The building is set in Pfefferberg, the former site of a brewery of the nineteenth century, that, since the late twentieth century has been used for cultural and leisure activities. The museum designed by the bureau SPEECH, led by the architects Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov, is conceived as part of the Pfefferberg complex and not as an isolated building.
The five-storey building has a massive and forceful appearance but also its outer image is changeable and mobile due to the overlapped volumes rotated upon each other. As an engraving, the facade has been decorated with architectural drawings referring to the content of the museum.
The building was completed in 2013 and since then the studio has been awarded in numerous occasions, including the German Design Award and the nomination for the European Museum of the Year Award this year.
Description of the project by SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov
This five-story building represents a stack of solid cuboid volumes with a glass penthouse on top. Solid jutties loom at different angles from each of the four floors below, spraying the building’s basic geometrics. By means of pictorial concrete moulds showing large scale architectural representations the lightly died exposed concrete alludes to the role and content of the building. On the ground floor and along the height of the staircase the massive concrete body is perforated by small cathedral-glass windows in special shapes that derive from the drawing fragments.
Access is located on the front and the rear of the building differentiating the access for the public and for management and service. On the building front two spacious openings on the ground and on the second floor have been formed as entrance niche and a glazed loggia. Interior functions have been clearly organized along with the vertical partition: reception and ticketing on the ground floor, exhibition cabinets on the first two upper floors, archives on the third and office and conference space on the fourth floor including two roof terraces offering splendid views onto the Pfefferberg premises in the East and the square of Teutoburger Platz in the West.
Although complying with the highest conservational conditions for artworks, the construction reveals an inviting appearance piquing the curiosity of passers-by and adding distinctively to the surroundings of protected industrial monuments, historical apartment houses, quiet streets, courtyards and the landscaped square in front.
