112 113Peter Zumthor, Kolumba Art Museum

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portret portrait

By drawing heavy leather curtains, we enter a landscape of recollection an archaeological hall, probably the most fascinating space of the museum of contemplation Zumthors Kolumba. In one gaze, we embrace layers of two thousand years of history: a Roman house with added Fran kish apse, a Carolingian church/hall from the 9th century, a threeaisled Romanic church from the 11th century which was being added to until the 13th century and finally, the remains of the fiveaisled Gothic Church of St. Kolumba from 1500, whose peri meter determines that of the new museum building. Among the remains of walls, arches and pilasters, bases, capi tals, sepulchral slabs and Roman spolia are piled up. Here, I think of the ruins of the Greek temple in Selinunte, where capitals, bases, shafts and broken archi traves are scattered as if thrown by a gigantic hand. While the Selinunte ruins are perceived in sharp contrasts of light and shadow in the bright Sicilian plein air, the Cologne ruins are perceived in a crepuscular space, merely penetrated by strips of magic light. Behind this archi tecture which takes the breath away and so naturally and selfevidently dominates its location, there are years of working on the design, of experiments, questioning ideas by means of large scale models and finally, of working on the production of an entirely new product, socalled Kolumba brick. Since 1992, the curators of the Cologne dio cesan museum were deve lo ping an idea of the museum of

Appreciating Process of Remembering

arhitektarchitect

Damir FabijaniMargherita Spiluttini (MS)Stanko Herceg

Vera Grimmer

Peter Zumthor

For something new to find its place, it has to motivate us first to see the existing1

1 Peter Zumthor: To Think Architecture,

AGM, Zagreb, 2003

Kolumba Art museum of the archbishopric of Cologne, Germany

Potovanje procesa sjeanja

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Razgrnuvi teke kone zavjese, uli smo u krajolik sjeanja arheoloku dvoranu, vjerojatno najfascinantniji prostor muzeja kontemplacije - Zumthorove Kolumbe. Slojeve dvije tisue godina povijesti obuhvaamo jednim pogledom: rimske kue s nadograenom franakom apsidom, karolinka dvo ranska crkva iz 9. stoljea, trobrodna romanika crkva iz 11. stoljea, nadograivana do 13. stoljea i konano ostaci peterobrodne gotike crkve sv. Kolumbe iz 1500. godine, iji para metar odreuje onaj nove muzejske graevine. Izmeu os ta taka zidova, svodova, pilastara nagomilane su baze, kapiteli, nadgrobne ploe, rimske spolije. Pomiljam pritom na rue vine grkog hrama u Selinuntu, gdje su kao divovskom

Da bi novo moglo nai svoje mjesto, najprije nas mora pota-knuti da vidimo ono postojee1

1 Peter Zumthor: Misliti arhitekturu,

AGM, Zagreb, 2003.

Kolumba, Muzej nadbiskupije u Klnu, Kln, Njemaka

114 115oris, number 53, year 2008 Peter Zumthor, Kolumba Art Museum

contem plation and te sted it at numerous exhibitions. Then in 1996, the archbisho pric declared a competition for a new museum building on the location of the Church of St. Kolumba (a Christian martyr of the Roman era), which was destroyed by Allied bombing at the end of World War II as was, after all, Colognes entire medi eval city core. The task defined by the competition was extre mely complex and demanding: to preserve and display the remnants of the Gothic church as well as other archaeological remains and to integrate the Madonna in the Ruins chapel by Gottfried Bhm, built at the end of the 1940s and extended with the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in 1957, and to design the museums exhibition spaces. Peter Zumthor won the competition in 1997 and working drawings were comple ted in 2001. The realization itself lasted six years. A museum came into being, which represents everything that much vaunted museums of travelling stars do not. Here, the exhi bits and their sensitive, thoughtful presentation are in the foreground, instead of branding at the vanity fair of architects and capital. Every square centi metre is here well thoughtout and purposeful, and there is no trace of the false luxury of progressive, megalomaniac forms and constructions without real justification. This museum is very far from the sensa tio nalism of Bilbao, Muse des Confluences or Akron Museum. The topic of Kolumba is continuity between the old and the new to continue to build on the basis of the existing, as was frequently the case in the past let us remind ourselves of the cathedral in Split which emerged out of a Roman emperors mausoleum, and of the cathedral in Syracuse which was inte gra ted with a Greek temple. In order to achieve a natural, al most seamless integration of the old and the new, Zumthor came up with an entirely new product a brick of unusual dimensions: 54 x 21, 5 x 4 cm, so that he was able to adapt more easily to the existing Gothic fragments. The bricks grey colour with nuances of blue, red and yellow (produced in a brickyard in Denmark) was chosen to make the remnants of the old Gothic church as visible as possible. The faades soft texture with wide and bright joints is the front side of mono lithic, 60 cm thick brick walls, which contain a number of very narrow, invisible openings inside instead of dilatation joints. Through the walls (made of perforated bricks), a system of water pipes with the water temperature from 18 to 20 degrees is installed using the warmth of the earth. Like in Vals Spa or Kunsthaus Bregenz, in Kolumba there are no visible signs of services so the air enters through continuous narrow joints between the floors and ceilings. Everything is here and everything works; however, due to the complex process of design, nothing disturbs the main purpose con templative communication between the recipient and the works of art. The promenade architecturale itself starts in a narrow, high

