Luigi Micheletti Award 2013

The redesigned Dresden Museum of Military History is now the official central museum of the German Armed Forces. It will house an exhibition area of roughly 21,000 square feet, making it Germany’s largest museum.

The armory was built from 1873 –1876 and became a museum in 1897. Since its 1897 founding, the Dresden Museum of Military History has been a Saxon armory and museum, a Nazi museum, a Soviet museum and an East German museum. Today it is the military history museum of a unified and democratic Germany, its location outside the historic center of Dresden having allowed the building to survive the allied bombing campaign at the end of World War II.

In 1989, unsure how the museum would fit into a newly unified German state, the government decided to shut it down. By 2001 feelings had shifted and an architectural competition was held for an extension that would facilitate a reconsideration of the way we think about war.

Daniel Libeskind’s winning design boldly interrupts the original building's symmetry. The extension, a massive, five-story 14,500-ton wedge of concrete and steel, cuts through the 135-year-old former arsenal’s structural order. A 82-foot high viewing platform (the highest point of the wedge is 98 feet) provides breathtaking views of modern Dresden while pointing towards the area where the fire bombing of Dresden began, creating a dramatic space for reflection.

The new façade’s openness and transparency contrasts with the opacity and rigidity of the existing building. The latter represents the severity of the authoritarian past while the former reflects the openness of the democratic society in which it has been reimagined. The interplay between these perspectives forms the character of the new Military History Museum.

Inside, in the original, columned part of the building, German’s military history is presented in chronological order. But now it is complemented, in the new wide-open spaces of the five-story wedge, by new exhibition areas with a new focus on thematic consideration of the societal forces and human impulses that create a culture of violence.

The project opened in October 2011 completed by Architekt Daniel Libeskind AG (ADL) with Studio Daniel Libeskind (SDL).



Building size
• 14,000 sq.m
• 20,000 sq.m (Exhibition Area)

Structure
Steel and concrete


Client
The Military History Museum (The Federal Republic of Germany)

Joint Venture Partner
Architekt Daniel Libeskind AG, Zurich, with Studio Daniel Libeskind

Cost & Site Supervision
Reese Lubic Wöhrlin Gesellschaft von Architekten mbH

Structural Engineer
GSE Ingenieur-Gesellschaft mbh, Berlin, Germany

Mechanical / Electrical / Plumbing Engineer
Ipro Dresden, Germany

Landscape Architect
Dipl.-Ing. Volker von Gagern, Dresden, Germany

Lighting Designer
Delux AG, Zurich, Switzerland

Façade
Josef Gartner GmbH, Gundelfingen, Germany

• Auditing Statics
Ing. Consult Cornelius-Schwarz-Zeitler GmbH, Dresden, Germany

• Exhibition Design
Barbara Holzer--Collaboration Holzer Kobler Architekturen and HG Merz Architekten

“This is a museum that encapsulates the principles of the EU, unity in diversity and peace. It is making a unique effort to change the grammar of the past, as it is seen and understood by today’s society, in order to bring more hope for peace in the world.”

“Although architects place their own landmarks in their designs as Libeskind does, it is clear that to achieve a good result this needs to be balanced with a strong group of policy- and decision-makers and advisors in the museum, and this has been done to great effect.”

“This is the best peace museum in a country which holds the European record of going to war in the last century. Also because it deals with the place of man in society, whether it be as a soldier of war or man as a victim of war. It is one of the best museums Germany can offer to a more peaceful world. It gives hope for an everlasting peace in Europe.”

“The museum is proud to be a forum which puts questions without giving answers. However, what is obvious for any visitor is that the museum is not quite neutral: it advocates peace and understanding ...It is not a hymn for the bravery of ancestors, but a very honest witness of the past and of the present. Some of the themes of the temporary exhibitions are very daring.”