The integration of the Passive House certified museum Kunstmuseum Ravensburg into the fabric of a medieval city challenges the identity of architecture by bridging 500 years of vernacular with a single gesture. The museum maintains the German city’s fabric with a nod in materiality and form, but resolutely avoids mimicry or nostalgia. If you quickly walked passed it you may not even recognize it is of our era. The barrel vault roof relief and rich, historical brickwork allow the mass to slip into the old, dense neighborhood with only a whisper and wink of the contemporary on the outside.
Pass the first-of-its-kind revolving door and you?ll find a familiar 21st-century interior. Crisp white rooms host 20th-century Expressionism and Contemporary art in a nearly hermetically sealed container. Three floors for display and a basement archive make for a tidy program, one that does not attempt to distract from the contents. The journey to the top is where the design?s coup d?état occurs. The tapering brick vault ceiling pulls you out of the airy space and plants you back into the old town.The museum?s effort not only bridges the past with the present,but stretches into the future by embracing the challenging energy standard of Passivhaus which originated only 350 km north in Darmstadt. By incorporating extremely low energy use, integrating the tried and true use of thermal mass with exhaustive insulation, the museum stretches the possibilities of inferred v...