After winning a design competition, Winking Froh Architects completed an extension to Hamburg's University of Fine Arts (HFBK) and delivered it to users on February 11th. This studio building stands as a free-standing cube beside the university's 1913 main building, designed by Fritz Schumacher, and its orientation toward Lerchenfeld gives it architectural autonomy. The clinker brick façade wraps the building like a rhythmic textile. Through layered, diagonally recessed window openings, the design creates a compelling visual tension. In both texture and material character, the new structure engages with its historic neighbor. The main entrance and stairwell sit perpendicular to the main building. At ground level, a generous gallery for exhibitions features a prominent "display window" that opens the building to the vibrant public realm of Lerchenfeld Street.

The existing building's primary materials are brick and glazed terracotta facades. The new extension adopts these material principles but employs hard-fired Wittmunder clinker brick with subtle sintering—a choice that gives the façade a slightly cooler, more metallic tone compared to the existing building's matte finish. The interiors embrace refined, robust materiality throughout. The load-bearing core, which houses the stairwells, is cast in exposed concrete. Both in its openness and material expression, it echoes the existing building's main staircase, itself constructed of striated concrete.

The ground floor comprises three gallery spaces, generously interconnected through the foyer and designed for flexible, unified use. An open main staircase with generous void space at intermediate landings ascends to the studio levels above. A rectangular skylight running the full height of the building floods the interior with natural light. This central void accommodates large-scale artworks and installations spanning multiple stories. The three upper floors each contain four equivalent studios, intentionally designed to provide uninterrupted wall surfaces for art—undisrupted by window placement.

www.winking-froh.de

Photography Credits:

Stefan Josef Müller
www.stefanjosefmueller.de

(Featured in CUBE Hamburg 01|22)