Guided tour of Zofia and Oskar Hansen’s home

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw invites you to Saturday guided tours of the Zofia and Oskar Hansen House in Szumin—a unique landmark in 20th-century Polish architecture. This small summer house, built on a plot of land along the Bug River, combines the qualities of a family retreat with those of a spatial experiment.

Saturdays from May 9 to September 12, 2026 is the only opportunity this season to visit the House of Zofia and Oskar Hansen in Szumin. The tours are led by staff from the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. During the visit, you will learn about the history of the house, its unique design solutions, and the personal dimension of this architecture.

The guided tour of the house lasts about 45–60 minutes, after which there will be time for additional questions and to relax in the house and garden. For the youngest participants, a small corner with paper, crayons, and activities to complete under adult supervision will be available on the house’s terrace throughout the event.

Zofia and Oskar Hansen — a couple of architects associated with the Warsaw Housing Cooperative and the creators of the Open Form concept — designed this house as a space for living, working, and teaching. They spent their vacations here and hosted guests and students. The house in Szumin was their plot of land, garden, studio, and eventually a year-round home, but also—in all its modest scale—a manifesto of their architectural ideas. Together, they created, among other things, housing estates in Warsaw (Rakowiec, Przyczółek Grochowski) and in Lublin (LSM Słowackiego Estate). Oskar Hansen also designed exhibitions and exhibition pavilions in Izmir (1955) and São Paulo (1959). The Hansens’ work combined design practice with teaching and theoretical activities.

According to the Open Form concept, architecture should not impose a rigid structure but create a framework open to change, interaction, and the individual needs of users. The house in Szumin was intended to fulfill these principles, responding to life, evolving alongside it, and being open to people and the relationships between them.

Since 2014, the house in Szumin has been a branch of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. The interior has retained its original furnishings, spatial layout, and numerous teaching aids, which help visitors understand how architecture can shape everyday life. The unique atmosphere of this place is shaped by traces of the activities and passions of its former residents—teaching aids for learning the basics of composition placed around the house, and a wooden dovecote, which, as Zofia Hansen joked, was her husband’s finest work.