Description

A collection of art and design from post-war times to the present, and in addition, an institute for modern art and the Designforum Nürnberg were to be accommodated in a new building right next to the mediaeval city wall. On the narrow side where the main access is located, Volker Staab integrated a historicist residence building into an extension that takes up the material and arrangement of its surroundings without excessive deference. Behind these two buildings facing the street (for the library and the museum administration) the rest of the building volume is shifted to the western edge of the site, so that on the other side a new square is created between the city wall, the residences of well-to-do citizens, and the expansive museum façade. Placed in front of a backyard and separate from the rest of the museum, a strictly organized, angled wing for the Designforum and the museum café allows a narrow alley to come into being. Visitors are virtually sucked through it, along the curving concave glass wall terminating above in the sharp, protruding edge of a flat roof. At the point where the narrow passageway widens out to the square, three revolving doors lead into the museum.

In the interior, each building element corresponds to a different function which, according to the architect, becomes clear as by a “surgical incision”: an inserted concrete cube surrounds the auditorium in the basement, the foyer on the lower ground floor, and on the higher upper floor, a room lit from above, without columns, for temporary exhibitions. To the north, this cube opens via a conical footbridge into an atrium adjoining the library and administration buildings and thus becomes the exterior space in the interior of the museum. South of the cube, the foyer broadens out into a light and airy hall in which an elegantly formed spiral stairway accesses both exhibition levels that open like balconies into the glass wall. Rooms of varying sizes arranged in three parallel room sequences are interconnected with each other in a matrix – not only by means of passageways positioned in enfilade in the corners, but also via two diagonal passageways and view axes. On the upper floor, these rooms – whose white walls ascend from the grey sandstone floor without baseboards – are naturally lit from above through a filigree ceiling grid, while below, spotlights illuminate the design objects.

wettbewerbe aktuell 1/1992, pp. 49-60 and 1/2000, pp. 91-96 • Ansichten zur Architektur – Neues Museum in Nürnberg, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2000 • Architektur Jahrbuch 2000, Frankfurt am Main, 2000, pp. 128-133 (Karin Leydecker) • Bauwelt 2/2000, pp. 18-23 (Nils Ballhausen) • Detail 1/2000, p. 35 and 2/2000, pp. 230-233 • Frank Maier-Solgk, Die neuen Museen, Cologne, 2002, pp. 188-194 • Oliver Herwig, Sechs neue Museen in Bayern, Tübingen/Berlin, 2002, p. 28-57

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Originally published in: Paul von Naredi-Rainer, Museum Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.