Description

Apart from Cologne’s Wallraf-Richartz-Museum by Rudolf Schwarz, this building that is devoted to modern art – primarily the sculptural work of the Duisburg artist Wihelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919) – is one of the first important German museum buildings of the postwar era. Manfred Lehmbruck, the artist’s son, designed two entirely different building segments linked to each other by a common entrance hall and a raised sculpture courtyard. For the general collection, there is a glazed rectangular volume suspended from five steel girders (first building phase) that leaves all possibilities of light incidence open, containing a large hall that can be subdivided at will and a smaller picture gallery suspended within it.

In contrast to this open hall reminiscent of Mies van der Rohe, Manfred Lehmbruck designed for the presentation of his father’s work a volume of concrete, experienced as more sculptural than otherwise (second building phase) which does not need to be flexible and is undoubtedly one of the most impressive achievements of more recent museum architecture. Around a rectangular sunken inner courtyard that functions as a central source of light is positioned a calm, almost square space whose external boundaries are formed by great, in part lightly curving, wall slabs of exposed concrete; inside it is articulated by slender, rectangular slices stood on end, piercing the ceiling. As these concrete walls neither touch each other nor are attached to the ceiling, the latter – pierced by very varied openings for light – appears to be floating in spite of its apparent weight. The incidence of light focused by the openings lends the sculptures three-dimensionality. By means of terraces and galleries, the architecture takes up the dialog with the sculptural works and, moreover, enables viewers to see above and below the sculptures, which is essential.

More than twenty years later, a third building phase doubled the spatial volume of the museum, both for the exhibition and the secondary areas. Based on the square and its rotation, the ground plan structure of the wing – which is roofed over by a glass pyramid and clearly set apart from the rest of the building – does not achieve the latter’s strong concentration.

Deutsche Bauzeitung 11/1964, S. 881-894 (Manfred Lehmbruck/Hans Klinkhammer) • Architektur und Wohnform 72/1964, S. 347-356 (Manfred Lehmbruck) • Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum Duisburg, Duisburg, 1964

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