Project Credits & Specs
- Architecture: Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos
- Photography: Roland Halbe
- Location: Dresden, Germany
- Area: 2 000 m2
- Year: 2023
Project Description
Located on the banks of the river Elbe, the Blockhaus is one of the most significant buildings in the historic city center of Dresden. Built in 1732, it has undergone multiple transformations, predominantly after the 2nd World War. The project, with a usable area of 2,000 m², responds to the desire to open the archive of the Marzona collection to visitors, specialists, and the general public. The newly accessible avant-garde archive includes works of art, objects, drawings, plans, and furniture that represent the valuable and heterogenous legacy of artistic movements from the 20th century: Futurism, Dadaism, Constructivism, and Surrealism, through institutions such as the Werkbund, Bauhaus, HfG of Ulm or Black Mountain College.
The project arises from a dialogue between memory and the avant-garde, represented by the building itself and its collection, which translates into the insertion of a suspended cube containing the archive that frees the entire ground floor as a flexible public space for exhibitions, workshops, events, and lectures. The provocation implied by the institution’s name is understood as the starting point of this project. A large concrete volume floating inside the empty Blockhaus constitutes the centerpiece of the archive, a hidden treasure, like the inevitable presence of the past.
The project description is provided by the architects.
About the Architects
Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos was founded by Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano and has offices in Madrid and Berlin. Along with being widely published in international magazines and books, the firm’s work has been exhibited at the Biennale di Venezia in 2000, 2002, 2006, and 2012, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 2006, at the Kunsthaus in Graz in 2008 and at the MAST Foundation in Bologna in 2014. They are the recipients of the 2007 National Prize for Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage and the 2010 Nike Prize issued by the Bund Deutscher Architektinnen und Architekten BDA as well as the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 2011 the Piranesi Prix de Rome, 2012 the European Museum of the Year Award and the Hannes Meyer Prize, 2015 the AIA Honorary Fellowship and the Alvar Aalto Medal and 2017 the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts.
