Category: Projects

Erich Kaestner Museum Dresden

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Erich Kaestner Museum Dresden

Museum/exhibition architecture, color concept, space program, reconstruction of the museum building, event and administration areas

The micromuseum®, a modern piece of architecture, artwork and interactive working tool developed by Ruairí O’Brien, reflects the multifaceted personality and work of the world-famous children’s book author, poet, media man and journalist Erich Kaestner.

The careful insertion of a new “heart” into the listed Villa Augustin on Albertplatz, the former home of Kaestner’s uncle, by means of a micro-architectural implantation of a house into the house -consisting of a multimedia core and 13 mobile life-size information modules- creates a lively bridge between past, present and future as well as all generations. By examining and operating the life-size building blocks as well as the multimedia components, the visitor gains access to the exhibition content and provides insights into the complex Erich Kaestner world. Into which he can gain insights on a self-directed route and at his own pace.

Services: Museum concept, planning HOAI Lph.1-9, exhibition design and graphics
Client: Förderverein für das Erich Kästner Museum Dresden

The interactive journey of discovery

In Dresden’s Neustadt, where Erich Kaestner lived from 1899 to 1917, the concept of a “walk-in treasure chest” was staged by Ruairi O’Brien. While the conventional museum usually only invites its guests to contemplate, the visitor of the interactive micromuseum has to become active himself.
When the visitor enters the museum at Antonstr. 1, he stands directly in front of an elegant object that stands two meters high, three meters long and 1.2 meters wide. This object is the museum itself, it is a work of art in itself, which the visitor must examine and operate in order to access the information it contains. Like building blocks, a dozen individual parts can be detached, the interior parts of which turn out to be well-stocked bookshelves, drawers that can be pulled open, and display cases for photographs and personal objects. A walk-in core is installed in the center of the room, a kind of multimedia time machine. In addition to books and other original objects, the Kaestner researcher will find audio and video technology as well as a work station in the core, by means of which the latest information on Erich Kaestner can be accessed in several languages.
Through architectural work, Ruairi O’Brien illustrates and unites several real spaces from Kaestner’s life in one place. The use of the virtual space achieves the greatest possible audience impact while at the same time providing ecological benefits by saving movement.

The architectural concept

Through the resource-saving, micro-architectural implantation, Ruairi O’Brien’s museum concept not only revitalized authentic old building fabric, but at the same time made an important urban area in the middle of Dresden’s Neustadt accessible to the public for the first time.
This living preservation of historical buildings fulfills the claim of preserving the historical and transporting it into the present and future by bringing the existing identity (old building structure) to fruition and placing it in harmony with the new (current content and functionality).
The individual visitor is invited to discover the life-size museum building blocks according to his or her own mood and individual pace and to “look behind” them, to delve into individual objects. Each of these building blocks is an independent object that, together with the other elements, in turn forms a self-sufficient whole.

Light Story Teller memorial area Dresden north

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Light Story Teller

Art – Architecture – Light concept for the memorial area Dresden North – Competition entry

The concept light storyteller is an expression of an immersive culture of remembrance. The light/shadow sculptures, which can be executed in different heights, dimensions and angles, intertwine the historical past with the sensual present, mark interdependencies between the places of remembrance and involve visitors in an immediate, low-threshold way through interaction with solar geometry.

The urban dimensioning takes up the meaning of the theme and the scale of the area/site in question. The aesthetic language expresses the existential hardness and force of the historical events, makes perpetrator attitude and victim feeling tangible. The light counter objects form a roof, are flexible anchor points, create microclimatic, sensually and cognitively stimulating spaces for diverse individual and communal, for analog, media and digital interventions, reflections and activities.

Diverse light guidance and control variants are playable via a light-shadow plan with narrative dramaturgy.

Exhibition TME, Washington D.C.

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Exhibition TME, Washington D.C.

Travelling Micromuseum Exhibition of the Erich Kaestner Museum

On October 29, 2014, the Travelling Micromusem Exhibition (TME) in honor of the famous German writer Erich Kaestner opened in Washington D. C. at the German Embassy (designed by Egon Eiermann in 1962). In the years between 1962 and 1964, the embassy building was built according to a design by Egon Eiermann. It is the only building of this architect outside Germany. It was renovated from 2010 to 2014. The mobile exhibition, which will be shown in other U.S. cities over the next six months, was conceived and created by architect and lighting designer Ruairi O’Brien. He is also president of the Erich Kaestner Museum in Dresden.
The aim of O’Brien’s concept is to present the important stages in the life of the author, who became world-famous particularly through his children’s books. The individual sections of the Micromuseum reflect the stations in Kaestner’s life, his four major places of activity Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin and Munich.
Kaestner draws portraits of big city life in many of his books. This is particularly inspiring for architects and urban planners, because the depictions of a city like Berlin in the 1930s, which Kaestner describes in works like “Emil and the Detectives” or “Fabian,” are like a kind of blueprint for cities that no longer exist. This element also appears in his autobiography “Als ich ein kleiner Junge war”. Here, Kaestner describes Dresden before the bombing on February 13, 1945, impressively showing that some aspects of a city are irretrievably lost after its destruction. Such a book is a reminder that war destroys many things irretrievably.

Dean’s Office University Hospital Dresden

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Dean’s Office University Hospital Dresden

Office lighting concept

Our lighting concept for the offices of the dean’s office of the medical faculty Carl Gustav Carus of the TU Dresden combines functionality of lighting with attractive lighting design. In addition to everyday work activities, the rooms are also used for meetings and small conferences as well as for receiving guests. These different functional areas are precisely supported by the lighting. At the same time, the luminaires and the high-quality lighting design form an important part of the interior design of the dean’s office.

