SKD Museum Shop

A concept, interior and lighting design and a production supervision of a new Museum Shop in Dresden.

In a corner tower of the Residenzschloss in Dresden studio chmara.rosinke have designed a new museum shop. The Residenzschloss is part of the “Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden” (SKD), that contains 15 museums in total. So the shop isn’t only a museum shop in the classical sense. It’s rather an additional space to the already existing shop, where you can buy books and souvenirs. In the newly designed “Art und Info” space you can purchase a line of souvenirs specially made for the museum as well as design objects connected to the formerly eastern part of Germany and its eastern neighbours like Poland or Czech Republic. But the more important role of this space is, that you can sit down in the space and inform yourself about all the museums in the whole complex, it’s an alternative to the classical cash desk, where you rather have to rush and buy your ticket. In the new space you are allowed to read about all the exhibitions, ask questions, get information material in several languages about the museums, buildings and the different forms of tickets.

The difficulties but also the appeal of this project were lying in the existing structure. The building is listed and dates back to the 16th century, with a still original Villeroy&Boch tile flooring from the 17th century. The corner tower has a nearly round floorplan with a diameter of only 5.5m and is slightly eliptic. This limitation of space has led to the functional concept of having all furniture of the interior in a round shape oriented to the middle point, so that the small space is used as efficiently as possible.

To highlighten the flooring, the colors of the interior were kept as simple as possible. The walls have been painted in a very light grey, nearly white. All the furniture is made out of bent black mdf, that offers more sensual quality than just a black paint. Sliding doors in the shelve system are made out of translucent bent twin wall sheets and surfaces to expose for example jewelry are made out of grey corrugated sheets. A black LED chandelier designed for the space is hanging central and highlichts the cupola and its architectural details.

Year: 2018
Material: black MDF, policarbonate, steel
Commission: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden