Ms. Hesse, the Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne is in the middle of the refurbishment and renovation process.

Will it be a green museum?

We are not committed to becoming the sustainability museum in 2022.

That is our long-term goal, since a conversion under the provisions of monument protection is complex and multi-faceted.

In addition to monument protection, which requirements also play a role in museum renovation in order to meet today's standards?

We have conservational obligations towards our collection.

The museum owns objects that were made in the Middle Ages.

You can't use every material that would possibly destroy parts of the collection through evaporation.

We also have to guarantee occupational health and safety for employees and the safety of visitors.

A complex task that also involves saving energy and resources.

What was the biggest challenge in planning?

We have been renovating for a long time, since 2018 during ongoing operations, apart from the closure caused by the pandemic.

We gradually started to replace all windows, this year we will finish it.

It's 276!

In addition, we have huge windows in the large exhibition hall.

In some cases, entire sections of the facade are made entirely of glass.

In 2011, we had a report drawn up in order to be able to measure the energy savings.

This is expected to be 20 percent.

Our double glazing, which insulates much more, also offers more security and UV protection for our properties.

No one today would build a city building with so much transparent space.

This was originally the home of the Wallraf Richartz Museum, a picture gallery that at the time wanted as much natural light as possible.

At that time, conservation research was not as advanced as it is today, and no one thought about climate protection.

We have a museum with groundbreaking architecture that we are in the process of adapting to the requirements of the 21st century.

Quite a balancing act, but we don't want to start all over again in five years, we want to maintain the standards for future generations.

What does that mean specifically?

That we not only replace the windows, but also the completely outdated air conditioning system and our lighting.

Modern systems can be controlled in a completely different way and therefore require much less energy.

However, since we were unable to retrofit some lamps, such as the beautiful pendant lights in the Overstolzen Hall, we had them made new by a Czech workshop based on the original.

For our offices, we get desk lamps that also shine upwards - this allows us to save on overhead lighting.

In a museum that is all about design, is there more understanding for meaningful renewal?

We have been dealing with the topic of sustainability for a long time.

Just as many designers have been dealing with the topic consistently for a long time, we museum people devote ourselves to the topic of upcycling in the form of exhibitions and lectures, for example about circular economy and dialogic processes.

We used the pandemic-related closure to advance the renovation without an audience, to prepare our new online presence with funding and to ask ourselves how we can make our everyday museum life as resource-efficient as possible.

It started with the question of whether we still want to print catalogs in the future and ends with the reuse of old exhibition architecture in the construction of showcases.

You ride your bike in the city yourself, do without the coffee-to-go, take your shoes to the cobbler instead of throwing them away in a battered state – and let objects fly around the world for exhibitions.

Are analogue exhibitions still up to date?

Especially in times of increasing digitization, people are looking for the authentic, the tangible and the auratic.

Museums provide all of this.

Here people can meet, exchange ideas and enjoy real art.