Musée Unterlinden

Colmar, France

2016

Units

180

Before becoming a museum, from the Middle Ages up to the French Revolution, Unterlinden (literally under the linden trees) was a Dominican convent. In 1793 the convent became the property of the City of Colmar and gradually fell into neglect, until the mid-19th century, when Louis Hugot, the archivist of the City of Colmar, saved the convent from demolition by transforming it into a museum.

The new museum, opened in 2014 and designed by Herzog & De Meuron, joins the former municipal baths building inaugurated in 1906 and a new wing in the original building. Now, the two buildings form a second open courtyard and are linked to the original building by an underground exhibition gallery.

Architecture and exhibit design

The pivot of the two complexes is the "small house" building, the reinterpretation of an architectural unit, which indicated the entrance to the old convent and now indicates the presence of the Town Museum.
The Herzog & De Meuron project has gone beyond the museum expansion and redesigned an important area of Colmar old town. The project restores one of the most interesting elements of the original fabric of the town through the re-opening of the Sinn canal, which is the axis of symmetry of the new Unterlinden.
Expanding the exhibition area by twofold implied a rethinking and rationalization of the museum tour: Middle Ages and Renaissance art will be exhibited in the medieval cloister, the new wing will be reserved for contemporary art, while temporary exhibitions will be set up in the bath building.

The installation

The architects focused great attention on the exhibition design and considered each presentation element in detail. Goppion engineered over 180 display units, ranging from metal and stone podia to supports for altarpieces, to several types of showcases: the largest one – a m 7 x 4 m floor-to-ceiling glass wall – protects a reproduction of Guernica on fabric, which is exhibited permanently for the first time.
During long study sessions with the architects, Goppion designers redesigned the opening mechanisms of showcases, minimizing the visible technique and developing the hinge into a state-of-the-art design solution, which met Herzog & De Meuron architects’ refined, minimalist and streamlined language, without disregarding the high performance and user-friendliness requirements.