Villa

The Contemporary Music Space Hashtag Lab is located in a villa at Barska 29, in the Old Ochota district of Warsaw. You can find us on the lower level of a single-family house, with a separate entrance, a concert hall, a garden, and a patio.

This mys­te­ri­ous build­ing at 29 Bars­ka Street was designed and con­struct­ed in 1949 by its own­er, Antoni Moniuszko – a lawyer, math­e­mati­cian, philoso­pher, artist, and man­u­fac­tur­er who passed away in 2001. He was a descen­dant of the com­pos­er Stanisław Moniuszko. His wife, Ire­na, the daugh­ter of Hele­na Mniszków­na, the author of The Lep­er, was a singer.

The build­ing is a labyrinth with strange stoves and a slant­ed wall made of glass blocks. It is filled with irreg­u­lar spaces and secret spots. What is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant – the place hous­es a con­cert hall and a for­mer pri­vate art gallery. For years, the own­er host­ed a cul­tur­al salon here. In the base­ment of the house, sci­en­tif­ic sem­i­nars were held, and recep­tions for for­eign guests were orga­nized. This is where War­saw’s intel­lec­tu­als and artists, includ­ing Prof. Jerzy Pelc and Władysław Hasior, gath­ered. Friends of Mrs. Ire­na, includ­ing promi­nent 20th-cen­tu­ry com­posers such as Krzysztof Pen­derec­ki and Witold Lutosławs­ki, held rehearsals for upcom­ing con­certs and performances.

The house was also the cen­ter of fam­i­ly life. In the lat­er years of his life, Antoni Moniuszko ded­i­cat­ed him­self to sci­en­tif­ic work. He would spend hours sit­ting in front of a large, strange stove of his own design, devel­op­ing the con­cept of the anthro­pogenic core. Years lat­er, his­to­ry came full cir­cle: in 2006, the WILLA Warsza­wa project was car­ried out in these walls, orga­nized by the Raster Gallery. As part of the project, there were, among oth­er things, days of dance and music art, as well as exhi­bi­tions from gal­leries across Europe and America.

The activ­i­ties of the Sfera Har­monii Foun­da­tion and the oper­a­tion of the Con­tem­po­rary Music Space Hash­tag Lab at Bars­ka 29 rep­re­sent a return to the cul­tur­al bril­liance of this place, a revi­tal­iza­tion of the for­got­ten stu­dio and art space.