The Museum of Roma Culture

The theoretical research of Roma culture and spatial models studies led to creating architectural conception of the Museum of Roma Culture. The Museum is designed as a mobile building and evokes indirectly a Romany camp. A visit in the Museum provides us with a diversity of experiences and simplifies the understanding of Roma culture.

The idea of the project is strongly related to a Roma camp which as an elementary space unit, is a kind of instant village, and can be installed in any place. It is always described by four classical elements: water, air, fire and earth. The meaning of the camp is for Roma people always the same, even though its location changes. \nThe idea of museum was redefined. A museum is a foreign concept for the Roma culture. Presenting it in a traditional way condemns it to decontextualisation. Functional program of a typical museum was simplified to anachronistic form and became a testing ground for a new type of use.\nDesign efforts were focused on giving visitors experience of some elements of Roma culture. The Museum functioning is in a kind of great performance that can be perceived in the different scales. The experience can begin with observing alone of functioning of the Museum, its moving, unfolding and folding, that should provide the association of nomadism.\nIt is mobile building, that stands in Warsaw and moves within the city whenever it is needed. The Museum evokes indirectly a Romany camp form and allows to feel the dimensions of a camp and a caravan. The building consists of modular space units – multimedia boxes which can be combined together in a specific order.\nUnits present issues connected to the Roma culture. Those topics are shown using multimedia in an abstract scheme – figuratively. The next modules of exhibition create a continuous narrative and programmed sequence of events, the order of which is arbitrary, but they reflect the themes related to some aspects of Roma culture including: ethnic bond, magic, dance, Romani language, “Romanipen”, wandering, music and adaptation.\nThe Museum form creates closed, irregular circle, which came from models analysis. It resembles ease in formation of a camp structure. The form adapts to existing conditions like Roma people used to.\nThe last stage of the Museum functioning observation is its vestige. It is a yellowed grass, burned ground after a bonfire. This place has some spirit of architecture which is slowly fading away, but the Museum itself is in different place.