The organization of the Sprengel Museum enlargement, designed by Meili & Peter AG, is composed of a series of exhibition halls distributed in an orthogonal grid, slightly rotating each room from its relative spatial arrangement. The access the exhibition halls is made via a spacious entrance hall, where a monumental staircase that greets visitors is located.
The rotation of the rooms from the organization axis gives some independence to each exhibition space, as well as serving as a counterpoint to the classical organization of the interior space.
Description of the project by MEILI & PETER ARCHITEKTEN
The existing museum represents a topographically and spatially extremely complex situation. One that is not easy to interpret either for the museum operation or its extension. Therefore, the project proposes a very simple volume as an extension that – in a similar size as the existing part – formulates its own relationship to the lake and the promenade: protruding into the trees, lightly floating, with a single main floor. It concludes and frames the existing part with its diagonally layered spaces.
The plan of the new exhibition wing at first forms a simple, classical enfilade with a soft and synoptic guided tour for visitors. This route gets its rhythm not only from its different room formats, but also from the fact that the rooms within the grid seem to “dance” a bit: they are slightly turned out of line and thus give each hall a certain independence, which is moreover emphasized by different ceiling heights. At the interfaces between the extremely strict outer cube and the rather eventful floor plan, small glazed loggias are placed that allow a view of the surroundings: small foyers that may be utilized as well.
These virtually dancing spaces are held together by a quiet and heavy concrete façade, whose formulation as bands of reliefs visualizes the events inside. Concrete as the façade material is treated much like a cut stone that is refined by creative interventions and manual processing. Thus, the material obtains, for instance, a noble, soft, almost velvety appearance by its dark colouring.
