Zhenyuan Yang
Contemporary Art Museum in Offenbach
The new Contemporary Art Museum in Offenbach is situated on 4000 m2 site by the Main River, inside the Hafeninsel and next to the intersection of Nordring and Kaiserstrasse. The proposal is formulated as a critique of traditional art museums with their discrete and isolated spaces to exhibit the art. It draws inspiration from contemporary art fairs where social events are mixed with the display of art and varying types of events are supported within the exhibition area. The museum thus attempts to combine the exhibition spaces with event structures into a new social and artistic environment; it sets forth a new synthesis of social space and art.
The social and artistic environment takes the form of an interior landscape that connects smoothly to the outside, the surrounding riverscape and urban infrastructure. The project thus integrates the historical landscape and recreational areas along the river as a means to synthesise social space with the exhibition areas.
The formal articulation of the interior landscape produces spaces of varying sizes and forms, much like a natural topography. It provides different zones and atmospheres for diverse forms of art and social gatherings. This is achieved through the transformation of an open plan organisation into the new interior landscape in order to solve the coming together of the specific requirements for exhibiting art and the open, relaxed structure of social space.
The design of the museum is based on an analysis of a simple ring structure and its material-structural behaviour. The analysis leads to parametric design system for the infrastructural space. Theoretically, the design strategy attempts to extend the diagrammatic paradigm of the recent ten to fifteen years by introducing models of material geometry into the generative process. In the specific context of the site, the system produces a network of connections with an already included structural capacity. It also generates an integrated organisation of interstitial spaces that can accommodate the exhibition and event spaces.
The building proposal that emerges from this process is oriented on the site so that it opens to the riverside while turning a more closed façade to the urban fabric to the southeast. The principle structure is realised in reinforced concrete with a perforated roof with glazed openings.
The interior offers a visual kaleidoscope of vistas and openings. It mixes views onto art, people walking and gathering in different localities and contexts, and glimpses of the outside. On the outside, the building can be understood as a series of layered paths and terraces, amplifying the public use of the existing riverbanks. The building offers two principle routes, one leading to its interior and one allowing a more expedient passing through the perimeter of the building complex.
The Contemporary Art Museum presents the public with a constructed landscape for the enjoyment of the arts. Its architecture stages art as an integral part of a 21st century model for social space.