The Brandhorst Museum in München, Germany, is one of the latest projects from architecture firm Sauerbruch Hutton, based in Berlin. The architecture agency has become one of the most dynamic pioneers of colour in modern European architecture and is a committed user of the NCS system in the development of its work. “In our work, the colour concept always forms an integral part of the overall concept from the first moment onwards,” notes Sauerbruch Hutton’s Caroline Wolf.
The Brandhorst Museum project represents a unique architectural proposition in which the building itself is as much an artwork as the pieces held within. ‘The polychromatic facade appears similar to a large abstract painting. The exterior skin is constructed of several layers. In front of the substructure and the thermal installation, there is a horizontally folded bi-coloured sheet-metal skin with fine perforations that absorb the noise of traffic from Tuerkenstrasse and Theresienstrasse. In front of this horizontally emphasized element of the façade are 36,000 separate ceramic rods (4cm x 4cm x 110cm), attached vertically and glazed in 23 different colours. The rods, in three families of differing colour mix and tone (light-mediumdark), have been arranged in three areas in such a way that the building appears to consist of three interlocking individual volumes.’ Viewed from afar the three colour groups used appear to combine, forming a neutral colour with differing brightness and tone.
NCS IN USE
“The first idea may come from a memory of a colour or colour combination we may have seen somewhere or it may come from a new thought that we have specific to the new project,” explains Wolf, adding; “Then we need to make an approximation of this colour or colour group – this we do with the help of NCS.”
For the Brandhorst Museum Sauerbruch Hutton visited the manufacturer of the ceramic rods three times during the development process filtering an initial 12 possible colour directions into the final facade as it appears now. “One cannot approve a single colour ahead of the whole group, as each colour affects all the others,” says Wolf.