Post Industrial and Pre-Modern in Molfsee

All photos either ppp Arkitekter, Arne Lösekann or Oliver Lowenstein
Outside the north-eastern city of Kiel, the regional, open-air museum, Freilichtmuseum Molfsee, opened its new gateway and gallery buildings at the height of Covid. In so doing, its architects, ppp Arkitekter, have remade regional thatch-barn traditions into a twenty-first century vernacular: Corten steel meets diamond-edged glulam.
It must have been nigh on impossible for architectural offices entering Molfsee Open-Air Museum’s Jahr100Haus (or ‘Hundred Year House’) project competition to ignore the many examples of local vernacular and traditional building forms found in the museum’s park-like grounds. All three of the competition’s finalists began with vernacular forms represented in Northern Germany’s largest repository of regional historical buildings; and the winning entry took its cue from the extensive collection of historic buildings presented and preserved in the museum’s grounds.
With around forty hectares and sixty historic buildings, dating from the sixteenth through to the twentieth century, recovered and rebuilt from various parts of the state (and also the Danish border areas), there was no shortage of choices for the original 160 entries, or, indeed, the twenty-two longlist. Sitting at the edge of the north-eastern city of Kiel, the open-air museum depicts and documents the daily life and cultural history of rural Schleswig-Holstein. It is both one of Germany’s largest ethnographic museums and part of the region’s network of all-state museums. With an ongoing programme of exhibitions and events, the museum attracts thousands of visitors each year. Yet it was considered dated: a museum living in the past, in more ways than one, which Jahr100Haus was conceived to remedy.

View in front of the entrance – photo Oliver Lowenstein
i) Tithe Barn from Klein Havighorst from around 1690 / ii) Four post-square barn farmhouse from Arentsee built in 1745 – Photos Oliver Lowenstein
With submissions from Berlin and other national and international studios, the surprise about the winning design wasn’t so much the building’s tilt to tradition and vernacular form, but that a local, Schleswig-Holstein studio – Lubeck’s PetersenPörksenPartner Arkitekten(known as ppp Arkitekten or ppp) team – had been chosen over other, higher profile studios.
Yet as you walk around the museum grounds it becomes obvious why ppp decided on their chosen form. Dotted across the grounds are several examples of the large, heavily-laden looking barns that were so prominent across rural Northern Germany through several centuries, weighed down with thick thatch roofs, dropping low and sitting close to the ground. The half-timbered or ‘fachwerk’ buildings are almost archetypal Northern European farm and rural building types. Yet ppp’s vernacular appropriation of their form brings home the quietly striking, sculptural quality of this pre-modern tradition. ppp have taken this old farm barn form and, abstracting its vernacular, turned it towards the twenty-first century.
The architect’s design concept actually called for two buildings: one, a gateway entrance hall; the other, for events and administration functions. Each faithfully shadows the steep roof lines and overall form of their ancestral predecessors, sitting side-by-side, cloaked in Corten steel, at pincer-like angles to each other.
Outside, the burnt-ochre, Corten-steel wrapping covers almost the entirety of the halls, remaking the structures into austere sculptural presences. Once inside, the external presence is replaced by the visitor entrance hallway. Here, an arching roof lofts high above, held by geometric all-timber walls of super-size diamond lozenges. They do not meet. Rather, a thin horizontal glazing runs the length of the hall, providing natural sunlight, while supporting beams join the two timber walls together. Much of the hall has been left open, stilling the atmosphere and deepening the effect.

Photo Oliver Lowenstein
The Hundred Year House cafe and entrance area (left) and stairwell up from the lower floor exhibition area (right)
A concrete floor, which, once you’ve descended the staircase, leads on to the similarly all-concrete underground galleries, is a reminder that ppp’s glulam lozenge frame is not a radical timber build. It’s more a mainstream regional practice coming upon a structural solution by chance and happenstance, rather than design. But what they’ve come up with – a rhomboid timber deck (though again, hardly a cutting-edge or experimental solution) – is both an atmospherically effective and successful complement to the Corten-steel façade.
The modest use of windows along the building’s north-eastern faces, along with the entrance door, provides daylighting into the hall. These also give views onto the second of the buildings, and between – where the light purply lavender beds, installed by Hamburg landscape architects Bruun & Möllers Landschaften, have been planted outside the back of the visitor hall. Raised, and warded with a miniature fence inlay, the beds are interrupted by cobbled stone surfaces around which grass and wild flowers have been left to grow untended. From twenty-first century to pre-industrial, Corten steel to thatch, and from rust to rustic, paths lead to the main open-air museum grounds and the nearest of the old farm building collection.
The brief was for a building celebrating a hundred years of the museum, and featured a shopping list of requirements, including, says the museum’s project leader Babette Tewes, “huge areas for the exhibition and cultural interpretation, storage provision, additional administration capacity, and a café and museum shop”. Also, so as not to risk a cuckoo in the nest, the new building wasn’t to be larger than any of the existing ones. The winning commission was to provide the museum with new spaces, including galleries focused on the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and showing the culture of the ‘troubled century’ through exhibitions, events and workshops.
Part of Molfsee’s broader relaunch, the new building was also to reflect the aim of projecting a more contemporary image and the new emphasis on more recent history. Tewes explained: “we want to be more modern… to talk about and focus on today’s relevant themes, so people are interested in the many themes which connect to the old times.” But, she adds as an afterthought, “we’re not used to such a building.”
Also, the competition didn’t state exactly where to site the building, resulting in one of the finalists placing their design close to one of the museum’s buildings.

