XVII. Marco De Michelis interviews Nikolaus Hirsch
26 Gennaio 2012
The most beautiful Kunsthalle in the World starts the new year - and its last season - with its seventeenth encounter, which will be a conversation between Marco De Michelis and Nikolaus Hirsch about how to give life to The most beautiful Kunsthalle in the world.
Nikolaus Hirsch is a professor, the dean of the Städelschule and director of Portikus, the art gallery that constitute an important reference for contemporary art in Frankfurt and worldwide.
Hirsch has given important contributes for the reflection about the constitution of an exhibition space, through the projects developed in Cologne, Berlin, and recently in India. His work includes the internationally acclaimed Dresden Synagogue, the Hinzert Document Center, the European Kunsthalle in Cologne and United Nations Plaza (with Anton Vidokle) in Berlin. He has curated ErsatzStadt: Repräsentationen des Urbanen at the Berlin Volksbühne. His work has been awarded a number of prizes, including the World Architecture Award 2002, and has been shown in exhibitions such as New German Architecture in Berlin, Utopia Station at the Venice Biennial and Can Buildings Curate, AA London/Storefront Gallery in New York.
Marco De Michelis will face Nikolaus Hirsch with some crucial questions: what is the need to create a new exhibition art centre? On who's advantage? Which is its bets location within the urban structure? It is preferable the use of a preexistent building or the construction of a new venue? What forms of governance to use? Which should its terrains of activity be?
Nikolaus Hirsch
The architect Nikolaus Hirsch is the Dean of the
Städelschule and the Director of Portikus, in
Frankfurt.
He was a Unit Master at the Architectural Association
in London (2000-2005) as well as visiting
professor at the Institute of Applied Theatre
Studies at Giessen University, Hochschule fur
Gestaltung Karlsruhe and University of Pennsylvania
in Philadelphia (2006).
His work includes the Synagogue in Dresden
(2001), a sound architecture for “Frequencies
Hfz” (2002), Bockenheimer Depot Theatre in collaboration
with choreographer William Forsythe
(2003), music pavillon “Soundchambers“ for
Museu Serralves in Porto (2003), an architectural
structure for Bruno Latour´s exhibition
“Making Things Public” (2005), the Synagogue
and Jewish Museum in Munich (2006) and the
Hinzert Museum and Document Center (2006).
Current projects include an office building in
Tbilisi, an art lab for Raqs Media Collective in
Dehli, the unitednationsplaza art institute in
Berlin and the European Kunsthalle in Cologne.
Nikolaus Hirsch has curated ErsatzStadt:
Representations of the Urban at Volksbuehne
Berlin. His work was awarded with German Critics
Award 2001, World Architecture Award 2002
and BDA-Prize 2006 and was shown in numerous
exhibitions such as Neue Welt (Frankfurter
Kunstverein, 2001), New German Architecture
(Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, Milano, 2003),
Utopia Station at the Venice Biennal 2003, and
Can Buildings Curate (Architectural Association
London / Storefront Gallery, New York, 2005).
