Mazel tov! With its modern new Lichtbau — Building of Light — exhibition structure, the Frankfurt Jewish Museum has received a major architectural award — the Great Nike, the highest architectural prize of the Association of German Architects (BDA).
Founded in 1988 as the the first municipal Jewish Museum in Germany, the museum reopened in 2020 after five years of closure for revamp and reconstruction, including new core exhibition and the Lichbau, a free-standing building that joins the original premises, the historic Rothschild Palais.
The “Lichtbau” was designed by Staab Architekten. It has doubled the museum’s overall surface area and is used for temporary exhibitions, lectures and symposia, a museum shop, and public cloakrooms.
With its extension, the Jewish Museum “has undergone an astounding and seemingly natural urban reorientation,” the Prize announcement said.
The old and new buildings, it said, create “a special, very public and at the same time almost intimate place that seems strangely removed from the real hustle and bustle of the city and, with the consistently white design of the building, seems to have fallen out of space and time.”
The ensemble of buildings of the Jewish Museum reflects the fragility in our society, the conflict between the self-image of dialogue and exchange on the one hand and a high need for protection and the resulting need for demarcation on the other. The necessary security concerns of the museum were met precisely and almost imperceptibly with the skilful staggering and interlacing of the urban ensemble and the inner world. The Jewish Museum in Frankfurt represents the desire to create a space for encounters that is as light-hearted as possible, despite all the difficulties in a society that is still at odds with intercultural issues.
The BDA awards the “Nike” architecture prize every three years, “for architects and builders of groundbreaking projects that have a lasting impact on building culture in Germany.” In addition to the Great Nike, Nike awards are presented for symbolism, atmosphere, combination, composition, social commitment, innovation and classic design.