Schloss Freudenstein, Freiberg
AFF architekten has won the open design competition to convert the ancient Freudenstein castle into a museum devoted to mining and mineralogy.
To win a rather big competition is unquestionably good news for an architect, especially in Germany, since open-to-all competitions have become extremely rare here in recent years and when they are held attract several hundred participants. One of the many participants in an open design competition for the adaptive reuse of the ancient Freudenstein castle in the German city of Freiberg was the young architectural firm AFF architekten (Berlin/ Magdeburg) which has now emerged the winnen. The firm's name signals a non-hierarchical work group, underlining the members' belief that architecture can never be (and never has been) the product of a single mastermind. lf there is something that could be called AFF's 'design philosophy´, it is an immense respect for existing buildings, intense interest in their history, aesthetic quality through a low-budget approach and detailed knowledge of materials and construction principles.
Freudenstein Castle, parts of which date back to the late middle ages, has dominated the Freiberg's cityscape for centuries. lt was recently decided to turn the ancient monument into a museum devoted to Freiberg's long association with mining (the city has the world's oldest academy of mining sciences, the 'Bergakademie´, founded in 1765). Comprising 6100 qm and costing some 22 million euros, the museum will house two complementary programmes: the unique Saxon mining archive and an exhibition space for a large mineralogical collection. In fact, AFF's proposal, which leaves the castle as intact, as possible, merely follows the conditions and requirements of place and use, but in so doing finds strong metaphors that make the design alltogether remarkable and convincing.
The dominant motif - that of the room-within-a-room - can be seen as an analogy with the mineralogical phenomenon known as a 'druse' : a rock cavity lined with a crust of projecting crystals. In the archive section, old-looking tubular windows have been added to provide light and views out and to make the new use visible on the outside. The motif recurs in the exhibition space, but here it takes the form of smaller rooms intended as cabinets for the various exhibition objects. Even the new entrance building in the castle's courtyard could be seen as such a metaphorical enclosure.
Von Knut Birkholz
Links zu diesem Projekt:
