During the 'Kommt auf die Baustelle!' festival, a media exhibition on the upcoming exhibition floor will unpack the design’s key themes under four titles: 'The Task', 'A New Place', 'From Darmstadt to Berlin', and 'The Tower'.

The exhibition traces the genesis of the Bauhaus Archive—from Walter Gropius’s designs for Darmstadt through to the envisioned museum ensemble—illustrating the interplay between old and new construction. The focal point is the construction of an experimental tower, a prominently visible signpost for the new site, signalling its emerging identity.

September 19 – 21, 2025
Bauhaus-Archiv  /  Museum für Gestaltung
Klingelhöferstraße 14, 10785 Berlin

Even before the overall project was completed, the tower of the extension of the Bauhaus-Archiv to the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung received the Austrian Steel Construction Prize 2025 in the building construction category.

The prize is awarded every two years by the Austrian Steel Construction Association for outstanding projects in building construction and civil engineering. The Austrian company Zeman & Co was responsible for the realization of the steel construction.

The monthly construction magazine regularly invites architecture firms to contribute project proposals and their own contributions to the issue's focus topic.
For the December 2024 issue on cultural buildings, we took on the role of guest editor. In addition to writing the editorial, we selected three projects by other architects and presented the Casals Forum in Kronberg. In the technical section of the magazine, we, together with the structural engineering firm Bollinger Grohmann, explain how we incorporate digitalization into our work, using the example of the Bauhaus Archive extension in Berlin.

DBZ Deutsche Bauzeitschrift 12/2024
Issue Topic Cultural buildings
Guest editor Staab Architekten
​Podcast with Volker Staab
Images by Marcus Ebener, Staab Architekten

For the 20th anniversary of the Neues Museum Nuremberg, Volker Staab's first work, the museum presented an exhibition by Staab Architekten in the six façade rooms. Through planned and built projects, it became clear how profound the influence of context is on the work of Staab Architekten and how broadly our office interprets the term "context." 
During the five-month exhibition, the museum's façade spaces were put in scene in an uanusual way. Transparent image planes changed the effect of the formative visual axes and visual references in the building, transforming the open spatial areas into light-filled berths. This intervention not only made clear the museum's relationship to the square in front of it but also played with the building's basic idea of allowing the cut-open museum spaces to become visible behind the glass façade.

04.07.2020–10.01.2021
Neues Museum
Klarissenplatz, 90402 Nuremberg

What can contemporary architecture in the context of the Bauhaus look like that does not run the risk of appearing like 'Bauhaus architecture'? To avoid falling into clichés, the design for the extension of the Bauhaus Archive draws on the programmatic specificity of the Bauhaus rather than stylistic elements associated with it. At the same time, the design addresses the question of how to deal with Walter Gropius' existing building, which was in danger of being relegated to the second row given the required building volume. The topography of the site and the winding access to the old building ultimately offered the key to how the idiosyncrasy of the house could be preserved and yet something emblematically new added to the building.

September 6, 2019 at 7:00 p.m.
Festival Center at Ernst-Reuter-Platz, 10587 Berlin

tip Berlin 18/2019
Interview with Volker Staab
By Iris Braun

ZOO Magazin, NO.63
Total Transparency. Bauhaus in Berlin: An Interview with Volker Staab
Review by Bettina Krause

Edition Detail, 2018
Published by Sandra Hofmeister
ISBN 9783955534516 (DE/EN)