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Berlin studio Gnädinger Architekten has completed a faceted golden museum dedicated to medieval marksmanship beside the fortified city wall of Duderstadt in Germany.

Like many historic towns in Germany, Duderstadt is filled with timber-framed buildings that are referred to as “half-timbered” and Gnädinger Architekten added the faceted golden structure to one of these old houses to create the two wings of the new museum.

“The expressive, outstanding form was chosen to create a new landmark in this old medieval town and a signature architecture for this unique museum,” architect Christoph Claus told Dezeen. “The inclined facades of the new wing refer to the similarly inclined facades of the old typical half-timbered houses in the neighbourhood, but in totally different and new ways.”

The museum also adjoins the historical Westerturm gatehouse tower, which dates back to the thirteenth century and features an unusual twisted spire. The architects added a new steel bridge to allow visitors to walk from this fortification to the next along the parapet of the ancient stone wall.

Sheets of copper alloy give the new wing its golden cladding and were installed by a traditional tinsmith. ”The golden skin was choosen in reference to the metal shiny surfaces of old weapons like armour, swords and shields,” said Claus.

“A wonderful side-effect is the sun reflection in this very narrow street,” he added.

Visitors enter the building through the old house and an angled staircase leads up through the extension to galleries on each floor.

The stone structure of the wall is exposed inside some of the rooms and the architects also used materials such as black-painted timber and raw steel.

Completed in 2011, the museum is already open to the public and offers an insight into shooting, city defense and local town life in the middle ages.

Other golden buildings we’ve featured include the Islamic art galleries at the Musée du Louvre in Paris and an extension to a Tudor-style museum in Maidstone, England.

See more stories about golden materials »

Here’s a project description from Gnädinger Architekten:

Museum of Historical Markmenship, Duderstadt, Germany

Duderstadt, which is situated in the neighborhood of Göttingen, ranks among the 10 most important half-timbered towns in Germany. Besides the historical town hall, one of the most striking landmarks is the medieval “Westerturm”, with its distinctive twisted spire, integrated in the oldest sections of the city fortifications.

Above: ground floor plan – click above to see larger image

In 2009 it was decided, to undertake the renovation of an abandoned half-timbered house next to the tower and to install a museum for historical marksmanship, thus incorporating the tower with another house on the east side of the tower, that has been flashily restored some years before.

Above: first floor plan – click above to see larger image

The massive historic stonewall acts as a support for the structure on one side of the ensemble. In addition to the reestablished half-timbered structure, Gnädinger Architects designed an expressive new wing made of concrete, consisting of assembled triangular folds. The addition, mainly houses the emergency staircases, as well as a gallery with a void in front of a big window. In keeping with the shape of the new building, the three story open staircases are also sculptural in design and form.

Above: second floor plan – click above to see larger image

The facade is clad with golden copper metal panels of various sizes, set in a uneven pattern; this has been executed by a tinsmith, in accordance to high craftsmanship standards.

Above: roof plan – click above to see larger image

The result reveals a completely foreign body, an exciting new quality, both partly rigid and partly organic among the other houses in this idyllic neighbourhood.

Above: front elevation – click above to see larger image

The interior design is mainly characterized by the use of a few materials: raw steel on the floor and the balustrades, black painted wood surfaces for furniture and doors imprinted with sulphur yellow texts and pictos and exposed concrete inside the new wing, contrasting with the old stone wall.

Above: facade details – click above to see larger image

The exhibition offers three stories of different media installations and historical exhibits, giving insights to such themes as shooting, city defense and town life in the middle ages. An interactive town model of Duderstadt allows the visitors to reenact different attack scenarios. The first floor is dedicated to the archers and shooters who formed a special militia to defend the city in the middle ages. Visitors can try their hand at target shooting or the crossbow, at two virtual shooting ranges. Further audio installations are spread throughout the overall museum and give insights ito medieval city life.

A new steel bridge, a reconstructed parapet walk, makes it possible to take a walk along a part of the ancient town fortifications, it also connects the ensemble to the adjacent historic “Georgsturm”, build onto the town wall in the eighteen century.

Completion: 2011
Volume: old part 765 m3, new wing 430 m3
Costs (without exhibition) 1.01 Mill. €
Designteam: Rolf Gnädinger, Babette Drillig, Karin Hirschmiller, Markus Hattwig
Project Director: Christoph Claus
Exibition-Design: Art+Com, Berlin

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by Gnädinger Architekten appeared first on Dezeen.

Daniel Libeskind has completed an education centre at the Jewish Museum Berlin, twelve years after the American architect completed his widely acclaimed extension (+ slideshow).

