Cantilever Chair museum

In 1981 TECTA opened in the city centre of Lauenförde, a few kilometres from Kassel, a ‘Stuhlmuseum’, based on Axel Bruchhaeuser's private collection. When he met the British architects Alison and Peter Smithson in 1980, the idea grew to build a contemporary museum for his chair collection. Over the years the Smithsons redesigned his home and his factory according to the concept of ‘Conglomerate Ordering’, which they formulated in the 80-ies. For the ‘Hexenhaus’ they created new pavilions, added porches,

made openings to the existing house and built bridges between the different rooms and pavilions. On the factory grounds the creative couple intervened on several places, making it into an ‘industrial park’ á la Schinkel, an old dream of Axel. The main buildings house the Kragstuhlmuseum and the Tecta-archives. In the museum Axel has unique pieces as the Andersen chair from 1953, which is a strong claim (or even proves!) that Verner Panton copied it for his now very much hyped Panton chair. Junker pieces which inspired Marcel Breuer, -whilst working there-, for his tabular steel chairs.

Original Prouvé furniture that is no longer in production. Next to those and many more design icon of the nineteenth and mainly twentieth century, the museum has an interesting collection of anonymous chairs, as for example fisher-stools.
What is particularly stunning about this place is the fact that you can stroll around and see the whole collection from the outside. There are no barriers, no secrets. The private collection is opened up in the truest sense of the word.

www.kragstuhlmuseum.de