.

Currently, the Rose of the Winds, an ancient version of the compass, serves mainly decorative purposes. The artist wanting to question this function invites us to a journey into the unknown. Read Less