Located across the street within the structure of Berlin’s old flower market, the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin provides a new home to the museum’s library and archive, which has doubled in size over the last decade to accommodate both printed and digital records.

At the entrance, Libeskind has designed a roughly-hewn timber box that bursts through the exterior wall, with angular skylights and a sliced opening to invite visitors inside. Two additional timber boxes are located within the building and house the library and auditorium.

The 2300-square-metre centre will be used as a venue for educational workshops, lectures and conferences, and will also offer a meeting place for the 7000 guided tours run by the museum each year.

The Jewish Museum Berlin is one of the largest museums of Jewish history in Europe and opened to the public in 2001, following the construction of Libeskind’s extension to the original 1930s building.

“My ongoing collaboration with the Jewish Museum Berlin is a source of tremendous professional and personal pride,” said Daniel Libeskind. “Each project offers a fresh chance to illuminate Jewish history and culture, to understand the tragedies and the triumphs, and to celebrate the resilience, creativity and erudition that have been Jews’ enduring legacy.”

This year Libeskind was also selected to design a peace centre on the site of a former prison in Northern Ireland and completed a family of curved towers in Singapore.

See more stories about Daniel Libeskind »

Photography is by Bitter Bredt.

Here’s some more information from Studio Daniel Libeskind:

The Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin Will Be Forum for Research, Discussion and Education

Roughly a dozen years after Daniel Libeskind’s extension to the Jewish Museum Berlin opened to great acclaim in 2001, the museum has unveiled its latest collaboration with the architect, the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin.

The 25,000-square-foot, one-storey Academy stands on the site of Berlin’s one-time flower market, whose shell undergirds the new structure. Located across from the museum proper, the Academy brings together its library, archives and education center and offers additional office, storage and support space for the museum.

Since the museum’s reopening in 2001, its public and educational programs have more than doubled. In addition to 7,000 guided tours each year, the museum offers more than 400 educational programs ranging from workshops for children to training courses for museum professionals. The new facility will house these programs as well as symposia, conferences, lectures and seminars.

The museum’s library and archives have also moved to the Academy. The archives, which contain both printed and audio-visual materials, have also doubled in size over the last decade while the library’s holdings have tripled.

In-Between Spaces

Daniel Libeskind’s design for the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin links the building to the museum’s other structures and open spaces, both thematically and structurally.

One of the first things visitors see upon entering the piazza leading to the building are the words of the great medieval Jewish scholar and philosopher Moses Maimonides. His famous adjuration, “Hear the truth, whoever speaks it,” is splashed across the left side of the façade, a reminder that those who delve into history must be prepared to accept what they find regardless of the source. The five languages in which the charge is given – English, German, Hebrew, Arabic and the original Judeo-Arabic of medieval Spain – reinforce that message while also suggesting the universal nature of truth.

On the right, a large downward-sloping cube bursts through the façade. Its unusual contours echo the jagged shape of the museum’s 2001 extension, designed by Mr. Libeskind and visible across the street. That shape is also a variation on a theme found in the museum’s Garden of Exileand Glass Courtyard, also designed by Mr. Libeskind and opened 2007 and 2005, respectively.

Two large skylights, visible from the piazza, rest atop the cube. Shaped like the Hebrew letters Alef and Bet (A and B), they are another reminder of the importance of learning and knowledge to the human experience and of their centrality to Jewish life.

After passing through a large gash in the cube that serves as the Academy’s entryway, visitors are decanted into transitional space comprising two more huge cubes. Thrust forward at odd angles, the cubes, which house the library and the auditorium, form a jagged triumvirate with the rear end of entrance cube.

The movement and interaction suggested by the cubes’ shape and placement and by the seemingly rough-hewn timber (actually radiate pine timber) used to fabricate them suggests the sort of crates used to transport precious objects, including books. They also suggest Noah’s Ark, which preserved the most precious thing of all – living beings, in all their splendid variety – during the most important voyage in biblical history.

“In-Between Spaces,” Mr. Libeskind’s name for his design, describes the transitional area among the three cubes. It also alludes to the different perspectives offered by that unique vantage point. Standing on that spot, looking into the hall and out on to museum’s other structures and spaces, visitors are ideally placed to reflect on the museum’s larger purpose and their own experience of it.

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by Daniel Libeskind appeared first on Dezeen.

American firm Morphosis has completed a museum of nature and science in Dallas where visitors begin their tour by taking an escalator journey to the uppermost floor.

