Description
The new seat of one of the most prestigious Polish science institutes came into being on the grounds of the new Warsaw Ochota PAS Campus at Pawińskiego Street 5. At the heart of the project is a night-lit birchen scrub, visible from all the building’s most important rooms. It is precisely in order to exhibit this “birchen grove” that the block of the building was cut at one-third of its length by a glass hall 25 metres in height. Thanks to this operation the building constitutes a compositional frame for one finding oneself within the birchen scrub. In order to enhance the artistic effect, the entire hall construction (together with the facade pillar constructions) is achieved with transparent glass. Inside the hall, at a height of 7 metres above the floor, has been hung a “bagatelle” (from the Italian for bead) - a complex of three conference rooms "threaded onto" three glass transport platforms. On the roof of the bagatelle, in the open space of the hall, a panoramic cafe with a viewpoint overlooking the scrub and the “starry” Kantian heavens has been placed. The stained-glass colour-composition of the front window of the main hall, completing the view of the “birchen grove”, was accomplished in the Cracow S.G. Żeleński Stained-Glass Works, known among other things for the execution of the great Cracovian projects of Stanisław Wyspiański. Its author, Piotr Ostrowski, is one of the best known Polish stained-glass makers.
