The 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 veiled in part by a free-standing concrete wall. A video screen is installed directly above the main entrance at this exposed location. As an element shaping the façade, the video screen takes on not only a real function, but also a symbolic one: it mediates between the inside and outside, between art and the public.