Surrounded by glazing, the escalator streaks diagonally across the striated concrete facade then angles back inside the building. At the top, each visitor is faced with a view of the city before spiralling their way back down through five exhibition floors into the atrium where they first arrived.

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science is sited in Victory Park, downtown Dallas, and when it opens to the public next weekend it will replace some of the facilities of the existing Museum of Science and Nature, located further east in Fair Park.

Morphosis‘ founder Thom Mayne conceived the building as a large cube emerging from a series of landscaped lower tiers. These levels, designed in collaboration with landscape architects Talley Associates, are covered in stones and drought-resistant grasses that are typical of the landscape in Texas.

A 3D cinema, auditorium, cafe and shop accompany the eleven exhibition galleries inside the building.

Above: site plan – click above for larger image

“The Perot Museum of Nature and Science is a gift to the city of Dallas,” said Mayne. “It is a fundamentally public building – a building that opens up, belongs to and activates the city. It is a place of exchange. It contains knowledge, preserves information and transmits ideas; ultimately, the public is as integral to the museum as the museum is to the city.”

Above: exploded axonometric diagram – click above for larger image

See more projects by Morphosis on Dezeen, including a floating house for Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation in New Orleans.

Photography is by Iwan Baan.

Here’s a project description from Morphosis:

Museums, armatures for collective societal experience and cultural expression, present new ways of interpreting the world. They contain knowledge, preserve information and transmit ideas; they stimulate curiosity, raise awareness and create opportunities for exchange. As instruments of education and social change, museums have the potential to shape our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live.

Above: east-facing section – click above for larger image

As our global environment faces ever more critical challenges, a broader understanding of the interdependence of natural systems is becoming more essential to our survival and evolution. Museums dedicated to nature and science play a key role in expanding our understanding of these complex systems.

The new Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Victory Park creates a distinct identity for the Museum, enhances the institution’s prominence in Dallas and enriches the city’s evolving cultural fabric. Designed to engage a broad audience, invigorate young minds, and inspire wonder and curiosity in the daily lives of its visitors, the Museum cultivates a memorable experience that persists in the minds of its visitors and that ultimately broadens individuals’ and society’s understanding of nature and science.

Above: north-facing section one – click above for larger image

The museum strives to achieve the highest standards of sustainability possible for a building of its type. High performance design and incorporation of state of the art technologies yields a new building that minimizes its impact on the environment.

This world class facility inspires awareness of science through an immersive and interactive environment that actively engages visitors. Rejecting the notion of museum architecture as neutral background for exhibits, the new building itself is an active tool for science education. By integrating architecture, nature, and technology, the building demonstrates scientific principles and stimulates curiosity in our natural surroundings.

Above: north-facing section two – click above for larger image

The immersive experience of nature within the city begins with the visitor’s approach to the museum, which leads through two native Texas ecologies: a forest of large native canopy trees and a terrace of native desert xeriscaping. The xeriscaped terrace gently slopes up to connect with the museum’s iconic stone roof. The overall building mass is conceived as a large cube floating over the site’s landscaped plinth. An acre of undulating roofscape comprised of rock and native drought-resistant grasses reflects Dallas’s indigenous geology and demonstrates a living system that will evolve naturally over time.

The intersection of these two ecologies defines the main entry plaza, a gathering and event area for visitors and an outdoor public space for the city of Dallas. From the plaza, the landscaped roof lifts up to draw visitors through a compressed space into the more expansive entry lobby. The topography of the lobby’s undulating ceiling reflects the dynamism of the exterior landscape surface, blurring the distinction between inside and outside, and connecting the natural with the manmade.

Above: west-facing section one – click above for larger image

Moving from the compressed space of the entry, a visitor’s gaze is drawn upward through the soaring open volume of the sky-lit atrium, the building’s primary light-filled circulation space, which houses the building’s stairs, escalators and elevators. From the ground floor, a series of escalators bring patrons though the atrium to the uppermost level of the museum. Patrons arrive at a fully glazed balcony high above the city, with a bird’s eye view of downtown Dallas. From this sky balcony, visitors proceed downward in a clockwise spiral path through the galleries. This dynamic spatial procession creates a visceral experience that engages visitors and establishes an immediate connection to the immersive architectural and natural environment of the museum.

Above: west facing section two – click above for larger image

The path descending from the top floor through the museum’s galleries weaves in and out of the building’s main circulation atrium, alternately connecting the visitor with the internal world of the museum and with the external life of the city beyond. The visitor becomes part of the architecture, as the eastern facing corner of the building opens up towards downtown Dallas to reveal the activity within. The museum, is thus, a fundamentally public building – a building that opens up, belongs to and activates the city; ultimately, the public is as integral to the museum as the museum is to the city.

