The extension of the Sprengel Museum (Hannover, Germany) proposes a sober and dark boxed volume, which seeks its integration with the urban landscape nearby, characterized by regularly disposed trees. In the inside, the exhibition rooms are put together through the heavy concrete facade, occupying the interstices between facade and exhibition halls by glassed lobbies that serve as visual relief to the outside.

The organization of the Sprengel Museum enlargement, designed by Meili & Peter AG, is composed of a series of exhibition halls distributed in an orthogonal grid, slightly rotating each room from its relative spatial arrangement. The access the exhibition halls is made via a spacious entrance hall, where a monumental staircase that greets visitors is located.

The rotation of the rooms from the organization axis gives some independence to each exhibition space, as well as serving as a counterpoint to the classical organization of the interior space.

Description of the project by MEILI & PETER ARCHITEKTEN

The existing museum represents a topographically and spatially extremely complex situation. One that is not easy to interpret either for the museum operation or its extension. Therefore, the project proposes a very simple volume as an extension that – in a similar size as the existing part – formulates its own relationship to the lake and the promenade: protruding into the trees, lightly floating, with a single main floor. It concludes and frames the existing part with its diagonally layered spaces.

The plan of the new exhibition wing at first forms a simple, classical enfilade with a soft and synoptic guided tour for visitors. This route gets its rhythm not only from its different room formats, but also from the fact that the rooms within the grid seem to “dance” a bit: they are slightly turned out of line and thus give each hall a certain independence, which is moreover emphasized by different ceiling heights. At the interfaces between the extremely strict outer cube and the rather eventful floor plan, small glazed loggias are placed that allow a view of the surroundings: small foyers that may be utilized as well.

These virtually dancing spaces are held together by a quiet and heavy concrete façade, whose formulation as bands of reliefs visualizes the events inside. Concrete as the façade material is treated much like a cut stone that is refined by creative interventions and manual processing. Thus, the material obtains, for instance, a noble, soft, almost velvety appearance by its dark colouring.

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Architects
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MEILI & PETER ARCHITEKTEN AG.- Marcel Meili, Markus Peter, Matthias Rühl.
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Team
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MEILI, PETER ARCHITEKTEN. Elke Eichmann, Christof Weber; Maike Basista, Sarah Escher, Lukas Eschmann, Elina Geibel, Patrycja Okuliar-Sowa, Anna Poullou, Mathias Wünsche.
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Construction management
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BAL Bauplanungs- und Steuerungs GmbH, Berlin (D)
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Bearing Structure Planning
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Drewes + Speth, Hannover; Werner Sobeck, Stuttgart (D)
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Dates
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Competition.- 2009
Project.- since 2010
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Building Physics
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Müller-BBM, Berlin (D)
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Façade design
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AMP Fassadentechnik, Neuss (D)
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Light Planning
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Licht Kunst Licht AG, Bonn (D)
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Electrical and Safety Engineering
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Rathenow BPS GmbH, Dresden (D)
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Building technology
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Inros Lackner AG, Rostock, Hannover (D)
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Landscape Architecture
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Müller Illien Landschaftsarchitekten, Zurich
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MARCEL MEILI (Küsnacht, Switzerland) studied architecture at the ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and formed Marcel Meili, Markus Peter Architekten together with Markus Peter in 1987. Since the establishment in 2006 he also runs the office of Marcel Meili, Markus Peter Architekten in Munich.

Marcel Meili has been a lecturer at the “Internationale Sommerakademie Berlin” in 1987 and in 1995 he won the award of the Biennale for Film and Architecture in Graz for the film "Il Girasole – A house near Verona“ produced in collaboration with the filmmaker Christoph Staub. Furthermore he has taught twice as a visiting professor at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and since 1999 he is a professor at ETH Zurich, where – together with Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Roger Diener, and Christian Schmid – he founded and runs ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute.

MARKUS PETER (Zurich, Switzerland) finished an apprenticeship as draftsman and studied at the Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany as a visiting student at the Department of Philosophy. 1984 Markus Peter received his diploma in architecture at the Technical Institute, Winterthur, Switzerland. In 1987 he formed Marcel Meili, Markus Peter Architekten together with Marcel Meili in Zurich, and established in 2006 a second office in Munchen, Germany.

Furthermore Markus Peter has worked as a teaching assistant for Prof. Mario Campi at the ETH, Zurich from 1886 to 1988 and in 1990 he was a teacher at the International Summer Academy (design) in Karlsruhe, Germany. From 1993 to 1995 he was Visiting Professor at the Chair of Design at the ETH Zurich and in 2002 Markus Peter turned Professor for Construction at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich. His current research focuses on the work and impact of the German architect Bernhard Hans Henry Scharoun.
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