Museum of the Great Famine by Nizio Design International

The National Museum “Memorial to Holodomor Victims”, the largest museum project in Ukraine (14,000 square metre), is under construction in Kiev. The architectural design of the Museum building has been prepared by Polish architectural studio Nizio Design International lead by Mirosław Nizio, in cooperation with the Ukrainian studio Project Systems LTD.

The starting point for the design of the Memorial building, by Nizio Design International, is the concept of blending it into the tectonics and landscape of the Dnieper valley slope, near Pechersk Lavra, a place of unique importance in the history of Ukraine.

Works on construction of the Museum will take several years. The date of the completion of Museum of the Great Famine has yet to be announced. Total usable area of the Museum is almost 14,000 m², while the exhibition area will occupy over 3,500 m².

‘The design of the permanent exhibition and the proposed architectural solutions are supported by over 15 years of experience in working on the most important history- and culture-related facilities in Poland. My office has worked on such world-renowned projects as the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II in Markowa or the Mausoleum of Martyrdom of Polish Villages currently under construction in Michniów.’

Mirosław Nizio

The Museum building is located on the axis leading from the viewpoint to the existing candle-shaped monument commemorating the victims of the Holodomor – the man-made famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933.

The architectural form of the building is an image of the idea of bringing to light the deliberately hidden truth about the Holodomor (Great Famine). The hidden history is to be remembered not only by the tectonic layers covering the building and the architectural intervention consisting in hiding the body of the building under the ground, but also by changing the colour of vegetation which will grow on the roof covered with soil. The monumental entrance to the building, located from the side of the candle-shaped monument, is a gate leading to the interior of the Memorial.

Nizio Design International y Project Systems LTD también incorporaron una "Zona de silencio" dentro del Museo de la Gran Hambruna cerca de la salida, que tendrá una iluminación suave y plantas para ofrecer un lugar tranquilo para el descanso y la reflexión.

Nizio Design International is fully responsible for the design of the permanent exhibition of the Memorial.

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Model. Museum of the Great Famine by Nizio Design International. Photograph by Dima Taranenko, Philip Dotsenko / Nizio Design International

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Mirosław Nizio

Mirosław Nizio is an architect, a sculptor and an active patron of the arts. He is an expert with many years of experience in designing public spaces: architecture, museums, historical expositions, exhibitions, memorials, and complex concepts for the revitalisation of post-industrial areas and urban spaces.

He studied at the Faculty of Interior Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, majoring in Interior Design. In 1989, he founded his design firm in the United States, where he received several awards and honourable mentions, including Glenn Boyles Memorial Rendering and Design (1993) and the Educational Foundation for the Design Industries in Interior Design (1998).

In 2002 Mirosław Nizio moved his studio to a historic building in the Praga-Północ district of Warsaw. It is here that the Nizio Design International studio was established, as well as the Nizio Gallery and the Nizio Foundation, whose task is to support artists and emerging creators, present socially engaged art and organise meetings, screenings and other cultural activities, also for children and seniors.

Today, Mirosław Nizio is one of the best-known architects of public spaces in Poland. In 2006, for his work on the core exhibition of the Warsaw Rising Museum, Mirosław Nizio received the Golden Cross of Merit, and for his contribution to the creation of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, he was awarded the Bronze Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis (2015).

The team of his studio, which is based in Warsaw in the post-industrial space of Inżynierska 3, is made up of first-class specialists. The studio has designed the architecture and core exhibition of the Mausoleum of the Martyrdom of Polish Villages in Michniów and The Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II in Markowa, as well as the revitalisation of the complex of the former “Julia” coal mine in Wałbrzych, where the “Old Mine” Science and Art Centre was established. Currently, Mirosław Nizio is working i.a. on the design of the architecture and permanent exhibition of the Blessed Father Jerzy Popiełuszko Museum in Okopy and the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide in Kyiv.

Published on: January 18, 2019

Cite: "Museum of the Great Famine by Nizio Design International" METALOCUS. Accessed

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