The Ruhr region is celebrating a new landmark: Following a four year construction, the extension to the Küppersmühle Museum, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, has now reached completion. From September 25, 2021, the museum will throw open its doors to visitors once again. 

With the presentation of works from the Ströher Collection across an additional 2,500 m² of space, the MKM is set to become a central venue for German and European post war art. On display are some 300 works, spanning the immediate post war period to the present day.
Bricks outside, White Cube inside: The MKM extension combines industrial culture with contemporary museum architecture. In keeping with the original conversion of the historical grain mill into a museum (1999), Herzog & de Meuron have once again taken their cue from the existing MKM building and the architecture of the Inner Harbour. 

In the interior, a sequence 36 brightly-lit and clearly structured collection rooms provide the ideal, spacious setting for the exhibited art works. As part of the extension construction, the historic silos were also refurbished and integrated into the new structure, from which bridges on the first and second upper levels forge a conne ction between the ne w and existing galleries.

Three structures of varying height continue the museum to form a new main edifice, which harmoniously rounds off the row of buil dings flanking the harbour basin. With its striking redbrick façade, the new extension terminates in a square boasting 35 newly planted sycamore trees a green urban oasis.
 

Description of project by Herzog & de Meuron

A grain mill was erected in 1860 on the site of the present Museum Küppersmühle by industrialist Wilhelm Vedder, one of the founding fathers of Duisburg’s Inner Harbour. In 1900 the first mill using the most up-to-date technology went into operation in the Inner Harbour, which became known as the ‘bread basket of the Ruhr district’, and in 1908 the earlier buildings were replaced by the three-part structure now housing the museum. The business was taken over in 1912 by the Werner & Nicola works, who added a boiler house with chimney. The adjoining steel silos were constructed in the 1930s. In 1969 the company merged with the Küppers works of Homberg, which gave its name to the mill and the museum. The mill closed down in 1972.

The Museum Küppersmühle (MKM), a project by Herzog & de Meuron dating from 1999, was the first milestone in the transformation of the Inner Harbour into an attractive focus of urban life. As a museum, the former mill, with its historic brick elevations, became the centre of a new, high-grade, multi-use inner-city location. Since 1999 the Küppersmühle has housed an art museum, run by the Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. (a registered cultural association in Bonn), that contains one of the finest collections of German art from the 1950s to the present.

The Ströher Collection

The MKM Museum Küppersmühle presents key works and groups of works from the Ströher Collection, one of the most extensive private collections of German post-war art - to date on 2,500 m2 of exhibition space. With over 2,000 works, the collection comprises central positions of art development in Germany, from the immediate post-war period to the present. The focus is on painting, but the collection also includes sculpture and photography. Over time, a desire for a building capable of housing all the works of art and displaying them in a manner worthy of a collection that includes many artists whose major significance is recognized internationally, among them Georg Baselitz, K. O. Götz, Jörg Immendorff, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Fred Thieler and Rosemarie Trockel.

Extension project

An extension to accommodate the collection was to be erected in 2008 on top of the silo towers. Faulty work by the steel-working company involved, and the company’s subsequent insolvency, meant that the steel-frame construction could not be installed. Construction work ceased and the project was abandoned owing to financing problems encountered by the client, the real estate company GEBAG. The building complex became the property of the Ströhers.

The extension project was activated in 2013, with the Ströher family as clients. A feasibility study undertaken by Herzog & de Meuron explored the potential of the site under current conditions. The resulting project constitutes a radical new start. The original idea of an illuminated cube balanced on the silo towers and visible from afar has been jettisoned. Instead, we propose to erect a building whose dimensions and materials accord with the sequence of historic brick structures lining the dockside. The new structure thus completes the existing museum complex in a visually appropriate way and forms a suitable conclusion to the row of buildings along the dock. At first glance it might seem as though the new building had always been there.

The new structure consists of three parts with a height of approximately 33.5, 30.5 and 27.5 metres respectively. In terms of mass, height and materials they take their cue from the existing buildings, continuing them and rounding them off to form a harmonious whole. Two parts contain the exhibition areas, the third provides access and houses utilities and art handling facilities. With five levels, one below ground, floor space amounts to some 4,900 square metres, in addition to exhibition areas of roughly 2,500 square metres.

Massing was crucially influenced by a ban on building within forty metres of the autobahn. Optimum use is made of the available area. The arrangement of the exhibition structures – the tallest of the three parts and the smaller one adjoining it – echoes the course of the building-free zone, while one elevation of the third part runs along its boundary. The additively composed parts remain distinctly legible. At its tallest point (the uppermost level of the larger exhibition component), the new structure is related in height to the main existing building.

The extension is to be linked directly to the existing exhibition spaces by bridges through the silos at the first and second upper levels, facilitating uninterrupted visitor access throughout the museum. Similarly, the height of the new exhibition areas takes its cue from the existing galleries. The silos will not only be converted into elements connecting the old with the new; they will also house distinctive exhibition spaces. Their original materials are to be retained, however, because the silos are an indispensable ‘sculptural’ component of the Küppersmühle as an industrial monument. Long reduced to this historical and aesthetic aspect, they acquire a new function through refurbishment as access links and display areas. Six inner silos had already been removed. Now, with the ground-floor ceiling opened up and the insertion of the bridges, the entire space will be visible to visitors. In addition, the silos can be seen from some of the exhibition areas.

As in the existing galleries, windows in the elevations facing the dock and Philosophenweg offer varied and striking views of the site and its surroundings. The material of the elevations echoes the brick of the existing buildings.

A staircase permits continuous visitor circulation and the arrangement of all the exhibits in a consecutive sequence. In conception and spatial context the staircase is related to that featured in the museum project of 1999.

