Description

The modular pavilions of the Modern Gallery were created between 1964 and 1976 according to a design by Hanns Schönecker (1928-2005). “The Modern Gallery in Saarbrücken does not aspire to be a work of art in itself that risks upstaging its contents, but to serve it as a functional enclosure.” The sculpture garden which looks over the banks of the Saar “encompasses the river, the trees of the park and the wider landscape” (Bauwelt, 1969). Schönecker drew inspiration for his design from the Folkwang Museum in Essen, built ten years earlier. His design also recalls the Brücke-Museum in Berlin designed by Werner Düttmann who declared of his building in the Brandenburg landscape of the Grunewald that “nothing should obstruct the viewer’s appreciation of the works of art and yet the building should incorporate the landscape.”

The starting point for the extension was the fragment of a new building that was begun in 2007 but aborted before completion in 2011 after differences between the architects, twoo Architekten from Cologne, and the client proved irreconcilable. The fragment stood provocatively directly in front of the existing museum. Following a new invited competition, the architects Kuehn Malvezzi and the artist Michael Riedel were awarded the contract. A new plan was devised, this time with public consultation and under the express condition that the original costs were not to be exceeded. The extension we see today is both a homage to the original building and a rewriting of the fragment begun by the previous architects.

The new plan also encompassed the design of the forecourt and external areas. Those trying to make sense of the new extension need only take a stroll across the courtyard as the architecture tells its story with each new step. The concrete panels – 3300 m² on the floor and 700 m² on the façade – are inscribed with a carpet of words. The words that constitute its warp and weft are fragments of a debate held in April 2015 at the state parliament in which experts discussed the design with Kuehn Malvezzi and Michael Riedel. The result is a textual weave of verbal fragments. The visual spectacle, which at first was met with scepticism by the public, explains the idea of the conversion project: Michael Riedel has turned the ground plan of the existing house, and its grid of 4 × 4 metres, and duplicated it with the square concrete slabs at the same scale. Where the new building stands in the way, the words continue up the sides of the rough render façades. The razor-sharp black lettering was made weatherproof, heat-resistant and non-slip in a complex process.

In the external areas, an orderly counterpart for Michael Riedel’s weave of words was found after the neighbouring Music Academy simplified its entrance situation through the addition of an access ramp and footpath to the river, making it possible once more to reach the museum by its original entrance.

This is Kuehn Malvezzi’s organisational master stroke: you now enter the house at its original centre of gravity, from which the exhibition rooms and the entrance to the sculpture garden branch off in three directions: straight ahead lies the former temporary exhibition wing, to the right the three pavilions of the old building, and to the left the fourth, new building rising upwards. The existing foyer was freed of its mediocre insertions and sensitively supplemented with a ticket counter and ancillary spaces.

The path through the new building no longer leaves out any room. The glass-covered 14-metre-high cathedral that was previously intended to be the entrance is now used for exhibitions. The materiality of the grey poured asphalt floor and the open white ceiling with exposed installations accompanies one throughout the building right up to the upper floors. For the new museum director, this was important: he wanted to avoid the typical museum-like aura, providing instead an environment in which the artists can freely experiment and that can accommodate all conceivable genres without having to dismantle the ceiling. That meant in turn that all technical services – the trusses, conduits, rails, ventilation ducts and electrical installations – had to be installed with meticulous care.

The eight rectangular rooms on four levels reach heights of just under eight metres. Full-height windows provide recurring views over the surrounding landscape so that the location remains a constituent component of the art.

Originally published in Bauwelt 23.2017, pp. 22-27, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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