After winning the competition, Winking Froh Architekten completed the extension to the Hamburg University of Fine Arts HFBK and handed it over to the users on February 11. The studio building was constructed as a free-standing cube next to the main building designed by Fritz Schumacher in 1913, and its orientation towards Lerchenfeld gives it a structural independence. The clinker brick façade covers the building like a lively fabric. In their layering, the diagonally cut window reveals arranged in opposite directions create an exciting image. In terms of grain and materiality, the new building relates to its listed neighbor. The main entrance and main staircase are arranged to the side of the main building. The first floor serves as a gallery for exhibitions and establishes a connection to the urban public on the busy Lerchenfeld street with a large "shop window".

The main materials of the existing building are bricks and glazed façade terracotta. The façades of the new building take up the materials, but a hard-fired Wittmund clinker brick with slight sintering was chosen, which appears a shade bluer and more metallic than the slightly matt brick of the existing building. The interiors are designed as a robust, refined shell construction. The statically bracing core with the stairwells is made of reinforced concrete in exposed concrete quality. In its openness and materiality, this represents an analogy to the open main staircase of the existing building, which is constructed in reinforced concrete.

The first floor is divided into three gallery spaces, which are generously connected via the foyer and can be used as a whole. The open main staircase with air space in the area of the intermediate landings leads to the studio floors. A rectangular skylight that runs across all floors allows daylight into the interior of the building. Art objects and installations spanning several floors can be set up here. The three upper floors each house four studios of equal value, which are designed in such a way that large continuous wall surfaces are created for the art, which are not cut up by the arrangement of the windows.

www.winking-froh.de

Photos:

Stefan Josef Müller
www.stefanjosefmueller.de

(Published in CUBE Hamburg 01|22)