Studio 5

“In the final analysis, architecture is a problem of form. For this reason, it is my view that the designer must approach the problems of architecture starting from form. Thus, other approaches (sociological, economic etc.), which in recent years have provided architects with an avenue of escape from their true responsibilities, must be excluded.”
Luigi Snozzi

Scroll Down

Our Aproach

 Studio 5 this year concerned itself with cultural artefacts in both semesters, interrogating spaces of their production in semester one, and spaces for their display in semester two. In semester one students designed a building to house Artist Studios on a site off Tithebarn Street in central Liverpool, followed by the design of an extension to the ethnological Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt Main, Germany, in semester two. The second semester site was located in a park on Frankfurt’s famous Museumsufer, neighbouring the Museum Angewandte Kunst by Richard Meier and  in proximity of, amongst other museums, OM Ungers’ Deutsches Architekturmuseum. While the museum brief in semester two was based on an international competition held in 2010 – won by Kuehn Malvezzi, but remaining to be unbuilt – the first semester brief was a speculative study for a number of vacant inner city sites currently used as surface car parks in Liverpool.

The Weltkulturen Museum

“The fundamental issue of architecture is, does it affect the spirit or doesn’t it. If it doesn’t affect the spirit, it’s building. If it affects the spirit, it’s architecture.”
John Hejduk

The Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt was founded in 1904 and is currently housed in three villas on Schaumainkai. Our project site was located in the park to the North of the villas. In addition to permanent and temporary exhibition spaces, students had to include a public study collection, a central reading room, an auditorium, workshops and staff facilities, inviting them to explore the relationship between public and private spaces within the institution of the museum. The relationship with the existing listed buildings on the site was as important as the museum’s role as a public institution and as part of the set of museums on Schaumainkai. Other architectural topics explored over the semester included the question of type, and how to display / make accessible cultural artefacts. During a field-trip in February 2024, we visited 11 museums along the South and North banks of the River Main and in central Frankfurt to investigate how different architects and designers have addressed the design task ‘museum’ over the last 30 or so years.

Header Image:  Weltkulturenmuseum Frankfurt – The Museum in the Park – William Jenner

Tutors

 Jane Cadot 
Julien Denis
Dr Torsten Schmiedeknecht
Juan Rivera Soriano


Special Thanks

Environment Dr Stuart Gee
Structures Ted Ruffell
Construction Julien Denis

James Browne, Stallan-Brand, Glasgow
Rebecca Sawcer, Waugh Thistleton, London
Prof. Ben Spaeth, TH Lübeck, Germany
Dr Patrick Zamarian, UoL

Model Photography Martin Winchester, UoL

Student Galleries

Studio 5 Final Teaching Day, May 2024

Students

  • Yunzhong Bai
  • Nathan Bell
  • Wencheng Chan
  • Tianxing Chang
  • Zhiyu Chen
  • Joseph Chrisp
  • Molly Close
  • Leo Cowie
  • Matthew Fitzgerald
  • Tom Greathead
  • Penny Hughes
  • William Jenner
  • Huimin Jiang
  • Yifan Li
  • Chenki Mi
  • Hannah Nixon
  • Somviset Phoeuk
  • Grace Power
  • Meg Pycock
  • Monika Servute
  • Anshika Sharma
  • Yichen Shen
  • Rorik Smith
  • Ashlea Mary Smith
  • Charlie Smith
  • Zixiao Wang
  • Hassan Waseem
  • Xinchi Wei
  • Qianqian Wen
  • Mezino Usiki-Whiskey
  • Zhiyuan Wu
  • Junren Xian
  • Changyu Xiao
  • Xueqi Xuan
  • Hanyu Yang
  • Zhiyan Zan
  • Weijie Zha
  • Jiaqi Zhang