MIXED MEDIA

Kolumba, the art gallery of the archdiocese of Koln, was designed by architect Peter Zumthor on a site rich with archaeological remains. And while it shows the ruins with abject theatricality, it shows artworks with tremendous grace. The three-story building is planned simply: it has a large, L-shaped footprint, with small box-like galleries dropped inside the corners of each floor. The plan is so simple that it looks foolish in the visitor’s brochure, like a student exercise in space planning. The large central spaces receive daylight from full-height windows, draped in shivering silver silk curtains. And the smaller galleries receive daylight through clerestories of clouded glass. The spaces have generous, cube-like proportions. The concrete on the floors, walls and ceilings has a smooth, cool grey finish. The walls are entirely blank. Daylight rolls through like mist, softening the purposefully reduced interiors. One of my friends, a painter, said, simply, “This is a great place to show art.”

The museum houses changing exhibits, and when we visited there was a show that paired contemporary German artworks with religious artifacts from the diocesan archives. So a vitrine showing a funky necklace of plastic beads sat beside one showing a centuries-old gold cross. A tender Madonna-and-child figurine sat on a pedestal in front of a huge, cartoonish painting of woodpeckers. This arrangement didn’t serve the old or new art well. It diminished the raw, atavistic power of the religious objects, and made the contemporary art seem flaky.

The building’s interiors, in their platonic proportions and astounding luminosity, captured something close to the spiritual. It’s unfortunate that the religious artifacts on display – a tabernacle trimmed with colored stones, a crucifixion carved from ivory, immense gold chalices – didn’t have the chance.

September 14, 2015 by Nalina Moses

RUINATION

Architect Peter Zumthor is best known for his understatement, and best appreciated by other architects, who understand how difficult it is to execute spaces with a reduced, minimalist look. Visiting Kolumba, the art gallery he designed for the archdiocese of Koln, I was, predictably, impressed by details: the inch-high brick coursing, the flush metal plate door frames, the black plaster finish on the restroom walls, the fastidiously book-marked wood paneling in the library, the bent metal pins supporting the stair handrails. The gallery spaces themselves are finished in a luminous, ash-colored concrete. The floors, ceilings and walls meet simply, without trims or reveals, so that the concrete folds seamlessly from surface to surface. It creates an atmosphere of quiet and sobriety.

Kolumba was built on the site of a centuries-old church and, during excavation, layers of remains from older churches were found, some dating to the eleventh century, all piled upon one another. The ruins were dutifully preserved and are housed in a pavilion, also designed by Zumthor, attached to the new gallery building. One reaches the ruins by walking from the gallery lobby through huge steel doors and a heavy leather curtain. Inside the pavilion there’s a zigzagging wood walkway, raised a foot off the ground, that gives views to the ruins below, all around. The space is dramatically dark, lit only by daylight filtered down through open brickwork at clerestory level, and a handful of cone-shaped pendant lamps.

This pavilion is charged with a theatricality that’s at odds with the quietness of the adjoining galleries. The walkway is clumsy; its handrails are heavy, its wood is stained a garish red, and its jagged course has no apparent logic. Perhaps the departure from Zumthor’s typical restrained vocabulary is meant to emphasize that this is a contemporary structure that’s been inserted into an old, sacred space. Instead it feels like a poor addition, as if it had been authored by a different, less gifted architect.

September 07, 2015 by Nalina Moses