Teamwork Is a Necessity of Our Times: Artistic and Research Unit (ZAB) Exhibition, Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts

At the Czapski Palace, the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts brings together the scattered output of the Artistic and Research Unit (Zakłady Artystyczno-Badawcze, ZAB) - a team of architects, artists and engineers to whom Warsaw owes, among other things, the Warszawianka sports complex and the interiors of Warszawa Śródmieście station. The exhibition runs 15 October 2026 - 21 March 2027, and from the end of October it is complemented by an installation by Marcin Chomicki in the palace courtyard.

The Academy of Fine Arts Museum on the exhibition:

The exhibition prepared by the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw is the first account of this breadth of the output of the Artistic and Research Unit (ZAB). Drawing on the Museum’s unique collections, it brings out of the shadows the full spectrum of the work of this unit, which served as a laboratory of modern design in Poland.

For years dispersed and largely forgotten, the heritage of ZAB - spanning architecture, urban planning and design, among other fields - will be brought together to tell the story of one of the most significant phenomena in Polish visual culture of the second half of the 20th century.

Several hundred objects will be presented, a large part of which remain unknown to the wider public to this day.

What to expect

The starting point is a script, found in the archive, for an exhibition that never opened: the members of ZAB prepared it in 1974 for the Unit’s twentieth anniversary, with a concept written by Lech Tomaszewski and an exhibition design by Viola Damięcka. The museum takes six design theses from that script, ranging from “spatio-temporal action through form” to “the optimisation of housing structures”. The theses let you look at the projects not only through their function or purpose, but above all through how their authors understood and shaped form.

The exhibition recalls the Unit’s leaders - Jerzy Sołtan, Zbigniew Ihnatowicz, Lech Tomaszewski and Oskar Hansen - but above all dozens of co-authors about whom art history has written little. The list of authors includes Wojciech Fangor, Zofia and Oskar Hansen, Alina Szapocznikow and Krzysztof Wodiczko. Alongside the work of ZAB, the museum shows selected works by the ŁAD Artists’ Cooperative (Spółdzielnia Artystów ŁAD), because the exhibition is part of two anniversaries of the Academy: the centenary of ŁAD and the fiftieth anniversary of the Faculty of Design.

The museum announces several hundred objects, a large part of them unknown to the wider public, and builds the exhibition on its own collections, which hold works and photographic documentation of the Unit. On the exhibition page it shows photographs that convey the scale of the subject well:

• The SKS “Warszawianka” swimming pools - a photograph by Jan Fleischmann from 1972, from the collection of the Academy of Fine Arts Museum.
• The interiors of Warszawa Śródmieście station - a photograph taken in 1964 by Jerzy Sołtan himself.
• The “Wenecja” bar - a photograph by Zbigniew Kapuścik from the 1960s.
• A model of the “Osa M-55” scooter and the “Alfa 2” camera - industrial design from the 1960s; the camera dates from 1963.

The museum does not publish a full list of exhibits, so there is no telling which of these things you will see in the rooms in the original and which only in photographs.

Part of the project is an installation by Marcin Chomicki, a painter and photographer born in 1976, whose series Archiwum Transformacji (Archive of Transformation) documents the destruction of post-war architecture, including ZAB buildings such as the “Wenecja” bar and Warszawianka. In the courtyard of the Czapski Palace he sets archival photographs of buildings from the 1950s and 1960s beside his own contemporary photographs and abstract paintings.

The museum also announces guided tours, workshops, walks and a discussion on the history of ZAB, prepared with the CENTRALA studio, the Masław Association / Tu było, tu stało, the Academy’s Faculty of Design and the UNITRA brand, among others; it has not yet given their dates.

Context

The Artistic and Research Unit was founded in 1954 by the Academy’s rector, Marian Wnuk, at the Faculty of Interior Design. It was meant to be a place where architects and urban planners, painters, sculptors, designers and engineers worked together, drawing in the Academy’s professors, graduates and students.

The Unit’s central figure was the architect Jerzy Sołtan, who after the war spent four years working with Le Corbusier in Paris. He called his way of working at ZAB the integrating method; Wikipedia links it to Le Corbusier’s Modulor, Oskar Hansen’s theory of Open Form and Walter Gropius’s method of teamwork.

According to culture.pl, it was the first prize won by Sołtan’s team in the competition for the Warszawianka sports complex that justified founding the Unit. Its studios also produced the unrealised design for the Polish pavilion at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, with music by Stanisław Skrowaczewski. The Unit also designed the “Wenecja” bar in Wola, opened on 1 May 1961, and the interiors of Warszawa Śródmieście station from 1960-1962, with mosaics by Wojciech Fangor.

From the mid-1960s the Unit lost its importance, and most of its works have not survived: “Wenecja” was rebuilt beyond recognition in 2000-2002, and part of the decoration of Śródmieście station was destroyed or removed during renovations. The exhibition itself raises the question of protecting what is left.

Tickets and time

• Where: the Czapski Palace, Krakowskie Przedmieście 5 - the home of the Academy of Fine Arts Museum, which since 2021 has shown its collection in temporary exhibitions in two rooms of the palace. Chomicki’s installation stands in the courtyard. Directions are on the Academy of Fine Arts Museum profile.
• Ticket: the museum gives no admission terms for this exhibition - its page mentions neither a ticket nor a separate fee. The museum’s prices and opening hours are on the Academy of Fine Arts Museum profile.
• When: the exhibition’s opening days and hours, the opening night and the opening of the courtyard installation are in the Accompanying events section.
• How long: several hundred objects in two rooms plus an installation in the courtyard take at least an hour; longer if you want to read the project descriptions along the six theses.
• Who it’s for: anyone interested in the architecture and design of post-war Poland and in Warsaw modernism. Also anyone who knows Warszawianka or Śródmieście station and wants to know who designed them and how, and design students - this is an exhibition about a team method of working.
• Who can skip it: anyone looking for painting and sculpture in the museum sense. The subject is architecture, urban planning and design, and most of ZAB’s works have not survived, so you will get to know much of their output from designs and photographs.

Accompanying events

• 14 October 2026, 18:00 - opening night of the exhibition at the Czapski Palace, Krakowskie Przedmieście 5.
• 15 October 2026-21 March 2027, Tue-Sun 12:00-19:00 - the exhibition is open to visitors.
• 29 October 2026, 17:30 - opening of Marcin Chomicki’s installation “Zakłady Artystyczno-Badawcze. Archiwum Transformacji” (The Artistic and Research Unit. Archive of Transformation) in the courtyard of the Czapski Palace; the installation is part of the same project and will stay in the courtyard until 21 March 2027.

See also

• Alina Szapocznikow / Nairy Baghramian - at Zachęta from 16 October 2026 to 31 January 2027. Szapocznikow is on the list of authors of ZAB’s output, and Zachęta writes about references to industrial design in the work of both artists.
• Sculpture for the Wall Unit - at Królikarnia until 25 October 2026: porcelain figurines designed in the mid-1950s at the Institute of Industrial Design (Instytut Wzornictwa Przemysłowego), that is, post-war design in the same decade, only for homes rather than for the city.
• Polish Design: Object Biographies / Designer Biographies - on the sister site muzea.org.pl: until 13 December 2026, Bunkier Sztuki in Kraków presents contemporary Polish designers through their personal objects.

Museum profile: Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.