The new museum building honors the historical context of the site, while at the same time finding an effective way to merge the past with the aesthetic, spatial experience of the newly created.

The aim of the project is not only to design a modern museum building, but also to integrate it into the surrounding museum quarter effectively. Past is combined with present to create transformative, holistic architecture and wallpaper is used as an artistic medium, referencing the world’s largest collection of wallpaper exhibited in the museum. The building echoes the two-dimensionality and capacity for illusion associated with wallpaper: using architectural means, the façade evolves from a sculptural three-dimensional design on the end faces to a figurative two-dimensional design on the long sides.

The front facing Brüder Grimm Platz evokes past history in an illusionistic trompe l’œil achieved with high-end production techniques. The courtyard side of the building also plays with ambivalent perceptions by exposing what appears to be solid on the exterior as porous when you get inside. This architectural complexity is juxtaposed with an interior space designed for maximum flexibility; the building provides space suited to a variety of configurations and different modular exhibition concepts. Visitors detect a dialectical principle in the way the interior spaces are configured: spatially neutral spaces with low light to protect the exhibits contrast with bright corridors employing specific structural elements to aid visitor flow.