Lech Grochola
Museum and Centre of Reproduction in Frankfurt
The proposal for a Museum of Reproduction is located centrally in Frankfurt, along the Untermainkai by the Main River. It contains a museological programme for the technology and practice of reproduction and an extensive centre for reproduction and copying art objects as well as common commercial goods.
The Museum of Reproduction is devoted to the entire cultural complex of reproduction and copying, particularly as it emerged as a vital productive and economic force from early 20th century and on. It problematises the cultural phenomenon that Walter Benjamin so powerfully addressed in his essay of 1936, the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. The museum provocatively combines its museum function with commercial services and outlets, which provides the sale of all different kinds of services and objects that are reproduced. In this manner, the museum function is confronted with the reproduction service and sales, and Benjamin’s ideas about the ‘aura’ and ‘ritual’ with respect to art production are radicalised and thrown into question.
A visitor may thus learn about one of the most powerful productive forces in our time, its technological base and socio-cultural role, while also buying a poster of a great painting or a fake Rolex watch. In providing this dual function, the Museum and Centre of Reproduction appeals first of all to a young audience and couples a cultural and educational programme to their habits of consumption.
The building occupies a large part of the site and facilitates a new, underground connection between the riverside and the site through a new pedestrian tunnel. Facing the river, its sits as the apex of the extension of the main shopping area in Frankfurt. Together with the small high-rise across the sss ddd, the building makes up a new gate to the inner city as one passes northwards on the Friedensbrücke.
The building is a six level structure where the different functions are distributed in an open, boundary-free manner in a vertical organisation of looped surfaces. The building organisation and structure is derived from an analysis of ring structures in Italian renaissance churches. Such ring structures, for example and in planar terms, between a dome and the wall structure below, serve the dual function of dividing and connecting different functional and symbolic zones.
In the Museum and Centre of Reproduction, this ring model is transformed and employed to articulate the façade and the sectional and planar organisation of the building. The main structure of the building is made from steel; the façade is glazed with large panels with various degrees of transparency. The building also offers cafés and a roof terrace restaurant.