Kassel School of Art and Design has a long and winding history that dates back to 1777. Today, thousands of students come here to study visual arts, visual communication, product design, art education, art history and aesthetics.
The school describes itself as a place of constant change, where artistic and creative freedom is combined with scientific thinking. The students are encouraged to break conventions and explore new paths.
Somehow all this is manifested in the 450 square metre exhibition hall that opened in 2022, in the courtyard of the art school’s listed north building.
Different aesthetic ideals and eras that interact
The latter was designed by architect Paul Friedrich Posenenske and built in the 1960s, and now its concrete and steel structure stands in contrast with the dark wooden façade of the new building. The buildings clearly represent different aesthetic ideals and eras. And yet they interact well with each other.
The exhibition hall looks like an elegant box, sitting regally in the courtyard, its rough-sawn larch an intense black, creating a simple but tasteful design. While it stands out and draws the eye, it also blends in and interacts well with its surroundings.
Markus Innauer from the Austrian architectural firm Innauer Matt, which won the architectural competition to design the exhibition hall, says that the façade colour is inspired by the black steel structure that surrounds the historic 1960s building.
»When I first came to view the site, I was so impressed by the existing building. It has a very clear structure, a kind of raw and direct materialisation, and I was attracted by the atmosphere that it invoked. We wanted to carry that same feeling over to our building. So we created something different, but still in harmony with the rest of the site.«
Wood an obvious choice
Using wood was a natural choice. According to Markus Innauer, the building felt predestined for this material, and it was also the best solution in both financial and environmental terms. Glulam was used for the cylindrical components, such as columns, beams and transoms. Cross laminated timber (CLT) was used for flat components such as roof formwork and wall panels, and all the joints for the timber structure were handcrafted.
»We didn’t want to use concrete or steel like in the old building. Times have changed since that was built. We wanted to create a modern building and it felt exciting to be building a wooden exhibition hall, as it’s not the most obvious solution,« says Markus Innauer.
The rectangular exhibition hall is positioned concentrically in relation to the older building, i.e. with a common centre, creating a generous front plaza.
Documenta - one of the world's largest exhibitions of modern art
Kassel is the home of Documenta, one of the world’s largest recurring exhibitions of modern art, and this is reflected in a small green space with seven so-called Beuys trees. For Documenta 7 in the 1980s, artist Joseph Beuys had 7,000 oak trees planted in the town as a kind of permanent and living work of art.
The internal structure of the exhibition hall, with its clear line of sight through the entire building, is, like the black façade, a clear reference to Posenenske’s 1960s building. Similarly, the untreated wooden surfaces of the interior allude to the rough concrete surfaces of the older building. The hall opens up in all directions and invites visitors in like a warm embrace, enveloping them in fragrant firs.
»It’s like stepping into another world. We left the wood unpainted to create a direct relationship with the material. It’s an inspiring environment for the art students to work in,« says Markus.
Innauer Matt has a well-documented ability to create simple architectural solutions in complex conditions, seamlessly blending the new with what already exists.
With limited space in the courtyard and a tight schedule to avoid disrupting the school’s activities, the best solution for the exhibition hall was to use as many prefabricated elements as possible, enabling the hall to be erected quickly.
The brief included creating not just an exhibition hall, but a flexible space for multiple uses. The building is also used for lectures, concerts and sound installations, for which the beautifully warm acoustics provided by the wood are a great benefit.
Movable pine walls
The hall can be used in its entirety or divided into sections using 36 movable pine wall elements that run along rails in the ceiling. When not in use, the wall elements, which are 5.8 metres tall and 1.15 metres wide, can be pushed away into one corner of the room.
»You can move the walls around however you want. We weren’t quite sure that the students would use this feature, but every now and then I get sent pictures showing the new exhibitions, and the walls are always being used in new and different ways. That feels good, because we didn’t really know how it would turn out. Sometimes your ideas work great and sometimes things don’t turn out the way you intended, but in this case it worked exactly as we wanted,« says Markus.
864 curved glass lenses
A particularly distinctive feature is the 864 curved glass lenses in the upper walls, which have both a practical and an aesthetic function. Markus Innauer himself is very pleased with the solution, which he says gives the exhibition hall a graphic depth when sunlight and shadows hit the façade.
»We thought a lot about how to bring in light. We didn’t want direct sunlight. We wanted a softer light that was suitable for an exhibition or as lighting for a working artist. Our first idea was to bring the light in through the ceiling somehow, but then we thought of trying to do something with the walls instead, to perforate them in some way. We felt this could not only have an internal function, but also add something to the outside, to make the façade more special.«
Before proposing the glass lenses, Innauer Matt consulted designers about what was even possible and also created a detailed cross-section to give a general outline. After winning the architectural competition, they continued to pursue their idea.
They tested different forms of mouthblown glass and produced four variants. They then made prototypes with holes in the walls to explore the functionality and appearance on both the outside and the inside, including how the light fell at different angles. The result was a triple glazing solution with a sandblasted glass on the inside to soften the light in the desired way.
»It was a fascinating process and certainly a lot of work, but now we have a special effect for both the interior and exterior, which was our intention from the beginning. We weren’t sure what to expect, but it has worked out really well. It was great to see what we were capable of creating and that we could achieve something like this,« says Markus Innauer.
The design of the light lenses was the biggest challenge. Otherwise, the project was not particularly complicated in terms of structural engineering. The intention was to create a basically simple wooden building using solutions that were not too complex. As a result, the exhibition hall doesn’t contain all that much technology. There is no ventilation system, for example; instead, the space is naturally ventilated through the windows in the roof and walls.
»It was important for us not to have too advanced a level of technology in the building, but to take a low-tech approach instead.«