Description

The local history museum is housed in a building that is itself an important historical testimony. Thanks to its sheet metal roof and metal shutters, the 18th-century Wackerle House survived the devastating fire of 1865 that burned down the old centre of Partenkirchen. The former burgher and merchant’s house has housed the museum on the culture of Werdenfelser Land since 1973 and its extensive collections fill the house to the roof. To resolve the space constraints, the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen announced an invited architectural competition in 2013, in which seven regional offices took part. The historic ensemble comprises the main building on Ludwigstraße as well as an intermediate building and an outbuilding at the rear, which is also a listed building. The redesign needed to make better use of the provisionally used courtyard to the rear, and to upgrade it architecturally. The primary task was to create new space for special exhibitions, for a depot and for museum education facilities. The intermediate building, with its winding staircase, needed renovation, and the adjacent building could be demolished. The competition was won by Atelier Lüps in Schorndorf am Ammersee, which had already made a name for itself with similar projects.

Mauritz Lüps placed a new two-storey building for the education spaces and depot on the west side of the courtyard and connected it to the intermediate building by an arcade. The resulting newly created courtyard area could then serve as an outdoor space for cultural activities. The architect also proposed expanding the museum’s facilities by adding a hall with a lightweight structure on the base of the intermediate building to create a larger space for special exhibitions. “By rooting the new in the existing, tradition and location are not at odds with the contemporary and with engagement with the world,” says Mauritz Lüps. The architect has coined the term “regionalist cosmopolitanism” to describe his approach and it is exemplified in his extension to the museum. In numerous parts of the building, he has succeeded in translating traditional typologies into modern forms. The new staircase in the intermediate building, for example, recalls the historical staircase in the main building in its shape, in its light from above and in its blue colouring. The sculptural insertion connects the arcade and the exhibition hall, while an additional lift provides barrier-free access to the old building. This typological translation is even more evident on the exterior: all the new elements that enclose the U-shaped paved courtyard render the traditional of the rural barn in a new, harmonious, modern form. The impression is heightened by the simple addition of vertical timber slats and ornamental cut-outs to the timber cladding that encloses the glazed upper storeys.

A defining moment of the museum, that is also visible from the courtyard, is an oriel window that projects out of the wall of the double-height hall. It marks the end point of a bridge that crosses the space and provides a view of the Zugspitze mountain top in the distance. The architect’s interpretation breaks with the widely held tradition of articulating old and new separately. Instead, he approaches the museum as a “palimpsest” that he attempts to give a sense of structural unity: “We have tried to weave a fabric – an ensemble – of the old and new, leaving the old and the new threads visible.”

Originally published in Bauwelt 5.2020, pp. 48-51, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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