Views of Stirling’s Staatsgalerie tend to show the front of the building with its extraordinary denial of the conventional facade in favour of an array of architectural motifs grounded in a stylised ruin – the approach from Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse invites the visitor to immediately enter or to climb the building.
A visit in 1984 soon after the opening of the building was quite different. The hostel was on a hill side and we made our way down to the city centre by foot, encountering the Weissenhof-style administration building first and using the path via the building’s rotunda as a route between the hillside and the city below. This powerfully linked the promenade through the building with the surrounding landscape and we experienced Stirling’s architecture as an easygoing down-hill short-cut – a series of experiences in which the building never fully presented itself. View the Staatsgalerie Slideshow 1984-1990.
James Stirling 22 April 1926 – 25 June 1992