New Architecture in Germany

Essen – and with it the Ruhr region – is the European Capital of Culture 2010. One of the attractions of the former industrial city that aspires to transform itself into a city of culture is the Museum Folkwang rebuild: great art has a great location at last.

The city of Essen can boast one more attraction since the last weekend in January 2010: the new Museum Folkwang was opened to the public. The building is a jewel. Not only because of its greenish shimmer, but also because it comes across as light and classy, spacious and clear, generous yet low-key. Extensive window fronts and a wide entrance staircase are inviting to visitors.

The building is new. But the museum is old. The Folkwang is an art museum, it was founded in 1922. Back then one of the most important Classic Modern collections came to Essen, the collection belonging to industrialist Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874–1921) from Hagen. Osthaus established the Museum Folkwang in Hagen in 1902. An industrialist and arts patron, he had already collected works by Rodin, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Renoir, van Gogh, Cézanne or Gauguin very early on and hoped for a link between art and life, and between the arts. He did a great deal to put what was known as the “Folkwang idea” into practice. As a result of his initiative, a Folkwang fine arts school, an alternative school, an art colony, a publishing house, as well as garden city projects, also came into being. Folkwang – folk’s hall – is the name of the palace of the goddess Freya in the Edda, an old Nordic epic.

The jewel is a gift

So right from the start the Museum Folkwang owned an outstanding collection of paintings and sculpture from the 19th century, as well as contemporary art from the start of the 20th century, which they call Classic Modern today. As co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Paul J. Sachs, who visited the Folkwang in 1932, praised it as “the most beautiful museum in the world”.

The Museum Folkwang collection is still one of the most important in the world, not least because key Expressionist works, the Blue Rider and of course post-1945 art has been added to it since then. But even though the Folkwang certainly isn’t the most beautiful museum in the world – it is entitled to rank amongst the most beautiful since it acquired a new residence.

This new residence is a gift. A gift from the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation to the citizens of Essen. This foundation is the beneficiary of the Krupp company, which has been manufacturing steel in Essen since the mid-19th century: railway track, locomotives, canons. Because what was then the Museum Folkwang’s main building – which dated from the 1980s – had serious defects and renovation would have been very expensive, the Krupp Foundation decided to give the city a new museum. It was meant to be ready for the Capital of Culture year, 2010, and was not supposed to cost more than 55 million Euro.

Both promises were kept. The old building was pulled down, an architects’ competition was tendered, from which the British architect David Chipperfield emerged as the winner. He designed the new Museum Folkwang. It was a great success for him.

The courtyard principle

A broad, extensive ensemble of single-storey cubes rises up on a plinth made of light stone. The façade facing the main road is made of ceramic glass with a greenish shimmer, it keeps the large, casually sprawled building hovering between a functional structure and architecture of significance. At the rear and on the sides facing the courtyards the external skin is formed by glass walls.

The courtyards – this is one of the main design principles of the new museum. Six cube-shaped buildings are grouped around four lawned courtyards, so that the view is through the glass frontages, across the courtyards and into other rooms. This results in an exciting interplay between inside and outside. The principle of the courtyard surrounded by buildings also forms the architectural link with a part of the old museum that was left standing, which dates from the year 1960. It is of a high aesthetic quality, unlike the part that was torn down, and it now harmonises with the new building in a completely wonderful way.

Light from above

In a certain way it’s old-fashioned, says David Chipperfield, the way he’s handled the floor, the walls, the light. “His” Museum Folkwang has very simple qualities. Indeed. You see, it is these simple qualities that make it so great. The balance not only between inside and outside, but also between escape and closeness, distance and security, is complete. Lines of sight into all four directions open up at every point, a little perspective, window, view, can be seen everywhere without it ever seeming playful. The individual rooms are intimate, although they are almost six metres high, and at the same time they show the way to the next one. Each room possesses a soothing power.

The Museum Folkwang now owns over 6 000 square metres of exhibition space, of which all rooms (except the photography and graphics rooms) get daylight from above, precisely because they are all on a single level without a second storey. Even the temporary exhibition room with its massive 1 400 square metres of floor area without any supporting columns at all has this quality of lighting across the full extent of the ceiling. It was particularly important to David Chipperfield to site the entire public part of the museum on one level: for him this was an expression of openness and transparency.

It only took two years for the museum to be ready. A building of the 21st century, which nevertheless belongs to the Classic Modern architectural tradition. In other words, it’s just right for the Museum Folkwang in Essen.