Lavender landscaping

Survival store (for nuclear fallout)
By contrast, ppp proposed a large new underground space joining their two buildings. It won them the project. “No other design had something like this. It was a very good idea, and, also, not so big.” Placing gallery exhibition spaces underground also provided an improved underground climate for exhibits and storage by limiting sunlight.
The museum was more reserved about the main above ground concrete structure. ppp modified the initial design, introducing timber as a design option rather than concrete.
Part of Molfsee’s broader relaunch, the new building was also to reflect the aim of projecting a more contemporary image and the new emphasis on more recent history. Tewes explained: “we want to be more modern… to talk about and focus on today’s relevant themes, so people are interested in the many themes which connect to the old times.” But, she adds as an afterthought, “we’re not used to such a building.”
Also, the competition didn’t state exactly where to site the building, resulting in one of the finalists placing their design close to one of the museum’s buildings.
By contrast, ppp proposed a large new underground space joining their two buildings. It won them the project. “No other design had something like this. It was a very good idea, and, also, not so big.” Placing gallery exhibition spaces underground also provided an improved underground climate for exhibits and storage by limiting sunlight.
The museum was more reserved about the main above ground concrete structure. ppp modified the initial design, introducing timber as a design option rather than concrete.
Photo Oliver Lowenstein

ppp Arkitekter/Arne Lösekann
A critical reason was the arrival of new energy and insulation regulations: the Energy Saving Ordinance EnEV and Renewable Energies Heat Act (EEWärmeG) in 2016. To adhere to these updated regs, the concrete walls would have needed to be massively thick. By contrast, with timber substituted for the roof, the buildings energy and insulation requirements met the new regs. Not only this, but with the timber, costs decreased. The modified design allowed the beautiful timber diamond lozenges to emerge. With this change, the hallway space entrance has been turned into a quiet marvel.
A matter of “learning by doing” says ppp’s project leader Arne Lösekann, of the timber turn; though once the decision was made, both design and construction changes were integrated quickly. It may have seemed novel then, but now (nearly seven years on), he can see the increasing popularity in commissioning timber buildings happening all over the country, including in Northern Germany’s clay country. For the museum team, the timber turn was new. Tewes again: “we hadn’t really realised the overlap and connection in advance.”
In accordance with the museum brief, the size of the new buildings were similar in dimension to the older buildings in the collection, and, though not modelled on any of specific example, the sheer lowness of the roof where it meets the vertical wall, sitting at 2.1m from ground level, shadows one of the collection’s buildings. Lösekann notes how the design was led by “this idea of getting the roof so low to the ground”– with the relatively narrow strip of vertical wall climbing from ground level to the timber roof deck only enhancing the hall’s atmospherics.
Once the timber roof decision was taken, the design team began to explore the type of deck needed. Researching timber roof systems in Germany, they came upon the 1930’s engineer Friedrich Zollinger, and his Zollinger lamella structures – Further: for Edward Cullinan Architects experiments with Zollinger lamellas see here. The architects began experimenting with, what Lösekann describes as, “the idea of a Zollinger design”: flattening the curving roof members and straightening the timber lines. This is vague, and structurally it’s difficult to see how two joined rhomboid decks are related to a Zollinger lamella. Still, these roof walls (described in Detail magazine as a rhomboid space frame) provide a dramatic piece of timber design.
During the design phase, challenges continued – including the sizes of the glulam components, and what was statically and stability-wise possible. The angles between the vertical wall and roof were also complicated, though eventually pitched steeply between 64–65o. Likewise, optimising natural light in the near windowless hall. Amman, the timber contractor, were introduced early into the design iterations, as were Austrian engineers Samuel Blumer, from Graz, who were brought in to help with the roof’s static design. Amman – tasked with reducing the amount of steel in the timber roof – would eventually specify over 190,00m3 of glulam, plus nearly 1700m2 of roof boarding. Even so, the deck still needed approaching two million kgs (1,785,000kg to be precise) of steel fittings. Lösekann recalls how the sheer number of metal connectors were gradually reduced and replaced by large screws: “the longest screws I’ve ever seen.”

