The heating is on, but it's still not really warm in the new quarters of the German Architecture Museum. While his building on the Museumsufer is being renovated, the exhibition center has moved to Danziger Platz in Frankfurt's Ostend. The first exhibition can now be seen in an old office building where Telekom used to be: The "DAM Prize 2022" brings together the best 26 buildings in and from Germany, as photographs on pink boards and in models. It is the first presentation since the museum became homeless. More will follow, not only here. In an old barn in Hessenpark, village architecture will be the theme from March under the title "Schön hier". The International High-Rise Award will be shown in the Museum of Applied Arts in November.The Deutsches Architekturmuseum wants to celebrate its fortieth anniversary on June 1, 2024 at the old address.

Rainer Schulz

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Until then, it goes on a journey and moves into its base camp at Danziger Platz. Museum director Peter Cachola Schmal is quite satisfied with the "loft feeling" that sets in there. The interim quarters should be ready in a few weeks. Access will be moved to the rear, where a window becomes a door. But the alternative quarters are miles away from those "new working worlds" that can be seen on the pink exhibition boards. Ironically, at a time when the home office was beginning to triumph, many chic corporate headquarters made it into the yearbook of the Architekturmuseum. Open office landscapes, cozy sofa islands and intimate meeting cells, wherever you look.In the exhibition catalogue, Falk Jaeger dedicated an essay worth reading to the change in office architecture towards “open space”.

The "World of Sports" designed by Behnisch Architekten for Adidas in Herzogenaurach, for example, with its free-floating stairs and hall-shaped corridors, tempts you to explore it while jogging.

The office building sits enthroned on stilts above an aerial storey on whose blue tartan track employees can do their laps.

Christoph Ingenhoven is doing something for Düsseldorf's microclimate with his Kö-Bogen office building, which is overgrown with hornbeam hedges.

And the massive, spectacular corporate headquarters, which was built for Axel Springer in Berlin based on a design by OMA, even made it into the group of four finalists.

In the diagonal, the building is apparently cut through by a glass hall that imitates the course of the Berlin Wall.

But Springer has walled himself in:

No building from the region in the final

As in every year, this year's selection is a mixture of building types with very different uses. For the Molfsee open-air museum in Schleswig-Holstein, ppp Architects have designed two archaic exhibition buildings with a rusty, shimmering outer skin, which pick up on the archetype of thatched barns and also look impressive from the inside. Five of the 100 nominated buildings, which are presented in a separate architectural guide, were from the region, including the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. Two more made it onto the shortlist of the 26 best, which are also gathered in the exhibition catalogue: The red footbridge by network architects for pedestrians and cyclists in Darmstadt, which wraps around the trees and slowly increases in height, and Rheinstrasse near the Mozart Tower overcomes.And the Tuscan-style Wohnen am Verna-Park project by Baur & Latsch in Rüsselsheim.

There was no local building among the four finalists: apart from Springer and the first prizewinner, the austere John Cranko Ballet School made of exposed concrete by Burger Rudacs Architekten in Stuttgart made it into the final, as did a highly interesting research project by Florian Nagler.

Under the slogan "Simply build", he designed three research houses that were assembled from different building materials.

One is made of wood, the second is made of brick, and the third is made of lightweight concrete.

The winner of the DAM prize, however, is the San Riemo cooperative housing project in Munich, which impresses with its flexible floor plans.

The design by the offices of Summacumfemmer and Juliane Greb is reminiscent of an office building on the outside, but provides variety in the monotonous new development area of ​​Messestadt Riem.

■ DAM Prize 2022, until March 27th in the DAM Ostend, Henschelstrasse 18, Tuesday to Sunday 12pm to 7pm.