100 years of freedom

Volker Staab, founder of Staab Architekten, recounts the expansion project for the Bauhaus-Archiv, and lends a voice to a drive that will lay another crucial architectural stone.

The whole of Germany sees the Bauhaus as a symbol of freedom and culture, to be defended and handed down to future generations. The centenary of this celebrated school falls in 2019 and the German parliament, the Bundestag, is backing a number of promotional initiatives in support of the three schools linked to the Bauhaus name: Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (Dessau Bauhaus Foundation), Klassik Stiftung Weimar (the original Foundation in Weimar) and Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung in Berlin (Bauhaus Archives/Design Museum). Part of the plan was to hold a design competition for the extension of the Walter Gropius structure, built for the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin in 1979. The competition was for architecture that was respectful of the existing building but with a quite independent symbolic connotation.

The design idea put forward by Staab Architekten responded to all the competition demands, delivering spatial quality to the benefit of the new museum spaces. An exhibition at the Berlin archives, the focus of the expansion, hosted a display clearly illustrating the prospects for the future museum and how the expansion will be achieved – a transparent tower featuring stringcourses on each level and rising on slender pillars above a base, which is the point of connection between the entrance to the exhibitions and the open courtyard. Der Hof (the courtyard) horizontally balances the vertical impact of the tower, injecting light into the lower level through a long glazed slash and offering a pause in the exhibition route developed on the upper floors. The decision to communicate with the context is expressed firstly in the continuity between public space and the plateau and secondly via the connection of the old and new foundations.

Every year, numerous donations add to the Bauhaus collection, creating a pressing need for a spatial organisation that can display drawings, sketches, models, paintings, prints, books and objects produced by masters such as Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Johannes Itten and many more. Unable to display the creative diversity of the celebrated German school, the new Museum für Gestaltung found itself having to satisfy needs unknown in the years when W. Gropius designed the present complex, itself an adapted copy of the Bauhaus-Archiv in Darmstadt. The possibility of holding lessons and workshops as well as having leisure spaces in the form of a store and coffee shop broaden the concept of culture, potentially breaking through all boundaries.

The school’s centenary has brought to fruition a project first raised about ten years ago. The competition held back then judged a proposal by SANAA in Tokyo as convincing but works on the Japanese office’s tower never began because of a lack of investment. Now, the new competition, dated June 2015, has fortunately restored a function of forum-educational centre to a place created for this very purpose, the 1979 design, and allocates space to every activity required by the customary running of a cultural centre. Volker Staab, founder of Staab Architekten, answers questions, avoiding interpretations alien to the project, and lends a voice to a drive that will lay another crucial architectural stone.

Nicola Violano: How did you approach the process of designing a museum that would be compared to the historically and culturally established symbol of the Bauhaus?

Volker Staab: Our goal was to develop a project that, despite its conceptual and formal independence, forms an obvious ensemble with the existing Bauhaus Archive by Walter Gropius and does not destroy the iconic presence of the older building.

Nicola Violano: Where can we find the character of the German Bauhaus School in the new expansion project for the archive in Berlin?

Volker Staab: Our approach to the Bauhaus School is seen less in terms of form and more in terms of programme. A central idea of the Bauhaus – that of dissemination, discourse and experience – is expressed in the new glazed tower, in the museum’s education department, the Internet laboratory and the event lounge. The structure of the tower breaks new ground with its extremely delicate, slightly tilted supports. These brace the building and permit a sculptural, interlocking double staircase which maximizes the surface area in the tower.

Nicola Violano: A great sense of openness characterises the tower. Is this meant to contrast the lightness of the tower with its context or is it a desire to open the tower up to the outside?

Volker Staab: Both are indeed correct. Our goal was to strengthen the urban presence of the building and the public nature of the location while, at the same time, creating a new signet for the Bauhaus Archive in conjunction with the sawtooth roofs of the existing building.

Nicola Violano: How are future users included in the project’s development? Were you able to test any public reactions to the project together with your collaborators?

Volker Staab: The results of the competition were discussed at a public event and have been presented in two consecutive exhibitions. There has been a great deal of public interest in the project, which the Bauhaus Archive – as far as we know – will continue to encounter through periodic events pertaining to the planning progress.

Nicola Violano: Since the competition in 2005, the year when you faced the same challenge, how have your ideas for the museum developed and what are the characteristics that have worked to make this a winning project?

Volker Staab: In 2005, the task was a bit different. The site intended for the new entrance tower was, at that Time, to be developed into an office building for investors. An expansion to the Bauhaus Archive’s exhibition space was to be financed with revenue from the sale of this property.

Nicola Violano: What are the future plans of the Bauhaus institution and how long will it take to complete the project?

Volker Staab: We have just begun the planning stage. The goal is to begin construction in 2018. Re-founding art is the aim behind the creation of the Bauhaus but it is also a strategy that renews itself and creates a symbol of freedom and culture.

Bauhaus Neubau
Design: Staab Architekten (competitions’s winners)

100 years of freedom

Volker Staab, founder of Staab Architekten, recounts the expansion project for the Bauhaus-Archiv, and lends a voice to a drive that will lay another crucial architectural stone.

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