Köln Ethnographic Museum

The Atelier Brückner design of the ethnographic Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum - Cultures of the World in Köln

The Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum is presenting its extensive ethnological collection with a new concept for the content in a surprising, scenographic setting. After Europe-wide tendering in 2003 Atelier Brückner was tasked with the design concept. The aim was to create a "Gesamt¬kunst¬werk", which consits of the harmonic interaction between form and content and the design's elements of space, graphic, light and media. Staged spaces resulted, spaces full of intensity and magic.
Prologue
Prologue
"People in Their Worlds" is the title of the theme-based visitor routing through the exhibition, which reveals and displays itself in differentiated spatial narratives covering an area of 3,600 square metres. Around 2,000 exhibits are placed in theme-based spaces that have been allocated their own individual staged settings: "We want to make the exhibits speak, tell stories that affect the visitor and create an experience that remains in the memory for a long time," says Prof. Uwe R. Brückner, who developed the narrative dramaturgy of the new permanent exhibition with his multi-disciplinary team. A panopticum of coherent themes, generated from the museum's outstanding inventory, provides an authentic experience, whereby the scenography endows the culturally-comparative themes in the spaces with a three-dimensional language.
Gamelan, 
Room: Creating the Right Mood. A gamelan is the typical Indonesian orchestra, usually
gamelan accompanies dance wayang puppet performances, or rituals or ceremonies.
Gamelan, Room: Creating the Right Mood. A gamelan is the typical Indonesian orchestra, usually gamelan accompanies dance wayang puppet performances, or rituals or ceremonies.
The visitor experiences the exhibition as a dynamic sequence of individual chapters that open up access to the diverse "Cultures of the World". A total of nine themes are addressed from two main vantage points: "Understanding the World" and "Shaping the World". The transition between the two consists of a stage-managed narrative space, consisting of doors. The opulently presented Gamelan ensemble offers an accommodation to the parcours. The highlights of the exhibition are the space entitled "Death and Afterlife", illuminated by blazing light and concealed behind string curtains, and the European Parlour with its interactive media desk. The "museum in a museum" takes museum work itself as a theme. Visible through a large window facing towards Neumarkt, a deconstructed Yams Storehouse silo is the central exhibit and invites the open-minded passer-by to pay a visit to the new permanent exhibition. The opulently presented Gamelan ensemble offers an accommodation to the parcours. The highlights of the exhibition are the space entitled "Death and Afterlife", illuminated by blazing light and concealed behind string curtains, and the European Parlour with its interactive media desk. The "museum in a museum" takes museum work itself as a theme. Visible through a large window facing towards Neumarkt, a deconstructed Yams Storehouse silo is the central exhibit and invites the open-minded passer-by to pay a visit to the new permanent exhibition.
Museum, 
Room: The World in a Showcase
Museum, Room: The World in a Showcase
In the foyer, the visitor is welcomed by the museum's emblem, a rice barn from Indonesia, which is accompanied by information modules where a preview of the entire route through the exhibition can be obtained. A prologue and an epilogue frame the pathway through the museum in the form of multi-media spatial installations that are designed in the same way. People from unfamiliar cultures welcome visitors here and, later, take their leave with the insight that they are all inhabitants of the city of Cologne.
Doors, Room: Transition
Doors, Room: Transition
European Parlour,
Room: Living Spaces - Ways of Living
European Parlour, Room: Living Spaces - Ways of Living
Death and Afterlife, 
Room: The Staged Farewell
Death and Afterlife, Room: The Staged Farewell
Mask,
Room: Intermediary Worlds, Rituals
Mask, Room: Intermediary Worlds, Rituals

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