Intermediary Worlds-Rituals.

Historic Rice Barn.

A Matter of Perception and Opinion – Art.

Ways of Living – European Parlour.

Doors.

Transition.

Epilogue.

As of 23 October, the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum is presenting its extensive ethnological collection with a new concept for the contents in a surprising scenographic setting. Stage-managed spaces, conceived and designed by ATELIER BRÜCKNER from Stuttgart, entice the visitor into fascinating worlds full of intensity and magic.
“People in Their Worlds” is the title of the theme-based visitor routing through the exhibition, which reveals and displays itself in differentiated spatial narratives covering an area of 3,600 square metres. Around 2,000 exhibits are placed in theme-based spaces that have been allocated their own individual staged settings.
The visitor experiences the exhibition as a dynamic sequence of individual chapters that open up access to the diverse “Cultures of the World”. A total of nine themes are addressed from two main vantage points: “Understanding the World” and “Shaping the World”. The transition between the two consists of a stage-managed narrative space, consisting of doors; the opulently presented Gamelan ensemble offers an accommodation to the parcours. The highlights of the exhibition are the space entitled “Death and the Afterlife”, illuminated by blazing light and concealed behind string curtains, and the European Salon with its interactive media desk. The “museum in a museum” takes museum work itself as a theme. Visible through a large window facing towards Neumarkt, a deconstructed yam silo is the central exhibit and invites the open-minded passer-by to pay a visit to the new permanent exhibition.
In the foyer, the visitor is welcomed by the museum’s emblem, a rice barn from Indonesia, which is accompanied by information modules where a preview of the entire route through the exhibition can be obtained. A prologue and an epilogue frame the pathway through the museum in the form of multi-media spatial installations that are designed in the same way. People from unfamiliar cultures welcome visitors here and, later, take their leave with the insight that they are all inhabitants of the city of Cologne together.

ARCHITECT: ATELIER BRÜCKNER, Stuttgart, Germany, www.atelier-brueckner.com. CLIENT: Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum. LOCATION: Cologne, Germany. DESCRIPTION: Interior / Exhibition spaces. AREA: 3600 sqm. DATE: Oct 2010.

COPYRIGHT: ATELIER BRÜCKNER. PHOTOES: Michael Jungblut, Berlin.
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