Thursday 15/03 20:00 - donderdag 15/03 om 20h00
Venue/plaats : LAMOT 'Auditorium'

by Prof. Arch. Rainer Mahlamaki, Helsinki (Fi)

In his lecture Rainer Mahlamaki will give a short overview of the history of modern Finnish architecture from the point of view of allegories (and symbolism),  (Aalto, Pietilä).

After a short introduction to Finnish traditional architecture and the meaning of nature in Finnish architecture, Rainer will deal with questions as :

• globalisation in architecture
• is it possible to design for a culture you have no personal links with
•  ....

and develop/explore these ideas around the case of the Jewish culture and the project for the "Museum of the History of the Polish Jews" in Warsaw.

Rainer will colour his discours with pictures of :
- Finnish modernism and tradition
- the Finnish Forest Museum in Punkaharju
- the Folk Art Centre in Kaustinen
- the Exhibition element in Milan triennial 1996
- the Maritime Museum in Kotka (currently under construction)
and of course, the Museum in Warsaw

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews to be built in Warsaw in 2009 will present the forms and phases of Jewish culture from the Middle Ages to the present day. The Holocaust will occupy one of the museum's many galleries. The total exhibition space will be nearly 5000 square metres. The building will also accommodate spaces for teaching, library and temporary exhibitions. The annual visitor number of this versatile culture centre is expexted to mount to over half a million.

The site, a park nowadays named after Willy Brandt, was part of the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War. Next to the place of the coming museum is the Ghetto Uprising Memorial. The site is at about one kilometre's distance from the old city centre that was reconstructed after the war.

The plan of the museum is a square, the length of its side defined by the measurements of the Memorial square. The facades will be clad with panels of glass and copper. The name of the building, YUM SUF (sea of reed) refers to the forms of the main lobby: the free-form space of steel and concrete is an abstraction of Old Testament stories and also of the universal forms of nature.

 
The design of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews is based on the winning entry in an international competition organised in 2005.

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews is being created as a modern multimedia center of education and culture, the formula of which differs from the traditional museum based on the presentation of collections and exhibits. Visitors, regardless of their age, language or their preconceived ideas, will discover the history of the Jewish people and the wealth of its culture, created within the territory of Poland over a period of one thousand years.

This meeting with the past, serving both as a commemoration and contemporary historical education, will fill the gaps in the knowledge many people have about their common heritage. It will restore the lost consciousness of their multicultural history to Poles, the memory of the creative life of their ancestors to Jews, and it will show all visitors the life of Polish Jews as an inseparable part of global and European heritage.