Chocolate Factory E.Wedel

Project Country: Poland 

Architect: BIM Architekci sp. z o.o.

Brickwork Contractor: Sahaty sp. z o.o.

The E. Wedel Chocolate Factory Museum is not only a production building, but also a place where the brand's over 170-year history meets the present, old technology meets modern production processes, and childhood memories follow the taste of chocolate. This is a place where every chocolate lover finds what they love most about it.
The inspiration was a box of chocolates. Simple, noble, devoid of excessive detail and ornamentation, and at the same time intriguing, arousing curiosity, hiding a secret. A box that only after uncovering the lid releases the richness of the interior, a mixture of flavors and scents.

The E. Wedel Chocolate Factory is an interactive center telling the story of chocolate. The typical museum exhibits and sterile spaces have been abandoned. The intention is for children and adults to touch, feel, and test. Guests can actively participate in the tour and experience it with all their senses. The exhibition uses modern scientific research, creating a place that stimulates the imagination and educates in a modern way.
One of the key elements is the educational value of the exhibition, which teaches through play, engages generations in a cognitive experience. The E. Wedel Chocolate Factory is a source of knowledge and experience.
The oldest chocolate factory of its kind in Poland has been delighting Warsaw with Wedel's refined delicacies and drinking chocolate since 1851.

The E. Wedel Chocolate Factory building, using the same architectural language in both its shape and the materials used, fits into the character of the development of the part of Warsaw in which it is located.
The building attracts attention from a distance with its unusual appearance, resembling the shape of giant chocolate cubes reminding of the importance of sweet products for the region. The building was built in a revitalized silo building, which was formerly used to store cocoa beans. Referring to the local art of construction, gray brick was used on the elevation - the basic and original material from which the buildings on the premises of the Wedel Factory were made in the years 1927 - 1931. Materials and gray bricks arranged in decorative motifs refer to the old decorations of the main building of the factory and to the architectural tradition of Warsaw's Kamionek.

The elevation was divided into fields in which brick, as the leading building material in Praga, was arranged in different ways. The variety of bricklaying methods is a tribute to the disappearing craft and the construction equivalent of the variety of the brand's products. The subtle tectonics of brick placement, visible only up close, is a way to achieve subtle detail in the relatively massive body of the building.

During the construction of the building, a part of the existing structure was used, which, together with fragments of recovered grain silos, is now an integral part of the exhibition space and has become an exhibit on the tour path.
By preserving parts of the old structure, the construction carbon footprint was reduced during the construction process.