Art Walk

Art Walk is a permanent open-air art gallery located on the newly developed European Square, the first open-to-the-public city square of its scale developed by a private investor in the center of Warsaw since World War II. Part of the Warsaw Spire complex, one of Europe’s largest office developments in recent years developed by the Belgian real estate firm Ghelamco, Art Walk is located in a unique setting: a car-free zone devoted to art and culture with greenery, including ornamental trees and shrubs (14,000 plants in total, including 160 trees); various water installations, including a lake, cascade stream and many types of fountains; restaurants and cafes; and just steps from the high tech Warsaw Spire “A” tower, currently the tallest and most modern office building in Poland. In addition to Art Walk’s outstanding design and functionality, the location and surroundings of Art Walk are phenomenal.

Ghelamco commissioned Massive Design, led by chief architect and designer Mac Stopa, to design a special art exhibition venue on European Square that would become a design landmark in Warsaw, helping to attract the estimated 20,000 people anticipated to visit the newly developed site daily, and stimulating and contributing to the creativity and performance of the employees working in the office complex as well as for the benefit of visitors and the local community.

More specifically, the brief was to create a permanent art gallery where select young artists and creative minds can display throughout the year their paintings, sculptures, fashion or other work in the form of exhibitions that are open to the public.

Mac Stopa took up the challenge and designed Art Walk, a modular open-air art gallery designed in the shape of an approximately sixty meter (200 ft.) long wall composed of twenty exhibition modules. Students from Warsaw’s Academy of Art were selected to display their creations for the gallery’s opening exhibition.

In addition to Art Walk’s organic modern aesthetic, what makes this year-round, four seasons-equipped, 24/7 art gallery standout design is the following:

• Each module has identical, organic-shaped, asymmetrical 3D geometry, which is inscribed on a square-shaped base. By turning adjacent modules around on their axis, Mac created a flow of random geometry throughout the entire length of the sixty meter modular wall – by designing only one module.

• Each module is approximately 3 meters by 3 meters (10 ft. by 10 ft.) with a large frameless organic-shaped window, which amplifies the feeling of random organic design thanks to the different positioning of the modules in the Art Walk elevation.

• Each module is made from organic-shaped white fiberglass shells reinforced with steel framing erected on concrete foundations and flooring; metal sandwich panels were used for back walls and roofing;

• Art objects are exhibited inside Art Walk behind safety glass equipped windows in a temperature controlled space.

• Art objects are illuminated from the inside with ceiling and floor-installed adjustable LED halogens.

• The secured exhibition space inside Art Walk is accessible via an indoor technical corridor used during the changing of the exhibitions.

Art Walk won the Interior Design Best of Year 2016 Award in Outdoor Space category and the entire Warsaw Spire complex won mipim AWARD in Best Office and Business Development.

Click here to watch the Art Walk video

Click here to watch the video of the Warsaw Spire Grand Opening