Glulam beam (right) – ppp Arkitekter/Arne Lösekann

Model – ppp Arkitekter/Arne Lösekann

ppp Arkitekter/Arne Lösekann
Completed, the hall has been left close to empty, with reception and ticketing at its north-eastern end, while at the opposite end there is a modest café. The visitor entrance cuts into the Corten steel, with views through large-glazed windows onto the smaller barn and landscaping. To the right is a double-width staircase leading down to the galleries. Overhead is the roof: the large glulam frame emphasising the diamond rhomboid structure. The diamond glulams meet at the roof’s lower ridge, supported by concrete embossed pillars. In between each are recessed seating bays. The day I visited, perhaps because there were few visitors, this made the space effortlessly atmospheric.
Completed, the hall has been left close to empty, with reception and ticketing at its north-eastern end, while at the opposite end there is a modest café. The visitor entrance cuts into the Corten steel, with views through large-glazed windows onto the smaller barn and landscaping. To the right is a double-width staircase leading down to the galleries. Overhead is the roof: the large glulam frame emphasising the diamond rhomboid structure. The diamond glulams meet at the roof’s lower ridge, supported by concrete embossed pillars. In between each are recessed seating bays. The day I visited, perhaps because there were few visitors, this made the space effortlessly atmospheric.

Photo Oliver Lowenstein

Photo Oliver Lowenstein
The second, smaller, building comprises educational rooms, workshops and a conference and seminar event room, as well as further storage and administration capacity. With open space split up for these functions, the stairs, corridors and rooms lack the spatial presence of the main entrance hall – even if the timber deck remains visible and expressed.
ppp’s competition-winning move – the underground gallery area – has been designed as a flexible space. Led by curatorial and scenographic needs, this includes adapting gallery spaces for different exhibition uses. Certainly, when I visited, the galleries provided ample room for the exhibition on show: an arc of national and regional artefacts from the last fifty years, introduced by a wall of film-screens showing local builders hammering posts in time to a Kraftwerk-like metallic rhythm.
More constant is the sunken courtyard, which works with the different levels: looking down, looking in, looking out, looking up. Organised around the courtyard, spare boulders and a solitary tree convey something of the atmospherics of a Zen stone garden. Large-glazed windows on the courtyard’s four faces draw natural light into the underground floor, with the adaptable exhibition spaces arranged around the edge. Storage space is provided away from the windows.
Features contributing to the building’s environmental performance include the exhibition rooms’ use of various insulating acoustic plaster systems, along with an acoustic plaster base board, fleece and laminated mineral wool insulation, underfloor hearing and 100% LED lighting.
The underground concrete section went smoothly, according to Lösekann, even if 2017 provided a summer of rain, and the earthworks and foundations turned the site into a mud bath, making moving the sandy earth a particularly arduous process. Not only this, but there weren’t local sites to transport soil to. The concrete, while drawing the building to the ground, is supplemented by the roof’s structural integrity – its size making it structurally stable.

Photo Oliver Lowenstein

ppp Arkitekter/Arne Lösekann
Opened in March 2021, Molfsee’s relaunch suffered from being in the middle of Covid. There has been some national press, and the project was a finalist in the German architecture museum’s annual awards. Today, ppp are working on another Schleswig-Holstein cultural building: a theatre beginning on site next year. But this isn’t timber.
Still, Molfsee is a sign that wood is coming to Germany’s north-eastern Baltic edges. And despite the relative lack of local timber, the Molfsee lozenge deck isn’t ppp Arkitekten’s first timber building: they’ve already completed a timber school, the Ecolea International School in Schwerin. Since Molfsee, the office has finished two further, this time, elementary schools – Bederkesa in Grachten and Seelze-Süd in Seelze. Each sought to simplify designs and optimise acoustics and noise-transfer: lessons which have informed a third new school, currently under construction. Other issues of fire control, electricity and air condition have also apparently been resolved.
Molfsee is very different, of course. As a one-off for a regional practice like ppp, the new buildings have been an opportunity to push the boat out, and, in contrast to the usual process of handing over design-and-build contracts in the early stages, ppp’s involvement continued all the way through – working on detailed design and on interiors. This meant more effort and longer hours, though also higher quality. “Everybody was looking forward to working on the building,” Lösekann says – it allowed the team to get out of the daily norm “and this influenced the whole quality of the interior design.”

Photo Oliver Lowenstein

Photo Oliver Lowenstein
The conjunction of contemporary buildings in a setting where the focus highlights the past, and particularly the pre-industrial past, is also unusual. With the network of open-air museums having grown and multiplied over the past hundred years throughout Europe and elsewhere, where new buildings have gone up – such as the Weald & Downland Open Museum in Sussex – they have become singular sites for these marriages of past with present. By appealing to the deeper past, expressed in vernacular forms, they also extend architectural reach beyond its general historical modern era timeframe. The diamond-lozenge glulam deck is a technical feat and atmospheric treat. Combined with its reaching into the world beyond-the-modern makes Molfsee’s 100 Year House into something considerably more than the sum of these parts. New lines in this old new language of a 21st century Pre-modern vernacular.

An article profiling Friedrich Zollinger in Bauzeitung is here (in German)