Architecture

For Professor Josef P. Kleihues (1993–2004), the rebuilding and new construction of the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen was the ninth museum project he had been able to realize. With his work in Siegen, Kleihues was especially interested in the productive tension between the old and new fabric of the building, between tradition and modernism. Thus, he expanded the old building, erected as a telegraph office in 1894, by adding a new building facing the Schlossplatz, which is partly veiled by a free-standing concrete wall. A video screen is installed at this exposed location, directly above the main entrance. As an element shaping the façade, the video screen not only has a real function, but a symbolic one as well: it mediates between the inside and the outside, between art and the public.