Kurt Schuessler | Projects

SELECTED PROJECTS

11 EXPOSITIONS OF THE THEMATIC AREA EXPO2000, Hanover, Germany, 1997–2000

RESPONSIBILITY: Art Direction, Senior Project Leader Art Direction
PROJECT SIZE: 100.000 m²
TOTAL PROJECT COST: 260 m Euro
DESCRIPTION: The discovery of a new world. The Thematic Area was perhaps the most ambitious project of the EXPO2000 in Hanover. For the first time not only some pavilions called for attention but a large content wise connected Thematic Area with eleven single topics. Their purpose was to raise questions and give profound answers about the future by addressing the most up-to-date issues of the new millennium.

The Thematic Area informed on 100.000 m² about the real adventures of the future – and the adventurous realness of the present. The exhibitions were developed in close co-operation with architects like Jean Nouvel and Toyo Ito, exhibition designers like François Confino and Uwe Brueckner, artists like Antoni Miralda, Rajeev Sethi and François Schuiten, research institutions like ESA and MIT, industrial partners like BMW and Siemens and many more.

OLYMPIC VELODROM AND SWIMMING POOL, Berlin, Germany, 1993–1997, Arch. Dominique Perrault

RESPONSIBILITY: Senior Project Leader Swimming Pool, Urban Planning, Train Station
TOTAL PROJECT COSTS: 296 m Euro
DESCRIPTION: 1992 Berlin competed to become host city of the 2000 Olympic Games. As part of the – unsuccessful – application a Velodrome (11420 spectators, 5583 seats) and a Swimming Pool (4200 spectators, 2136 seats) were designed and consequently built from a scaled down design and modified to serve successfully as multifunctional facilities.

Two enormous steel lakes in an apple orchard that is how the two sport arenas appear at first sight. They are hardly noticeable despite their enormous size as they are sunk in the park with roof lines only slightly above ground level. The shapes – abstract and geometrical – are purely a result of the internal use. A rectangle for the swimming pool and a circle for the velodrome.