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by Morphosis appeared first on Dezeen.

A museum of contemporary art designed by Zaha Hadid for Michigan State University opened to the public this weekend (+ slideshow).

As shown in photographs revealed last month, Zaha Hadid designed the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum with a pleated facade of stainless steel and glass that contrasts with the surrounding red brickwork of the university’s Collegiate Gothic north campus.

The building is named after philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, who have spent four decades amassing two prominent collections of contemporary and postwar artworks.

Exhibitions will be dedicated to modern art, photography, new media and works on paper.

Double-height galleries are included within the museum’s 1600 square metres of exhibition space, which is split between three storeys that include two floors above ground and one basement level.

The plan of the building was generated by the directions of surrounding pathways and sight-lines, and the architects hope this will help the building to integrate with its surroundings. ”Cultural engagement is paramount,” said Zaha Hadid. “The design of the Broad invites dialogue with the university, the community of East Lansing and beyond.”

Hadid won a competition in 2008 to design the museum, which also contains an exhibition space, an education wing, study centre, cafe, shop and outdoor sculpture garden.

The museum’s inaugural exhibitions include Global Groove 1973/2012, an exploration of current trends in video art, and In Search of Time, which investigates the relationship of time and memory in art.

See the competition-winning designs for the building in our earlier story, or see the first photographs of the building revealed last month.

See more stories about Zaha Hadid Architects, including the recently completed Galaxy Soho, a 330,000-square-metre retail, office and entertainment complex in Beijing.

Photography is by Iwan Baan.

Here’s a project description from Zaha Hadid Architects:

The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, located at the northern edge of the Michigan State University campus, is influenced by a set of movement paths that traverse and border the site.

The vitality of street life on the northern side of Grand River Avenue and the historic heart of the university campus at the south side generate a network of paths and visual connections; some are part of the existing footpath layout, others create shortcuts between the city and the campus side of Grand River Avenue.

The circulation travelling in an east-west-direction on Grand River Avenue, along the main road of East Lansing and also on the main approach street to the campus produce an additional layer of connections that are applied to this highly frequented interface between city and campus.

Generating two dimensional planes from these lines of circulation and visual connections, the formal composition of the museum is achieved by folding these planes in three-dimensional space to define an interior landscape which brings together and negotiates the different pathways on which people move through and around the site.

This dialogue of interconnecting geometries describes a series of spaces that offer a variety of adjacencies; allowing many different interpretations when designing exhibitions.

Through this complexity, curators can interpret different leads and connections, different perspectives and relationships.

These detailed investigations and research into the landscape, topography and circulation of the site, enable us to ascertain and understand these critical lines of connection.

By using these lines to inform the design, the museum is truly embedded within its unique context of Michigan State University, maintaining the strongest relationship with its surroundings.

The Broad Art Museum presents as a sharp, directed body, comprising directional pleats which reflect the topographic and circulatory characteristics of its surrounding landscape.

Its outer skin echoes these different directions and orientations – giving the building an ever-changing appearance that arouses curiosity yet never quite reveals its content. This open character underlines the museum’s function as a cultural hub for the community.

Above: site plan – click above for larger image

Above: basement plan – click above for larger image

Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: section A-A – click above for larger image

Above: section B-B – click above for larger image

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by Zaha Hadid Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

Swiss studio Mauro Turin Architectes wants to celebrate the history of the Lavaux wine-making region in Switzerland by cantilevering a museum from the side of a mountain (+ slideshow).

Architect Mauro Turin initially came up with the designs as an imaginary project for a page in Swiss design magazine Hochparterre. “The space is given to architects for a dream of something that could be interesting, or could reveal some parts of an area or idea,” said Turin’s collaborator Martine Laprise.

Turin chose to design a wine museum dedicated to the historic vineyard terraces, which date back to the eleventh century and step down the side of the landscape to meet Lake Geneva on the western border of the country.

The architect explains how he wanted to create something that would not only tell the story of the World Heritage Site, but also create a landmark that would attract tourists from all around the world. A museum that “offers a walk in the air, allowing an unforgettable experience of Lavaux, Lake Geneva and the Alps could be the answer,” he says.

After capturing the attention of the local press and politicians, the architects are now in discussions to develop the building for construction.

Other extreme cantilevers on Dezeen include a glass viewing platform over a glacial valley in Canada and a ski jump in Norway.

Above: site plan – click above for larger image

See all our stories about cantilevers »

See all our stories about museums »

Above: section – click above for larger image

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Mauro Turin Architectes appeared first on Dezeen.