Bremen’s historic city center is encircled by a continuous green belt that occupies the site of the former medieval fortifications. Embedded within this park to the east of the city center is the Kunsthalle Bremen, a museum for modern and contemporary art with a significance extending far beyond the region.

Our competition proposal asks how the museum can be extended without interrupting the spatial continuity of this important green belt, while preserving the urban presence of the existing neoclassical building from 1849 as a freestanding object within the park. The new addition is therefore carefully positioned, slightly behind, and detached from the historic building, connected to the existing museum by bridges at the exhibition levels and the main lobby. Set back from the street, the extension allows the historic Kunsthalle to retain its prominence while pedestrians can continue to move freely around the ensemble and through the park.

The form of the addition develops from the vertical distribution of the program and the organization of the individual floor plates. Orthogonal galleries are clustered at the center of each level, leaving open areas along the free-form façade to create a continuous perimeter circulation zone. This space provides a moment of orientation and transition between the controlled environment of the white-box galleries, designed to international exhibition standards, and the specific genius loci of the surrounding park.

This perimeter is enclosed by a climatic envelope of clear, translucent, and mirrored glass. Reflections of the park, sky, and historic museum form a changing camouflage pattern across the façade, dissolving the apparent boundaries of the new volume into its surroundings. Rather than establishing itself as another autonomous object within the park, the addition deliberately resists a clear-cut visual identity, appearing and disappearing with changing viewpoints, light, and seasons.