Architecture in the Realm of the Arts - architeria.eu

ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION
Architekturmuseum der TU München
Munich, Germany

ARCHITECTURE IN THE REALM OF THE ARTS
200 YEARS OF THE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS MUNICH
Opening: 14.02.2008, 19.00
15.02. - 18.05.2008

To mark the 200th anniversary of Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts, the Architekturmuseum der TU München
is launching the festival year with a show of works by its lecturers in architecture and their students.
Impressive works on paper, pictorial material, plaster casts and models illustrate in the first two rooms
of the exhibition the specific form of architecture studies at the Academy. Just as in the 19th century
the study of architecture at the Academy was incorporated into the »realm of the arts« together with
copper-plate engraving, sculpting and painting, so this tradition of teaching architecture along particularly
artistic lines is continued there to this day. The »Royal Academy of Fine Arts« founded in May 1808
had its origins in the public school for drawing dating back to 1766. In its constitutional certificate it was
stipulated that the »charitable influences of the Fine Arts« should be disseminated to all members
of society in order to propagate »inclinations towards the aesthetic and well designed « through »this
powerful means of education« and thereby refine »the spirit and morals of the people«. With the
founding of the Academy the study of architecture received equal status in Bavaria as an academic
discipline alongside the other arts.

The architects of the Academy not only played an outstanding role in architectural projects realised in Munich
and Bavaria. In some cases, their influence reached far beyond Germany too. Among the famous teachers
in the19th century were Carl von Fischer, who designed Munich’s National Theatre, and his pupil Friedrich
von Gärtner, under whose direction the Academy achieved international fame and formed a counterweight to
the Schinkel school in Berlin. The major building works, with which Ludwig I. commissioned Gärtner from 1828
onwards, attracted pupils from all over the world to the architecture school of the Academy. Right up to the
1870s Gärtner’s »rounded arch style« dominated architecture not just in Bavaria but also saw its influence
spread all the way from Southern Europe to the USA via his many students. August von Voit, architect
of Munich’s Glaspalast, Ludwig Lange and Georg Friedrich Ziebland were Gärtner’s successors before
architectural studies were transferred in 1868 to the newly founded Polytechnic School, now the Technical
University of Munich.

The remaining departments of painting, works on paper and sculpting moved to a representative new
building designed by Gottfried von Neureuther near the Siegestor (‘Victory Arch’), still the home of the
Academy today. Since 1946 architecture and interior design have also been taught here. Confronting
architectural studies at the Technical University is the inter-disciplinary approach of the Academy
»in the realm of the arts«. It is a distinctive feature of the Academy that to this day it has adhered
to the system of training based on the master-pupil-principle. Through teachers like Sep Ruf, Paolo Nestler
and Otto Steidle the study of architecture at the Academy has won international acclaim.

Installation »The third room«
Under the direction of their professors, students of interior design have developed especially for
the exhibition an installation entitled »The third room«. The joint task of the departments of interior
design, product design and exterior design has been to address sociologically relevant concepts such
as self-projection, community and retreat and translate them into concrete spatial situations that can
be directly experienced in the exhibition. 52 students spent months knotting together 1.2 million recyclable
cable ties to create a walk-in room installation measuring 200 square metres. The visitoris led into
an abstract landscape of cocoon-like birds nests hanging from the ceiling and tents made from spiders
-web-like tissue. This concept adopts the design approach espoused by the Academy, one that
is essentially oriented towards interior design.

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CREDITS:
Text and image: Architekturmuseum der TU München