Nine Rooms
Sited in the Polin Museum Park in Warsaw, Nine Rooms is a commemoration that honours the Poles who rescued Jews during the German occupation. The commemoration embodies the act of making space and offering it to someone by featuring nine open-air rooms that appear to have been hollowed out from a single block of solid concrete. Each interconnected void has a scale that loosely brings to mind a room in a pre-war home – perhaps in an apartment, house or cabin belonging to one of the rescuers. Openings between rooms and to the surroundings are formed as the voids intersect each other and the perimeter of the block. These openings direct views to the park and its monuments, as well as to the daily life in the street. The softly shaped walls gently embrace visitors and provide opportunities for conversation as well as contemplation. Overall, Nine Rooms combine the familiarity of a domestic environment with an unsettling spatial experience that pays homage to the moral character of the rescuers.