The new exhibition areas echo the overall additive character of the Küppersmühle as a typical industrial facility of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In their architecture and interior design, the galleries echo the existing exhibition spaces. The uppermost display area, which is not directly accessible from the existing building, consists of a visible shed construction with top-lighting. All exhibition levels have a spatial arrangement facilitating flexible multiple use.

The silos are to be fitted out with a superstructure, as they were originally, in the 1930s. Featuring a viewing platform accessible from the dockside promenade, the superstructure will grant the silos yet another new function.

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Architects
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Project team
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Project Architect/ Project Manager.- Roland Schreiber. Mikolaj Bazaczek, Juliane Brantner, Teodor-Octavian Cuciureanu, Florian Hartmann, Sebastian Hefti, Māra Igaune, Susanne Kozlowski, Hannah Reusser, Daniel Schürer.
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Collaborators
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General Planning.- Drees & Sommer, Basel, Switzerland. HVAC Engineering.- Drees & Sommer Advanced Building Technologies, Köln, Germany. Structural Engineering.- Drees & Sommer Advanced Building Technologies, Stuttgart, Germany. Construction Management.- Diete + Siepmann Ingenieur GmbH, Kaarst, Germany. Landscape Architect.- Vogt Landschaftsarchitekten, Zürich, Switzerland. Fire Protection.- HHP Berlin, Hamburg, Germany.
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Client
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MKM Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V., Darmstadt, Germany.
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Area
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Site Area.- 9000 sqm. Gross floor area (GFA).- 5000 sqm. GFA above ground.- 4150 sqm. GFA below ground.- 850 sqm. Number of levels.- 5. Footprint.- 850 sqm. Length.- 54 m. Width.- 25 m. Height.- 32 m. Facade surface.- 4000 sqm.
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Dates
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2013-2021.
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Opening hours
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Wed.- 2pm - 6pm | Thu-Sun-Public holidays.- 11am - 6pm.
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Location
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MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst. Philosophenweg 55, 47051 Duisburg (Innenhafen), Germany.
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Photography
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Simon Menges.
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Herzog & de Meuron Architekten is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog (born 1950), and Pierre de Meuron (born 1950), closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. They are perhaps best known for their conversion of the giant Bankside Power Station in London to the new home of the Tate Museum of Modern Art (2000). Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have been visiting professors at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 1994 (and in 1989) and professors at ETH Zürich since 1999. They are co-founders of the ETH Studio Basel – Contemporary City Institute, which started a research programme on processes of transformation in the urban domain.

Herzog & de Meuron is a partnership led by five Senior Partners – Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Christine Binswanger, Ascan Mergenthaler and Stefan Marbach. An international team of 38 Associates and about 362 collaborators.

Herzog & de Meuron received international attention very early in their career with the Blue House in Oberwil, Switzerland (1980); the Stone House in Tavole, Italy (1988); and the Apartment Building along a Party Wall in Basel (1988).  The firm’s breakthrough project was the Ricola Storage Building in Laufen, Switzerland (1987).  Renown in the United States came with Dominus Winery in Yountville, California (1998). The Goetz Collection, a Gallery for a Private Collection of Modern Art in Munich (1992), stands at the beginning of a series of internationally acclaimed museum buildings such as the Küppersmühle Museum for the Grothe Collection in Duisburg, Germany (1999). Their most recognized buildings include Prada Aoyama in Tokyo, Japan (2003); Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany (2005); the new Cottbus Library for the BTU Cottbus, Germany (2005); the National Stadium Beijing, the Main Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China; VitraHaus, a building to present Vitra’s “Home Collection“, Weil am Rhein, Germany (2010); and 1111 Lincoln Road, a multi-storey mixed-use structure for parking, retail, a restaurant and a private residence in Miami Beach, Florida, USA (2010), the Actelion Business Center in Allschwil/Basel, Switzerland (2010). In recent years, Herzog & de Meuron have also completed projects such as the New Hall for Messe Basel Switzerland (2013), the Ricola Kräuterzentrum in Laufen (2014), which is the seventh building in a series of collaborations with Ricola, with whom Herzog & de Meuron began to work in the 1980s; and the Naturbad Riehen (2014), a public natural swimming pool. In April 2014, the practice completed its first project in Brazil: the Arena do Morro in the neighbourhood of Mãe Luiza, Natal, is the pioneering project within the wider urban proposal “A Vision for Mãe Luiza”.

Herzog & de Meuron have completed 6 projects since the beginning of 2015: a new mountain station including a restaurant on top of the Chäserrugg (2262 metres above sea level) in Toggenburg, Switzerland; Helsinki Dreispitz, a residential development and archive in Münchenstein/Basel, Switzerland; Asklepios 8 – an office building on the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland; the Slow Food Pavilion for Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy; the new Bordeaux stadium, a 42’000 seat multifunctional stadium for Bordeaux, France; Miu Miu Aoyama, a 720 m² boutique for the Prada-owned brand located on Miyuki Street, across the road from Prada Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan.

In many projects the architects have worked together with artists, an eminent example of that practice being the collaboration with Rémy Zaugg, Thomas Ruff and with Michael Craig-Martin.

Professionally, the Herzog & de Meuron partnership has grown to become an office with over 120 people worldwide. In addition to their headquarters in Basel, they have offices in London, Munich and San Francisco. Herzog has explained, “We work in teams, but the teams are not permanent. We rearrange them as new projects begin. All of the work results from discussions between Pierre and me, as well as our other partners, Harry Gugger and Christine Binswanger. The work by various teams may involve many different talents to achieve the best results which is a final product called architecture by Herzog & de Meuron.”

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