Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne Building, NRW Architecture Photos, Architects, Interior Design News

Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne Architecture

Building in North Rhine-Westphalia, northwest Germany design by Atelier Brückner

post updated 23 July 2021 ; 2 Oct 2010

Ethnological exhibition surprises with a thematically arranged layout full of intensity and magic

Design: Atelier Brückner

Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum opened in Cologne

Historic Rice Barn, the museum‛s emblem, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum – Cultures of the World:

photo : Michael Jungblut, Berlin

Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne

As of 23 October, the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum is presenting its extensive ethnological collection with a new concept for the contents in a surprising scenographic setting. Stage-managed spaces, conceived and designed by ATELIER BRÜCKNER from Stuttgart, entice the visitor into fascinating worlds full of intensity and magic.

„A Matter of Perception and Oponion: Art“, theme-based visitor routing “People in Their Worlds”, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum – Cultures of the Word:

photo : Michael Jungblut, Berlin

“People in Their Worlds” is the title of the theme-based visitor routing through the exhibition, which reveals and displays itself in differentiated spatial narratives covering an area of 3,600 square metres. Around 2,000 exhibits are placed in theme-based spaces that have been allocated their own individual staged settings: “We want to make the exhibits speak, tell stories that move the visitor and create an experience that remains in the memory for a long time,” said Prof. Uwe R. Brückner, who developed the narrative dramaturgy of the new permanent exhibition with his multi-disciplinary team.

A panopticum of coherent themes, generated from the museum’s outstanding inventory, provides an authentic experience, whereby the scenography endows the culturally-comparative themes in the spaces with a three-dimensional language.

„Living Spaces – Ways of Living: European Parlour“, theme-based visitor routing “People in Their Worlds”, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum – Cultures of the Word:

photo : Michael Jungblut, Berlin

The visitor experiences the exhibition as a dynamic sequence of individual chapters that open up access to the diverse “Cultures of the World”. A total of nine themes are addressed from two main vantage points: “Understanding the World” and “Shaping the World”. The transition between the two consists of a stage-managed narrative space, consisting of doors; the opulently presented Gamelan ensemble offers an accommodation to the parcours.

The highlights of the exhibition are the space entitled “Death and the Afterlife”, illuminated by blazing light and concealed behind string curtains, and the European Salon with its interactive media desk. The “museum in a museum” takes museum work itself as a theme. Visible through a large window facing towards Neumarkt, a deconstructed yam silo is the central exhibit and invites the open-minded passer-by to pay a visit to the new permanent exhibition.

„Intermediary Worlds: Rituals“, theme-based visitor routing “People in Their Worlds”, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum – Cultures of the Word:

photo : Michael Jungblut, Berlin

In the foyer, the visitor is welcomed by the museum‛s emblem, a rice barn from Indonesia, which is accompanied by information modules where a preview of the entire route through the exhibition can be obtained. A prologue and an epilogue frame the pathway through the museum in the form of multi-media spatial installations that are designed in the same way. People from unfamiliar cultures welcome visitors here and, later, take their leave with the insight that they are all inhabitants of the city of Cologne together.

Transition, theme-based visitor routing “People in Their Worlds”, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum – Cultures of the Word:

photo : Michael Jungblut, Berlin

Doors, theme-based visitor routing “People in Their Worlds”, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum – Cultures of the Word:

photo : Michael Jungblut, Berlin

Epilogue, theme-based visitor routing “People in Their Worlds”, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum – Cultures of the Word:

photo : Michael Jungblut, Berlin

Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne images / information from ATELIER BRÜCKNER GmbH

Atelier Brückner

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photo : Stefan Bunkofer
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