The Museum is open 12:00 – 20:00
Cinema is open 11:30 – 20:45
The Museum is open 12:00 – 20:00
Cinema is open 11:30 – 20:45
Szumin
This wooden house on the Bug River is a spatial manifesto of Open Form, the conceptual axis of Oskar Hansen’s work as an architect, artist and teacher. Since 2014 the house has been under the care of MSN Warsaw, and it became a branch of the museum in 2017.
Zofia and Oskar Hansen House
The theory of Open Form, presented by Hansen for the first time at the CIAM conference in Otterlo, The Netherlands, in 1959, called for opening up architecture to joint creation by its users, placing architecture in the role of an “absorptive background” for the events of everyday life. Focused on participation, process, and altering the hierarchy between artist and viewer, it became the key concept for Hansen’s architectural activity and a touchstone for the artistic work of his students at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.
The house, built from 1968 onward, fully expressed this ideal, and was one of only a few works by the Hansens executed in accordance with their wishes, without the restrictions imposed by the socialist construction industry. The spatiotemporal architecture, seamlessly combining interior and exterior, contained within itself the kernel of change, easily adapting to the users’ evolving needs. Built as a framework for living, it comes to life with the presence of people. Traces of the inhabitants’ activity and passions contribute to the house’s special atmosphere—instruments for teaching the foundations of composition distributed around the house; a vine-covered steel structure from the 1977 Venice Biennale; and a wooden dovecote which, Zofia Hansen joked, was her husband’s most perfect work.
The house has been part of the Iconic Houses Network since 2014. It is accessible for tours, and hosts workshops for families and for art students. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw has owned the Hansens’ house in Szumin since the end of 2017.