The Bavarian Parliament selected the design of Berlin architect, Volker Staab
Budapest/Munich, October 2, 2003 – After a stringent selection process and
extensive consultations on the reconstruction of its Assembly Room, the Bavarian
Parliament has opted for the design competition-winning entry of Volker Staab.
When reconstructing the Assembly Room, the interior design of which dates
from the post-war era, three main tasks had to be carried out: to change the
Assembly Room’s seating plan (the number of representatives having been reduced
from 204 to 166); to provide a contemporary interior design, incorporating
modern seating and state-of-the-art facilities for representatives and finally,
to optimize the room’s lighting and thus brighten up the atmosphere of the
Assembly Room, which had been considered quite gloomy.
While paying respect to such a historical building, Staab took a cautious,
though innovative approach to its reconstruction. The assembly room will be
fitted out with a completely new interior, which has two main features: a glass
“sky” and the reorganization of the Assembly Room’s layout. The folding chairs
of the post-war era will be replaced by modern seating. The glass sky, arching
within the upper walls, will give the illusion of flattening out the steep
proportions of the relatively tall and narrow room. As this pushes down the
focal point of the light, a feeling of greater expanse in the room will be
created. In this frame of light, Staab places a wooden shell, incorporating
all the seating, the galleries and the rear wall.
The reconstruction of the assembly room, commencing in summer 2004 and to
be completed in fall 2005, will be the Staab studio’s second imprint on the
Maximilaneum, Munich’s historical Parliament district. For his design of the
Representatives’ Offices, an extension to the Parliament building, Staab won
the 1995 Bavarian Architectural Prize of the Bavarian Association of German
Architects (BDA).
The Staab studio has been working with Graphisoft’s architectural software
since 1994, and, in addition to the Bavarian Parliament reconstruction, has
used Archicad to design several prestigious projects, such as Nürnberg’s Neues
Museum and the Georg Schäfer Museum in Schweinfurt.