Wandel Hoefer Lorch & Hirsch
Wandel Hoefer Lorch & Hirsch
GERMANY - Nikolaus Hirsch and Wolfgang Lorch of Wandel Hoefer Lorch & Hirsch speak about the political dimension of architecture, their critical position between reconstruction and avant-garde, and the fact that one can appreciate Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum without necessarily liking its expressiveness.
Biography
Nikolaus Hirsch (b. 1964) and Wolfgang Lorch (b. 1960) studied at Darmstadt Technical University. In 1993, together with Rena Wandel-Hoefer, Andrea Wandel and Andreas Hoefer, they founded the Wandel Hoefer Lorch & Hirsch office, based in Saarbrücken and Frankfurt. Since 2003, Wolfgang Lorch has been a professor at Darmstadt Technical University. Nikolaus Hirsch has held a professorship at the Architectural Association in London and been a visiting professor at, among others, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 2010 he was appointed Rector of the renowned Staedel Art Academy in Frankfurt.
Profile
Oliver Elser: What are you working on at the moment?
Wolfgang Lorch: On the Ecumenical Forum in Hamburg, which is under construction in the HafenCity district, and on the Archaeological Zone in Cologne.
OE: The latter won first prize in a competition that triggered a heated debate. How come?
Nikolaus Hirsch: The closer one gets to the centre of a city, the more discussion there is about new architectural interventions. The project is right in the historical centre of Cologne, immediately next to the City Hall. The layers of the city's history, unearthed during excavation work, are intended to be displayed in an archaeological museum. Our proposal envisages these layers being linked together under the roof of an extremely large protective structure above the Archaeological Zone.
WL: The discussions about the design were triggered by our proposal to redevelop the so-called City Hall Square (Rathausplatz). I say 'so-called square' because the place had already been under development for centuries.
NH: We are talking about space that was left following the bombing of Cologne during World War II, an undefined area that is scarcely used.
OE: Originally there was to have been a Jewish Museum in Cologne, and now it is known as the Archaeological Zone. What happened?
NH: Architecturally and politically, we think that working under one roof that boasts a contradictory history is more interesting than the neat division undertaken, for example, in the Jewish Museum in Berlin. That started out as an integrated Museum of Berlin with a Jewish section, and then became a purely Jewish museum. Berlin demonstrates the traditional approach to historical museums: historical discourse, and as such, social groups are separated from one another.
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