Bridging the Past

STAAB ARCHITEKTEN EXPANDS FRANKFURT’S JEWISH MUSEUM WITH DEFERENTIAL GRACE

An addition to Germany’s historic Jewish Museum merges time, space and place.

FRANKFURT’S ORIGINAL MUSEUM OF JEWISH ANTIQUITIES — Germany’s first — was barely 16 years old when it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1938. By the end of the Second World War, the vast majority of the city’s 30,000 Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust. In 1988, on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the city inaugurated a new Jewish Museum, this one with two branches: one on the site of Frankfurt’s former ghetto, which is dedicated to Jewish life and culture in the medieval and early modern era, and another situated in a pair of connected mansions, covering the period from 1811 (when

The rhomboid building (opposite) allows for an entrance courtyard that links old and new, with Ariel Schlesinger’s Untitled fig tree sculpture as a powerful centrepiece. Inside, recessed lighting in the subtly textured concrete surfaces augments the balance of spareness and richness.