Description

Founded in 1988, the ZKM, a research and development centre at the interface between art and media, was originally supposed to be housed in a glass cube designed by Rem Koolhaas. Its electronically equipped façades were to function as supports for multimedia messages and thus would have perfectly exemplified media architecture.

However, for financial reasons, this spectacular pro­ject was shelved in favour of the solution eventually arrived at, to accommodate the ZKM, a museum of contemporary art, the Städtische Galerie, and the Hochschule für Gestaltung (also newly established) in a much larger building, a former munitions factory subsequently put under historical protection. Built during the First World War by Philipp Jakob Mantz, this concrete skeleton construction is 312 metres long and 56 metres wide; it has ten interior courtyards, and each of its long sides is sparsely articulated by six projections crowned by gables.

The Hamburg office Schweger + Partner wanted to retain as much as possible the open character of the three-storey atria spanned by glazed sawtooth roofs. For them, the appeal and the quality of this architecture was to be attributed to its spatial structure – which, due to the galleries running through the whole building on two levels not only allows varied uses but also, moreover, thematizes that transitory moment of movement relating to the contents of the ZKM. The effect and practicability of the existing building was merely intensified and at the same time pragmatically interpreted by (consciously experimentally designed) light catwalks, bridges, and stairways. Unavoidable interventions such as the installation of self-contained rooms were kept to a minimum.

It is only in front of atrium 7, which serves as the entrance foyer and also fulfills an urban planning function as a connection between the eastern and western sides of the building, that the architects placed a high-tech structure referred to as a “media cube” inside which there is a state-of-the-art music studio. With every change in the lighting, the multilayered quality of its glass hull enveloping a blue core generates the subtle shifting of the levels of reality that is a distinguishing feature of the virtual world, which is what this museum attempts to portray.

Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie. Architektur Wettbewerb, Munich, 1990 • Karlsruhes neues Kulturzentrum. Kunstfabrik im Hallenbau A, Karlsruhe, 1997 • Bauwelt 46/ 1997, pp. 2576-2583 (Uwe Hinkfoth) • Werk, Bauen und Wohnen 3/1998, pp. 22-25 (Gerhard Ullmann) • Detail 3/1998, pp. 373-377 • The Architectural Review 1214/1998, pp. 64-68 (Layla Dawson) • Andrea Gleiniger, Architekten Schweger + Partner. Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, Stuttgart/London, 1999 • Frank Maier-Solgk, Die neuen Museen, Cologne, 2002, pp. 139-147

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