The basic lighting provided by wide-area ceiling luminaires is supplemented by individual space lighting for optimal working. Wall-washers attractively highlight the artworks on the walls, and “floating” ring luminaires above the communicative areas create a visual link between the different rooms as a recurring element in a varied arrangement. Simple, flexible control of color temperature and brightness allows individual, attractive lighting moods to be created for many different situations.

Exterior lighting at St. Joseph Stift Hospital, Dresden

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Exterior lighting St. Joseph at Stift Hospital, Dresden

Lighting concept west wing hospital, Dresden

By 2018, the St. Joseph Stift Hospital in Dresden built the new West Wing. With this future central outpatient clinic, an important new main frequency point of the hospital was created. Ruairí O’Brien developed the lighting design and a holistic orientation system for the exterior of the hospital.
For the exterior lighting, we considered this new hospital area in five local areas / spaces with different functions and developed appropriate lighting proposals for each.

  • Access and entrance area emergency ambulance (night entrance, ambulance access)
  • Entrance underground parking
  • Bicycle parking
  • Entrance area with canopy, external staircase, ramp
  • Patient garden
  • Entrance to residential area for nuns

In addition to supporting the various functions, our lighting design also takes into account the legal lighting requirements and the optimal fulfillment of safety aspects, such as a glare- and shadow-free design for the lighting of circulation areas, good facial recognition and optimal illumination of the space. Supporting the hospital’s new exterior orientation system was another design concern. Different brightnesses, colors of light and accentuations, e.g. of the entrance, creating a lighting hierarchy that supports intuitive human orientation. For the canopy as an asymmetrical element, we proposed a lighting design that supports its architecture and creates a strong visual connection between the exterior and interior. The entrance becomes more easily perceived as such from far and near.

SKD Museum Laboratory

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SKD Museum Lab

Interactive Museum Project for the Dresden State Art Collections

In order to make it possible for students of different ages to actively experience how a museum collection is created, architect Ruairí O’Brien developed the “Museum Lab” as an extracurricular learning opportunity for students on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the Dresden State Art Collections in 2010.

Extracurricular learning venues have complemented and extended primary instruction in schools since the beginning of the reform education movements. As important mediators of cultural education, museums represent special out-of-school learning venues. To enable students of different ages to actively experience how a museum collection is created, Ruairí O’Brien developed the “Museum Lab” as an extracurricular learning opportunity for students on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the Dresden State Art Collections in 2010.

The centerpiece: an interactive sculpture

The centerpiece of this special learning environment is an interactive sculpture designed by O’Brien, which served as an experimental collection and presentation surface. In five successive workshops, different groups of students dealt with the themes of “Creation,” “Desire,” “Inquisitiveness,” “Confrontation,” and “Radiance,” thus working through the developmental stages of a museum collection in a playful, compressed form.

Learning big things on a small scale

Each group first dealt with the results of the previous group’s work and then worked on them further. The students experienced “in fast motion” what it means to create a complete work over several generations and to deal responsibly with cultural heritage. This gave them a playful introduction to the institution of museums and allowed them to reflect on the role and significance that museums have for themselves and for society.

More info at: www.skd-museumslabor.blogspot.de


Marketplace Torgau

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Marketplace Torgau

Lighting for marketplace and town hall

For the city of Torgau we developed lighting proposals for a contemporary individual illumination of the market place, the town hall and the adjacent central streets within the scope of the redesign of the illumination of the historic city center.

The concept respectfully integrates the lighting into the valuable historic townscape.

Interactive Space

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Interactive Space 3+4

Architectural-theater-dance- project at Projekt theater Dresden

Movable boxes of one square meter size with dancers moving in and out of the spaces, which can be stacked and changed to create a variety of scenes.
Questions like: How much space does a person need or does the interaction of humans with their built environment affect our interaction with each other.
Inside and outside, day and night, light and darkness, safety and risk, communication and non-communication, loneliness and togetherness were all part of an “architecture dance.”
The Architecture Theater Dance Project was performed at the Project Theater in Dresden. Visitors moved freely through the architecture city / landscape and interacted with the dancers. The boxes were examples of simple low-budget and affordable architecture.

The production is Ruairí O’Brien’s first “Microarchitecture” project and the precursor to his micromuseum® series.

Open Spaces Pirna Sonnenstein

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Open Spaces Pirna Sonnenstein

Landscape Architectural Concept for Fallow Land

As part of the urban redevelopment of the Sonnenstein district of Pirna, one of the 17-story high-rise apartment buildings was demolished, and the resulting brownfield site was made available for the upgrading the residential environment, which is not without problems.

O’Brien’s design for the design of the public open space contrasts the orthogonal austerity of the slab buildings with a more dynamic geometry that features four circles as a basic motif in reference to the different seasons.

Services: HOAI LP 1-8
Client: Städtische Wohnungsgesellschaft Pirna mbH

Lighting Concept House 1, University Hospital Dresden

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Lighting Concept House 1, University Hospital Dresden

Façade lighting concept for the central administration building

The main focus of Ruairi O’Brien’s lighting concept was on the central administration building of Dresden University Hospital. The carefully accentuated illumination of the façade and the roof, which was approved under monument protection law, increases the perceptibility of the building and thus does justice to its central importance.
Elements in the surroundings, such as the pedestrian entrance and the avenue of trees in front of the main portal of the building, were also integrated into the lighting design.