On Saturday, 23 January, President of France François Hollande inaugurated the new Unterlinden Museum (“Le nouveau Musée Unterlinden”) in the Alsatian city of Colmar, in Eastern France.

The extension project by Herzog & de Meuron unites three dimensions: the urban, the architectural, and the museographic. After three years of construction, the museum has almost doubled its exhibition area, including a new space for special exhibitions, the first of which is called “Agir. Contempler”, curated by Jean-François Chevrier in collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron. The museum’s centerpiece – the Isenheim altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald and Nicolas de Haguenau – is also newly presented in the church of the former Dominican convent now housing the Musée Unterlinden.

In 2009, swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron won a competition to renovate and extend Colmar’s musée Unterlinden and six years later, the project is complete. The façades of the Ackerhof are made of hand-broken bricks, establishing a dialogue with the quarrystone and plaster convent on the other side of the channal, which divides the site.

Tall, narrow windows have been cut into the irregular walls, while the roof gables are formed from copper. Another small building, referred to as ‘la petite maison’, sits closer to the water, marking the museum’s presence on the plaza.
 

Description of the project by Herzog & de Meuron

Herzog & de Meuron’s project for the extension of the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar encompasses three dimensions: urban development, architecture and museography. It centers on the issues of reconstruction, simulation and integration.

After the extension, two building complexes, physically connected by an underground gallery, face each other across Unterlinden Square. The medieval convent consisting of a church, a cloister, a fountain and a garden stand to one side. On the other side of the square, the new museum building mirrors the church’s volume and, together with the former municipal baths constitutes a second, enclosed court.

Between the two museum complexes, Unterlinden Square has recovered its historical significance, recalling the times when, across from the convent, stables and farm buildings formed an ensemble known as the “Ackerhof”.  The bus stop and parking lot existing prior to the museum's renovation have now become a new public and urban space. The Sinn canal, which flows under Colmar’s old town, has been reopened, becoming the central element of this new public space. Close to the water, a small house marks the museum's presence on the square: its positioning, volume and shape are those of the mill that once stood there. Two windows allow passers-by to look downwards at the underground gallery connecting the two ensembles of buildings.

The architects were looking for an urban configuration and architectural language that would fit into the old town and yet, upon closer inspection, appear contemporary.

Moved to the centre of Unterlinden Square, facing the canal, the entrance to the expanded Museum leads to the convent, whose facade has been delicately renovated. The renovation works were carried out in close collaboration with the architects of the French national heritage department.

Museological components from the recent past were removed and the spaces restored to an earlier state. Original wood ceilings and reopened formerly blocked windows looking out on the cloister and the city are now revealed. The church’s roof has been renovated, and a new wood floor installed in the nave. Visitors walk down a new, cast concrete spiral staircase leading to the underground gallery that connects the convent with the new building. Inside, Herzog & de Meuron designed the underground gallery and the new exhibition building (now called the “Ackerhof”), which present the 19th- and 20th-century collections, along contemporary, abstract lines. The space on the second floor of the Ackerhof is dedicated to temporary exhibitions: its gabled roof and exceptional height (11.5 meters) reflect the proportions/volumes of the Dominican church standing opposite. The central space of the former municipal baths, the swimming pool (“La Piscine”), is now connected to the new exhibition spaces. It serves as a venue for concerts, conferences, celebrations and contemporary art installations. The other spaces of the former baths house the administration of the museum, a library, a café facing the new courtyard and the Colmar Tourist Office facing Unterlinden Square.

The Ackerhof and the small house have facades made of irregular, hand-broken bricks, entering into dialogue with the convent facades in quarrystone and plaster that were redone many times over the centuries. A few lancet windows have been cut into these brick walls; the roof gables are in copper. The new courtyard is paved in sandstone, as is Unterlinden Square, while the enclosing walls are made of the same brick as the new buildings.  At the heart of the courtyard, an apple grove – the “Pomarium” – arises from a platform made of stone and brick.

In close collaboration with Jean-François Chevrier and Élia Pijollet, as well as with the museum’s curators, the museography and the architecture were developed hand in hand. the collections comprise works of worldwide renown from the middle ages and the renaissance—most notably, the Isenheim altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald and Nicolas von Hagenau (1505-1516)—as well as designs, prints and patterns for the production of textiles, photographs, paintings, sculptures, faience pieces and ethnographic objects from the 19th and early 20th centuries, with a focus on local art and art history.

From the 1960s onwards, a modern art collection was built up. As to the Isenheim altarpiece, it remains in its original if more light-filled and less cluttered convent church location, although its presentation frame has been replaced by a sober steel structure. This makes the painted wood panels look more like artworks.  Eleventh- to sixteenth-century paintings, sculptures, small altars and artifacts are on display on the neighboring ground floor and in the cloister. The downstairs floor presents the archaeological collections. The underground gallery consists of a succession of three very different exhibition spaces.



Beginning the circuit, we have the history of the Unterlinden Museum, covering a section of 19th-century and early 20th-century works. The second gallery displays three of the museum’s most important pieces: located under the little house, this room represents the core of the expanded Unterlinden Museum, uniting the project’s three dimensions: urban development, architecture and museography.



On the first and second floors, the new building represents a loose chronological sequence of the 20th-century collection. Interconnected spatial units organize and structure the floor’s overall volume, rather than subdividing it: here works or groups of works are exhibited in relation to one another.



Together with the museography for the collection of 20th-century art, the inaugural exhibition (from january to june 2016), curated by Jean-François Chevrier, will serve as an outstanding example of the uses to which the newly acquired spaces can be put, while presenting an exemplary reading of specific pieces from the collection.

CREDITS. TECHNICAL SHEET.-

Architects.- Herzog & de Meuron
Project team.- Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Christine Binswanger (Partner in Charge), Christoph Röttinger (Associate, Project Director), Christophe Leblond (Project Manager), Marco Zürn (Project Manager) Edyta Augustynowicz (Digital Technologies), Farhad Ahmad (Digital Technologies), Aurélien Caetano, Delphine Camus, Tim Culbert, Arnaud Delugeard, Carlos Higinio Esteban, Judith Funke, Daniel Graignic Ramiro, Yann Gramegna, Wolfgang Hardt (Partner), Thorsten Kemper, Aron Lorincz (Digital Technologies), Donald Mak (Associate), Severin Odermatt, Valentin Ott, Alejo Paillard, Nathalie Rinne, Jordan Soriot, Raul Torres Martin (Digital Technologies), Guy Turin, Paul Vantieghem, Maria Vega Lopez, Caesar Zumthor.

Collaborators.- Museography.- Jean-François Chevrier, art historian, assisted by Élia Pijollet. Partner Architect.- DeA Architectes. Structural Engineering.- ARTELIA. Acoustics.- Echologos. Cost Consultant.- C2Bi. Façade Engineering.- PPEngineering, Prof. Jäger. Lighting Consultant.- Arup, London, UK.. Signage.- NEWID, Basel, Switzerland. Landscape Consultant.- Cap Vert Ingénierie, Grenoble, France. Tree Consultant.- August Kunzel Landschaftsarchitekten, Basel, Switzerland.

Dates.- Completed, 2015. Inaugurated, January, 2016.
Client.- City of Colmar, France
Site area.- 154,839 sqf / 14,385 sqm
Gross floor area.- 7,700 sqm (5,800 sqm existing +1,900 sqm new)

 

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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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Published on: February 7, 2016
Cite: "The Musée Unterlinden extension by Herzog & de Meuron" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/musee-unterlinden-extension-herzog-de-meuron> ISSN 1139-6415
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