This limestone-faced museum in the German city of Kassel by Kada Wittfeld Architektur homes the archives of popular literary duo the Brothers Grimm .
Grimmwelt Kassel (The Brothers Grimm Museum) is constructed on a sloping plot in Weinberg, a former vineyard near Kassel’s centre. The elevated internet site is strewn with fragments of stone retaining walls, actions, pergolas and is supported by planted terraces.
The German studio, which also created a weathering steel museum that cantilevers over a Celtic burial ground, gave the Grimmwelt Kassel a phase-shaped roof that doubles as a see stage in excess of the city.
The city was after the property to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm – the Brothers Grimm – and the museum is designed to existing their literary works. The brothers are ideal acknowledged for their anthology, the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. The guide of folklore stories contains Cinderella, Sleeping Attractiveness and Snow White.
Relevant story: Site visitors to Henning Larsen’s Moesgaard Museum can walk in excess of its grassy sloping roof
“Site visitors encounter a place with diverse environment and a single that focuses on German linguistics as effectively as the collection of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales,” stated the studio.
The museum is divided across five split ranges that accommodate the sloping internet site, and functions a stepped roof culminating in a viewing platform more than the park and city.
Photograph by Andreas Weber
“The new museum continues the topography of the surroundings in an available roof landscape and thus gives the park with an open stairway that prospects up to a terrace with a view across Kassel,” stated the architects.
“It translates the historical and topographical features of the surrounding park into a steady open area and invites site visitors to discover the exhibitions at their very own pace.”
A cafe, shop and exhibition hall displaying introductory exhibits spread across the biggest of the museum’s floors at ground level.
The prolonged ground level functions panoramic windows, snaking benches with views over the southern portion of the city and the nearby Karlsaue Park.
A unique exhibitions room is situated at the best of the creating and three partial basement floors include archives and storage places.
The reinforced concrete structure is faced in coarsely textured limestone block, which are laid in programs of varying height. The material was selected for its reference to the limestone passages under and the previous framework on the plot, which was destroyed for the duration of an air raid in 1945.
A warren of limestone tunnels beneath the former vineyard were employed for beer storage in the 19th century, then converted into shelters in the course of the 2nd world war.
Kassel is also house to Documenta, a contemporary artwork festival that has been held every 5 many years since its foundation for the duration of the 1955 Federal Horticultural Demonstrate, for which the late 2015 Pritzker laureate Frei Otto created a tent-like pavilion. The up coming instalment, Documenta 14, will be held in summertime 2017.
Photography is by Jan Bitter, except if otherwise stated.
Undertaking credits:
Architect: Kada Wittfeld Architektur
Undertaking management: Oliver Venghaus
Consumer: Documenta Stadt Kassel
Cooperation: Holzer Kobler Architekturen (exhibition design and style), Hürlimann Lepp (curatorial idea)
Concept diagram 
Exploded isometric diagram 
Roof diagram 
Location strategy 
Ground floor plan 
Extended section 
Cross part
