Historical Museum in Frankfurt / LRO GmbH & Co. KG Freie Architekten BDA

closed

The extension creates an urban plaza between the existing buildings and the additional exhibition spaces, delimited on its short sides by the so-called Stauferbau and, at the other end, by one of the few half-timbered buildings, the “Haus Wertheym”, that has been spared from wartime destruction. Below this plaza is the circulation level, a lower lobby, which gives access to the exhibition levels on four floors. A special feature of the building is its roofscape, which is composed of two contiguous gable roofs joined lengthwise. The façade is clad with red sandstone, a common historic building material of the region.As a first step, the old buildings were renovated by the office of Diezinger and Kramer, in order to accommodate the operations of the museum until completion of the supplemental new building.For this reason, the city held a competition for a new building with two primary goals: to make spatial improvements to the overall urban situation and to fulfil the specified museum requirements. After completion, the new exhibition building and the existing historic buildings will constitute a single entity.Text description provided by the architects.The Historical Museum in Frankfurt is one of the oldest institutions of its kind. It is located directly in the centre of the city, at the Römerberg and near the river Main. Until the 2010s, it was housed in an ensemble of historic buildings and in an annex building from the 1970s made of reinforced concrete. This more recent building had become unsuitable for further use due to technical problems concerning fire protection, escape routes, and contamination by harmful substances.