A sculpture hall under the open sky, a technology location, a business card, a picnic area - the new Städelgarten is many things.
"A visit to the museum does not begin at the door, but at the first glance at the museum," says Städel Director Philipp Demandt, who presented the facility, which has been redesigned since March 2021, on Tuesday.
Whenever he googled the Städel, the first images showed him the garden halls completed by Schneider + Schumacher in 2012.
A successful piece of Städel with a small problem: "It's not the face of our house, it's the back." So the appearance towards the Main had to be strengthened.
Florian Balke
Culture editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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The level of the site, which previously sloped slightly towards the Schaumainkai, has been raised somewhat with earth fills.
Sunken square beds are embedded in the raised lawn area, from which selected works of the sculptural collection of the house grow and tell of the development of sculpture in the 20th century.
They are surrounded by four types of ivy and white flowering plants.
"We wanted a design that is decidedly modern and takes up the clear design of the facade restored by Johannes Krahn after the war," says Demandt on the choice of squares.
"We treat him as if he were a sculpture"
The ivy will fill the bed areas like inlays on a piece of furniture, says Nicolai Levin from Levin Monsigny Garden Architects in Berlin, who designed the facility: "The garden will always look different and should invite you to visit it again." In March and April Daffodils bloom, followed by the ornamental onion "Mount Everest", which reaches Levin up to his belly, in July and August a low butterfly bush and fragrant roses bloom, in September and October the autumn anemone "Honorine Jobert" shoots up to a height of 80 centimeters on long stems .
The lawn can be walked on, says Levin: "It's even desirable."
The hoses for the drip irrigation in the morning hours can still be seen between the seedlings.
The turf is supplied by lawn sprinklers.
Under the lawns in front of the Main facade, two plastic cisterns have been sunk into the ground, which collect the rainwater from the entire building and hold 50,000 liters.
Since they were created soon after construction began and are well stocked, their content is most welcome in the growth phase.
Five cork oaks were removed, the ginkgo, which has its own bed, has been preserved.
"We treat him like he's a sculpture," says Levin.
Newly planted are a sweetgum tree and a patrician tree, both of which are coping well with the heat of climate change.
Oaks and walnuts provide shade on Holbeinstraße, below them stands the bench with the lamp from Tobias Rehberger's "Capri Moon" in gleaming white, freshly cleaned for the appearance in the new garden.
Seating groups invite you to linger
A little further around the corner is the latest addition to the collection, the bronze 'If a Traveler on a Winter's Night' by Elmgreen & Dragset.
The Vulture on a Dead Tree, which looks at the history of the sculpture in question as ironically as Italo Calvino’s meta-novel of the same name from 1979 looks at literary history, was acquired in 2020 with funds from the Städel Committee 21st Century.
Here and there seating groups invite you to linger, and passers-by can also have a picnic in the garden.
In order to further increase the quality of the stay, the construction of a roof terrace, which should be ready in summer 2023, will begin in the next few weeks according to plans by Schneider + Schumacher.
It is being built on the central avant-corps of the Main facade in front of the cupola. A crane will lower two spiral staircases into the building, which will lead up from the Old Masters Collection to the terrace.
It remains unattended, but offers a magnificent view.
Complementing the €3 million garden transformation is a new lift for visitors with reduced mobility, elegantly integrated into the base of the stairs leading to the main entrance.
Since it changed the statics of the building, it cost another 600,000 euros.