Schnütgen Museum IN FOCUS

The eight City Hall Prophets once admon­ished the city’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to take respon­si­bil­i­ty, stand­ing with their ban­ners as wise advi­sors on the way to the Cologne City Hall. Because they had his­tor­i­cal­ly stood free, the Prophets were now to be pre­sent­ed free­stand­ing in the Schnüt­gen Muse­um in Cologne, rather than as a group on a pedestal. There­fore, a pedestal was devel­oped that could not be too large and, above all, not too wide, yet would pro­vide these impres­sive wood­en fig­ures with secu­ri­ty and a sta­ble appear­ance. First, the mate­ri­als in the for­mer church were ana­lyzed: the basalt floor, the sand­stone and plas­ter walls. The basalt slabs served as a tem­plate for a dif­fer­ent, con­tem­po­rary mate­r­i­al, tex­ture­less MDF, whose col­or scheme was matched to the floor slabs.

By stack­ing the slabs slight­ly off­set, the pedestal now acquired the nec­es­sary weight and sta­bil­i­ty. This lay­er­ing, in turn, gave the fig­ures a con­fi­dent stance. The Prophets’ pres­ence visu­al­ly com­press­es the slabs. This is a result of the joints cre­at­ed by the slight­ly var­ied stack­ing. This does not cre­ate a homo­ge­neous vol­ume that works against the fig­ure, but rather the pedestals sup­port the fig­ures in their inner movement.

The result is that the fig­ures exert notice­able force on what they stand on, yet are not hin­dered in their flex­i­ble plas­tic­i­ty. The graph­ics were also inte­grat­ed into this lay­ered sys­tem. The texts were print­ed on anoth­er pro­trud­ing (acrylic) lay­er. This cre­at­ed pedestals to which no labels are attached, but rather the labels are an inte­gral part. All spe­cial mod­ules – such as a brochure stand, stool, and lectern – were also designed in this lay­ered arrange­ment. A por­tal was visu­al­ly insert­ed into an exist­ing wall niche oppo­site the fig­ures, cre­at­ing a visu­al ref­er­ence point for the three sculp­tures from the por­tal, which were also pre­sent­ed on the pedestals, through white spaces at the portal.

The Town Hall Prophets stand on a raised por­tal in the Schnüt­gen Muse­um, so that, despite the balustrade, they can also be seen from the low­er nave. From there, the prophets appear like free-float­ing fig­ures, dom­i­nat­ing the altar space with their dance in an impres­sive choreography.