Interior designer Gisbert Pöppler has redesigned the study rooms of the Prints and Drawings Collection at Frankfurt's Städel Museum - as light-filled treasure chambers where you forget about time.
The most striking innovation in the Large Study Hall: the hanging steel gallery. It was developed with Christoph Münks, as were the tables and cabinets, whose angled drawer fronts pick up on a detail of 1950s architecture. Simon Watson
The most striking new feature in the Large Study Hall of the Prints and Drawings Collection: the hanging steel gallery. It was developed with Christoph Münks, as were the tables and cabinets, whose angled drawer fronts pick up on a detail of 1950s architecture.
What does a painter known for his colorful art do when you take away his palette? If he masters his craft, he succeeds in bringing tension and atmosphere to the canvas by other means as well. Our painter's name is Gisbert Pöppler and, strictly speaking, he is an interior designer. Over the years, the Berlin-based artist has earned a reputation as a master of brightly colored interiors - only to surprise us now with a project that dispenses almost entirely with color. In collaboration with the blacksmith Christoph Münks, he designed the study area of the graphic collection in Frankfurt's Städel. Clear lines, free surfaces, delicate shades of gray, limed oak - design that restrains itself and, precisely because of this, not only attracts the eye, but is able to hold it.
Nothing jumps out at the eye, much nods to itself. Gisbert Pöppler and his team tailored an interior to suit art from six centuries, staff and visitors to the Collection of Prints and Drawings.
"The unique encounter with art needs an appropriately atmospheric setting," his client, Städel Director Philipp Demandt, is convinced. "The Collection of Prints and Drawings is, as it were, the treasure chamber of our house - but it didn't look like that until now. I wanted to change that." The rooms, where scholars as well as museum visitors can view drawings and prints from all periods since the late Middle Ages, are somewhat hidden in the left side risalit of the museum's 19th-century building, which was rebuilt in the 1950s after war damage by Johannes Krahn, a student of Dominikus Böhm. While the architecture speaks a powerful, clear language on the outside and in the proportions of the rooms, it seemed "a bit unfinished" on the inside, as Pöppler describes it. The furniture seemed to be scattered around, just as it had been over time. A new interior design was now to structure the rooms (Large and Small Study Hall as well as a room for science and research) in such a way that they relate to the architecture - and at the same time accommodate the complex workflows of the employees.
"The Collection of Prints and Drawings now also radiates a wonderful atmosphere to the outside world. You want to go inside right away, you'd love to live there!"
Städel Director Philipp Demandt
"Mr. Demandt wanted something tailor-made. A concept that would last for at least the next 40 years," recalls Pöppler. The load-bearing, no, floating basis of his design is a gallery conceived by Christoph Münks that elegantly divides and visually expands the six-meter-high Great Study Hall and adjacent research room by accommodating much of the library. The linear structure was suspended because construction on supports would have hindered accessibility and free movement in the space. "It's like a graphic itself," Münks says. "A 3-D rod structure that takes up all the surfaces and also picks up the grid of Johannes Krahn's window system."
The furnishings, most of which were designed and manufactured in-house, also reference existing elements; for example, the limed oak of a passageway door recurs in the fronts of the serving counter. In various places, such as the drawers of the trolleys, the element of the slant, with which Krahn already took the monolithic from his architecture, discreetly appears. The tables built by Münks stand on such slender, tapered legs that they can be effortlessly pushed through the room to create large work surfaces as needed. Exciting detail: the table legs are differently sized and angled, so depending on the combination, different "constellations" can result.
Unusual for a graphics collection: a lot of light enters the Large Study Hall through high windows. Double-layered cotton curtains by Dedar protect the sensitive art.
Every piece of furniture, every drawer, was coordinated in the process through intensive dialogue with the collection's staff. "The processes are mega-complex," Pöppler says. "It was important to us to design rooms that functioned really well - even if that occasionally came at the expense of design." It probably didn't go off entirely without internal battles among the quality fanatics at Pöppler's office. But it is precisely their willingness to accept the circumstances that "gives the rooms something relaxed," as Münks puts it. And at the same time, they breathe the caution and concentration with which the Städel's graphic treasures are cherished and explored here. Although they lie dormant in the vault most of the time, they are nevertheless the linchpin of the spatial concept. "Art is at the center, and quite a few decisions are based on that," says Pöppler. For example, the decision not to use white as a color. "We thought more in terms of materials and surfaces. The yellow-tinged paper of the prints and drawings should be shown off to its best advantage. Art is studied in the Graphics Collection, not presented for effect. The sandy gray plaster takes a back seat to that to the maximum." The interior designer also decided against colored curtains, as was initially planned: the sunlight would have cast a veil of color over the paintings that visitors view near the windows.
The hanging gallery continues in the "Science and Research" room, the working area of the art historians working for the Prints and Drawings Department. Underneath is a typical Pöppler: high-gloss blue laminated panels that reflect the library upwards. The parquet flooring, laid in the fifties, was preserved during the remodeling.
The wall behind the issue counter wears grayish plaster that seems to reflect the colors of its surroundings, depending on the weather - and beautifully accentuates works such as Wolf Huber's "Male Portrait with Schaube and Broad-brimmed Hat" from 1522.
It is quite conceivable that Pöppler's serene design will indeed endure for decades. Especially since the designer has already taken the aging process into account: The gallery's steelwork, for example, is hand-painted and can be easily repaired, he says, and hot-rolled stainless steel virtually demands signs of use. "Depth, stability and the ability to repair" - that's how he sums up the factors that should allow his work to age with dignity. Add to that a complexity that is not immediately obvious, but ensures that the rooms actually look timeless in the best sense of the word. "Everything looks as if it has always been there - and then again, it hasn't," sums up Städel director Demandt.
Incidentally, Gisbert Pöppler was (fortunately) unable to completely abandon the color magic. The chairs, which were taken over from the old stock and refurbished, were given leather seats in a restrained, bright cyan blue - clear, but not gaudy. And the gallery was lined on the underside with high-gloss laminate panels in the same shade. This will certainly be appreciated by the people with eyes, whose habitat is the graphics collection. Not least Philipp Demandt, who has already found his personal favorite place there: "I love the view from the gallery down into the rooms. It brings back that childlike tree house feeling! Even more so with books and a view of the Main."
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