ahrens & grabenhorst award-winning architects Creating landmarks, not shying from bold designs and colour There are many well-known buildings, especially in northern Germany, bearing the hallmark of ahrens & grabenhorst. The interdisciplinary team with headquarters in Hanover has worked on quite different, but all-in-all unique, buildings: from places of worship to hotels, from residence buildings to museums. TEXT: JESSICA HOLZHAUSEN | PHOTOS: PRESS IMAGES
Building an annex building to the state museum‘Ostfriesisches Landesmuseum’in Emden was not an easy task. Containing the region’s oldest collection the museum is situated in what once was the historic town hall. Destroyed in the Second World War it had been re-erected in a modern style only
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partly reusing historic features. When ahrens & grabenhorst took part in a contest in 2003 – and won it – to build an extension, this history had to be taken into account on the inside and outside.They for example created a new, light-flooded main entrance on the backside keeping the existing façade intact.
It is not the only museum building the architects have worked on, they were also responsible for an extension of the Celle art museum and redesigned the Wadden Sea visitor centre in Wilhelmshaven. In 2014 they developed a new concept for the memorial site and museum Gedenkstätte Ahlem, a place remembering crimes and mass murder during the Nazi reign, but also telling about hope. The team around architects Professor Gesche Grabenhorst and Roger Ahrens consists of experts from different fields,