A closer look
Cornelia Hellstern and Roland Pawlitschko created the result of the ‘Carte Blanche’ that the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main issued to KSP Engel. ‘Mr Engel did not want a navel-gazing exercise under any circumstances,’ says Hellstern. The result was not to be a retrospective and serve as a travelling exhibition at the same time. In the first room on the upper floor, visitors can now view a display depot with architectural models on heavy-duty shelves, curated by Mario Lorenz. The second section opens up into a large area where freestanding wall panels and tower-like structures can be seen, leaving plenty of space for discovery. The six essential typologies and themes for KSP Engel – location, city, house, structure, space and culture – are taken up and provide insights into the complex work of the architectural firm. ‘We don't show one project after another, but look at the content and what actually lies behind the firm,’ says Hellstern. As ‘tools’ derived from the methods, strategies and approaches to sustainable buildings and neighbourhoods, they have identified complexity, dimensional configuration, sensitivity, networking and resilience. Visitors can explore how these are used in the meticulously detailed planning that precedes high-quality architecture.
The exhibition spans a total of 37 projects from the last 25 years, spread across the workbenches and six towers, which are thematically linked. Extendable polycarbonate hollow chamber panels serve as interactive presentation surfaces. The aim is not to present KSP Engel's work in its entirety. Instead, the towers highlight international projects that, as milestones, most clearly illustrate the interlocking of topology and tools – such as the Deutsche Börse, the Central Business Tower (CBT), the Shenzhen Art Museum & Library, and the conversion of the existing building for the federal ministries in Berlin. KSP Engel designs buildings holistically, from their integration into the urban space to the door handles, ensuring an enormous transfer of knowledge between the firm's numerous locations in Germany and China. The exhibition offers insight into the work and portfolio of the architects, but also provides a general breakdown of how urban planning works, how multifaceted it is in terms of content, and what was decisive for the design processes.
To ensure sustainability, the displays have been designed to be minimalist: the towers are made of untreated square timber from local coniferous trees, which are screwed together so that the connections can be easily separated. Composite materials have been avoided as far as possible, and some of the polycarbonate panels are made from recycled material. The conscious use of resources is at the heart of the exhibition architecture: designed as a travelling exhibition, all elements of the show are material-saving, reusable, demountable and lightweight. Even the LED spotlights were borrowed from lighting specialist Zumtobel. The insight into the methods, strategies and approaches for sustainable buildings and neighbourhoods reveals an architectural communication that openly presents the interdisciplinary processes in the work of KSP Engel, rather than putting the architects themselves on a pedestal. A publication will follow, serving as a kind of inventory with a view to the future, according to Hellstern.
The Museum Angewandte Kunst awards the “Carte Blanche” at irregular intervals to creative individuals who are engaged with a topic of current relevance. To mark the 100th anniversary of the “Das Neue Frankfurt” design movement, the museum is currently focusing its annual program on its revolutionary ideas and highlighting their great relevance to our present day. KSP Engel's urban design and planning processes, as well as their interdisciplinary approach to responding to contemporary challenges, fit perfectly into this context. The collaboration is also the result of many previous discussions about urban planning between Jürgen Engel and the director of the Museum of Applied Arts, Prof. Matthias Wagner K. “Tools for Better Cities” thus also creates a space of possibility for illustrating processes that serve to shape our current and future built environment.
