Mercedes-Benz Museum

Frank Lloyd Wright probably would have given his porkpie hat to get the commission to design the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart—if he had lived so long. And he might have been impressed (even if grudgingly so) to see how a young Dutch firm, UN Studio, evolved a stunning spiral-ramped, reinforced-concrete building for the auto company. Granted, Wright generated his own historic concrete-ramp structure for displaying art with his Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan in 1959. There he realized a spiral-ramp parti he had also developed for cars—in the form of parking structures dating back to 1924–25. But Wright’s only chance to adapt that parti for the display of automobiles came with his 1955 Jaguar showroom at 430 Park Avenue in New York City. Now, belonging to Mercedes-Benz, it contains only a smidgen of his original idea.

Going beyond Wright, the nine-story Mercedes museum—designed by Ben van Berkel, an architect, working with his partner, Caroline Bos, trained as an art historian, and their Amsterdam-based office—is composed of two spiraling ramps in the form of a double helix that mimics DNA’s genetic strands. With clear spans of 100 feet that can display high-tonnage trucks and cars, the wide ramps loop, incline, merge, and meld as interchangeable surfaces, so that floors become walls, and walls become ceilings.

Many technical developments have emerged in the years between Wright’s experiments and the competition-winning scheme for the newly opened Mercedes-Benz Museum. These advances enabled the UN Studio team, which included both engineer Werner Sobek and a computer consultant on geometry, Arnold Walz, to develop a 270,000-square-foot, reinforced-concrete structure far more complex than the Guggenheim, and seven times larger.

In Germany, the Mercedes museum occupies a 37,674-square- foot site in an automotive enclave called Mercedes–Benz World near the parent company DaimlerChrysler’s Stuttgart-Untertürkheim plant. Next door is the new Mercedes-Benz Center, a square, three-story building pierced by skylights, where the sleek, elegant cars are sold. A 330-foot-long passage under a concrete podium, lined with shops and a restaurant, links the center to the museum.

According to Ben van Berkel, joint founder and director of UNStudio “The Mercedes‑Benz Museum sets up an interface for a series of radical spatial principles in order to create a completely new typology”. And by this, he refers to how visitors experience the museum: They do not begin their visit to the exhibition at a conventional entrance at the base of the building. They are transported by lift to the top floor. Here they have the choice of two tours, during which they descend through the building. The paths of each tour meet on each floor, enabling visitors to switch between tours – the Collections tour and Legend tour – should they wish to do so.