Enlarge image The winning design. (© dpa / picture alliance) The new Bauhaus Museum in Weimar – a city famous for the authors who once lived in the city about 120 kilometers southwest of Leipzig – is to be constructed in the shape of a glass cube. Christoph Matschie, Minister of Culture of the German state of Thuringia, where Weimar is located, said on Monday that the Berlin architectural firm led by Heike Hanada and Benedict Tonon had won the competition over the design of the new museum with their “Kubus” (cube) design. The design’s use of urban space and flexibility played a crucial role in the overall decision.

Bauhaus was a school in Germany between 1919 and 1933 that worked to develop a holistic approach to art and design, which then exerted a profound influence on many fields of design  including, notably, the architectural movement associated with its name.

The perimeters of the building are to be approximately be 25 meters wide, 20 meters high and 45 meters deep, forming a rectangle of glass and concrete, Hanada said during the presentation of his proposal. The completed museum is to include an exhibition area of 2,250 square meters, 1,800 square meters of which are available for the permanent exhibition while the remaining 450 square meters would be used for temporary exhibitions.

Hanada said that the aim of the design was to visually integrate the building in relation to both the angled slope of the park and the surrounding buildings like the New Museum. An exceptional feature of the design is found in the horizontal glass panels that encircle the building. The uniformity of the glass is then broken by an irregular grid of black lines. The building is also energy efficient, using only two-thirds of the usual energy necessary for such a building.

The two architects’ design beat out three other competitors in the last phase of the competition. In all, 536 designs were submitted for the nine-member jury to choose from. The jury then chose their favorite four designs for the last round of the competition.

The decisive factor for the jury was how the building would be integrated with the surrounding area and the amount of space that could be used for the versatile collection, the President of the Classic Foundation, Hellmut Seeman, said. The architectural duo’s design was perfect for this, he said, and the cascaded staircases and high ceilings made for an outstanding museum display.

The new museum is scheduled to break ground in either 2013 or early 2014, Seeman said, while the opening of the museum is scheduled for 2015. A total of 22.5 million euros are budgeted for construction costs.