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HISTORY
SHELTER
The cylindrical, free-standing air-raid shelter housing Wrocław Contemporary Museum was built in 1942 according to the design of Richard Konwiarz, a well-known architect from Wrocław.
The shelter at Strzegomski Square – built in 1942 according to the design of Richard Konwiarz – was laid out on a circular plan with a diameter of approximately 31 m. The approximately 25 m high building has six stories and no basement. It is a reinforced concrete frame structure with a foundation approximately 2.2 m thick, walls approximately 1.1 m thick, ceilings ranging from 30 cm to 1.5 m, and a flat roof 2.5 m. On the eastern side (on the building's façade) is a shallow, six-story avant-corps with a smooth paneled area and rusticated sides, preceded on the ground floor by a portico (which originally housed two steel entrance gates). According to the original design, the panel was to be filled with symbols of the Third Reich – an eagle and a swastika. Currently, it is decorated with a mural, "Klepsydra" (Hourglass), painted in 2009, with text by Stanisław Dróżdż. To the west (at the rear of the building), there is a more massive five-story projection with a side entrance. The roof has a low, circular superstructure with a cornice. The shelter has no windows – instead, ventilation openings are regularly spaced on the facade. The floors are accentuated with cornices.
The architecture of the shelter refers to classicist realizations, and one can also notice references to the Roman Pantheon, or rather its version in the spirit of Germanic tectonics stripped of elegance and all ornamentation.
WROCŁAW CONTEMPORARY MUSEUM
Wrocław Contemporary Museum has been located in a former air-raid shelter since 2011 – today it is one of the most important opinion-forming institutions presenting and popularizing contemporary art in Poland.
Festung Breslau i czasy powojenne
During World War II, Wrocław was almost 75% destroyed. In 1945, during the Festung Breslau, the war front passed through the Szczepin and Popowice districts, coming to a halt between Strzegomski Square and John Paul II Square. Several days of fighting took place over the shelter at Strzegomski Square, which was intended to defend the entrance to the city center. As a result of the fighting, the entire buildings in Strzegomski Square and the surrounding streets were reduced to rubble, and the air raid shelter was one of the few surviving buildings in the area.
During the time of the Wrocław Fortress, today's MWW headquarters served as a field hospital. The infirmary could accommodate up to a thousand wounded, filling six floors, stairs, hallways, and corridors. After all the victims and injured were evacuated, the bunker became the "last bastion," guarded until the very end by the 80 Nazis inside.
After 1989, the shelter and the adjacent ground-floor building housed wholesalers and supermarkets. Later, a pub and a second-hand clothing store also operated here, and Roma people set up camp nearby, and young people met in the evenings. Until 2010, the building was perceived by Wrocław residents as a special building with a rich, albeit tragic, history. Everything changed when revitalization and conversion work began as a cultural institution.
The shelter today – adaptation and new function
Two teams of architects from CH+ Architekci and VROA Architekci were responsible for adapting the former air-raid shelter to serve as a museum. From a conservation perspective, the adaptation was a critical renovation: reinforced concrete with its characteristic vertical formwork was exposed, and the curving space was maximized. During the adaptation, the elevator shaft was relocated, and a rooftop café was created, occupying an added glass, cylindrical space (and accessed by stairs). Some wall openings were not bricked up, but only secured with large-mesh mesh to maintain functional separation. In many places, traces of drills, saws, rebar, and the brick structure of the new partition walls are intentionally visible.
The concrete floors were not covered with a finishing layer, but the industrial character of the surface-mounted installations was emphasized, and the fluorescent beams and galvanized steel, which dominate the details, emphasize the industrial character of the building.
Level 1 features an interesting, colorful, cubic installation called Beautiful Tube, designed by Swiss designer duo Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann (L/B). It's a space for relaxation, as well as a venue for lectures, debates, and educational workshops. Currently, the spaces from the ground floor to level 5 are occupied by permanent and temporary exhibitions, while the rooftop terrace houses an observation deck.
To honor the informal patron of MWW, an outstanding concrete poet and creator of verbal and visual compositions called "concept-shapes" – Stanisław Dróżdż, who was associated with Wrocław for many years, a mural depicting one of his works – Klepsydra – was created on the facade of the shelter.
To this day, the concrete walls, monumental structure, austere interiors and ambiguous exhibition space, far from the standard "white cube", are one of the most original examples of revitalization and adaptation of a building into a museum in the entire country.