Art gallery, Opole

The architects' task was twofold. They were commissioned not only to reconfigure the interior spaces, adjusting them to the growing needs of the gallery, but also to thoroughly transform the elevations. With a budget that did not allow for any flamboyance, the building had to remain as simple and efficient as possible; any major structural or functional intervention was simply unthinkable. The six floors, served by a single continuous staircase, received humble black, grey and white finishes and a variety of functions. A library, several types of artistic workshops, a conference space and two small apartments for artists in residence fill the entire structure. The whole was topped with a renovated and bright green-painted platform providing spectacular views over the city and an exceptional space for open-air vernissages.

But of course the mere rearrangement of the interior spaces was not enough to express the artistic character of client. Knowing its profile, the architects wanted to do something really challenging outside, both for the inhabitants of Opole and for themselves. They wanted to somehow use the ArtPunkt's elevations to communicate a message of artistic contemporariness, but also to find a way to transgress their self-imposed limits of rationality, so omnipresent in all their previous productions. Depending on the needs inside, the architects recomposed the windows, differentiated the walls with an evenly distributed pattern of openings and recesses, equipped everything with white LED lighting and covered the whole with huge translucent polycarbonate panels, with a few cut-outs to let direct sunlight into some of the interior spaces.

The effect is amazing and uncanny, as the main body of building continually blurs behind the panels and the light disperses in both directions, inwards and outwards. The view of the building is not comfortable: it takes the eye quite a while to focus and make the image sharp. It is like an architectural version of Woody Allen in his film Deconstructing Harry, when unbearable distress causes his silhouette to blur. Did the architects have anything particular in mind when veiling the modesty of the interiors and mathematical rigour of the elevations? Could ArtPunkt's exterior be saying something about the world or art in the same way that Allen’s blurred shape was saying something about his mental condition? Knowing how straightforward Małgorzata and Antoni Domicz are, it seems unlikely. For them, architecture does not need to speak literally since it is a language with its own specificity and its own rules of use. My guess is that they simply wanted to make a building that differs from typical architecture just as contemporary art differs from the everyday. And if there is any camouflaged message in the ArtPunkt's escape from total rationality and self-discipline, it may have something to do with the influence of their son, who is a promising art student.