New Architecture in Germany

The Dornier Museum opened in the summer of 2009. It is dedicated to the history of aeronautics, and combines light art and architecture in a coherent overall concept.



‘Earlier, I used my obsession with aircraft to finance my hobby, art. Today, it is exactly the other way round,’ says the American light artist James Turrell. It was no accident that the passionate amateur pilot and the Dornier Foundation, which has built the new Dornier Museum at Friedrichshafen on the Bodensee, found themselves collaborating together. Originally, Turrell wanted to purchase a DO 27 – a historic, single-engine aeroplane that had been developed by Claude Dornier (1884-1969) during the 1950s. When the artist subsequently got to know Cornelius Dornier, the legendary aeronautical pioneer’s grandson, and was shown the Dornier Foundation’s plans for a museum, he rapidly became enthusiastic about the plan to combine the joy of flying and light art in a landmark installation.

Extension of the architecture

Delicate blue shines through the translucent skin, is transformed gently into magenta tones, then into shades of green and white. The main façade of the new building at Friedrichshafen Airport glows in every possible colour, translating the vision of flying that inspired the pioneers of aeronautics into a weightless light installation. The immaterial effect of the light depends decisively on the material of the façade, which is constructed of translucent polycarbonate panels. The plastic reflects the coloured LED light, disperses it and makes the museum glow both inside and out. ‘I use light to extend the architecture,’ says James Turrell, who understands his art as performing a supplementary function. (Another of his light installations can be seen until April 2010 at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.)

100 years of aeronautical history – from Claude Dornier’s early flying boats to space technology: The Dornier name conjures up a legacy that, apart from the famous aircraft, also encompasses inventions such as the black box or the lithotripter, a machine used to treat kidney stones. The former family company was absorbed into Fairchild-Dornier in the 1980s and later taken over by EADS. In order to bring the Dornier story and the early history of aeronautics to life again, the Dornier Foundation has now established a museum next to the runways at Friedrichshafen Airport.

Lively displays

In accord with the spirit of the place and the contents of the museum, the Munich architects Allmann Sattler Wappner conceived the building as a simple hangar with a total of 5,000 square metres of exhibition space, the western side of which can be opened up. The historic aircraft that are among the museum’s treasures can be moved through a large glass gateway onto the airport manoeuvring area. The architects have placed the entrance to the exhibition in the ‘Hall of Fame’ – a central space just behind the ticket desks where larger-than-life portraits of Leonardo da Vinci, the Wright Brothers and other pioneers of aeronautics give visitors a taste of what is to come. A curved spiral staircase leads to the rooms accommodated in what is known as the Museumsbox on the first storey. Here, the history of aeronautics and the story of the Dornier company are told in a sequence of lively displays.

The exhibition design by Atelier Brückner relies on structured zones of space that are devoted to individual periods of history, yet can be taken in as a coherent whole. Models of famous Dornier aircraft such as the Merkur, Lufthansa’s first commercial passenger plane, photographs, historic film sequences and the particularly fascinating reconstruction of an aircraft cabin await the visitor. Spotlights targeted on individual objects and glass dioramas give the windowless rooms clear contours and provide vivid insights into the periods represented. Dornier’s role under the National Socialists and the fate of the company’s forced labourers are addressed in a separate, central area.

Bringing the history of flight to life

Visitors leave the Museumsbox through a dark space where they walk between models of the solar system’s planets, and are then able to study the details of technologies invented for space travel in the display cases on the open gallery. They look down into the open hall of the hangar, admiring the DO 31, the first vertical-take-off aircraft, or the drones – developed by Dornier – of the kind used during Bundeswehr operations in Afghanistan. ‘Men like my grandfather had a vision and followed their vision,’ says Cornelius Dornier, the museum’s project manager. The light, airy architecture of the museum, which exploits striking visual axes to offer glimpses of the aeroplanes taking off and landing on the runway of the neighbouring airport, makes it possible for these visions to come to life.