Peter Zumthor, Muzej Kolumbaoris, broj 53, godina 2008

116 117oris, number 53, year 2008 Peter Zumthor, Kolumba Art Museum

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oris, broj 53, godina 2008

tlocrt prizemlja

ground floor plan

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1st floor plan

tlocrt 2. kata

2nd floor plan

118 119oris, number 53, year 2008 Peter Zumthor, Kolumba Art Museum

oris, broj 53, godina 2008

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120 121oris, number 53, year 2008 Peter Zumthor, Kolumba Art Museum

by raw concrete walls similar to the walls of the Brother Claus Chapel in nearby Wachendorf, takes over the role of filter in relation to the immediate, rather banal city environ m ent. These multilayered walls are not the only link to the chapel; a recumbent nude figure on a marble base, the only art exhibit in the garden, is the work of Hans Jose ph sohn who is also the author of a bronze bust of Brother Claus. The course of parcours leads us into the very heart of the building the arch ae ological hall, where the architect solved the complicated task of integrating historical layers in a see mingly simple manner: by covering the entire space with a single ceiling. The fact that the chapel by Gottfired Bhm also found its place under the same roof invited some criticism, although such a solution seems entirely natural,

anteroom, an area of transition between the public sphere of the city and semiprivacy of the museum and it leads into a lightflooded foyer freely meandering between closed co res. The possibility of further movement is multiple into the garden, in fact a black locust grove, into the archaeological hall or up to exhibition spaces by a narrow staircase between two walls. The garden, which represents the memory of the former graveyard by the church, is formed as a landscape with gently rolling forms, and groups of black locusts grow out of their gravelled surfaces. The architect very carefully supervi sed the planting of the trees. He was certainly successful in making this small piece of Arcadia affect our senses in a kind of irrational manner, creating an ambience of joyous tran qui llity. The garden, en clo sed

Peter Zumthor, Muzej Kolumbaoris, broj 53, godina 2008

ske muenice iz rimskog doba), sruene u saveznikom bombar diranju krajem 2. svjetskog rata, kao, uostalom, i cijela srednjovjekovna jezgra Klna. Zadatak definiran natjeajem bio je krajnje sloen i zahtjevan: ouvati i pokazati ostatke gotike crkve kao i drugih arheolokih ostataka, uz to integrirati kapelu Madona u ruevinama Gottfrieda Bhma s kraja etrdesetih, 1957. proirenu kapelom Sv. sakrament, te projek tirati izlobene prostore muzeja. Godine 1997. Peter Zumthor je dobio natjeaj, a 2001. bili su zavreni izvedbeni planovi; sama izvedba je, meutim, potrajala est godina. Nastao je muzej koji je sve ono to razvikani muzeji putujuih zvijezda nisu. Tu su u prvom planu izloci i njihova senzibilna, promiljena prezentacija, a ne branding na sajmu tatine arhitekata i kapitala. Tu je svaki cm promiljen i svrhovit, a nema ni traga lane raskoi progresivnih, megalomanskih formi i konstrukcija bez pravog opravdanja. Ovaj muzej je vrlo daleko od senzacija Bilbaoa, Muse des confluances ili Akron muzeja. Tema Kolumbe je kontinuitet graditi dalje na teme lju postojeeg, kao to je to u prolosti esto bio sluaj

podsjetimo na splitsku katedralu, nastalu od rimskog car skog mauzoleja, na katedralu u Siracusi, ugraenu u grki hram. Da bi postigao prirodno i gotovo beavno srastanje sta rog i novog, Zumthor je iznaao posve nov proizvod opeku neobinog formata: 54x21,5x4 cm da bi se lake prilagodio postojeim gotikim fragmentima. I siva boja opeka s nijansa ma plavog, crvenog i utog (proizvedenih u jednoj danskoj ciglani) odabrana je da bi to vidljivijima uinila ostatke stare gotike crkve. Meka tekstura fasada sa irokim svijetlim