Ground-breaking ceremony for New German Optical Museum

(eap) The Optical Museum in Jena is to become an edutainment centre that will re-open its doors in 2027 under the new name of German Optical Museum (D.O.M.) and make various phenomena in the physical disciplines of optics and photonics tangible for all interested visitors at more than a hundred hands-on stations. The ground-breaking ceremony was recently held for a new building planned as part of the transformation plan, which will directly adjoin the historic optics school. The latter will be extensively refurbished and will house the majority of the exhibits in future.

A 1:10 scale model of the facade was on display during the ground-breaking ceremony. Photo by: Katrein Brenner Fotografie The new building, in turn, is intended to impress in particular with an artistic façade design that plays with light and serves as a reception and entrance building to the museum. Studio Other Spaces by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann was commissioned to design the exterior façade of the new building, which is intended to make the content of the exhibition perceivable in the urban space. Highly transparent glazing and a circular mosaic of hand-blown coloured glass with a diameter of eleven metres as well as vertical, supporting aluminium ribs are intended to create impressive visual effects. A 1:10 scale model of the façade was on display during the ground-breaking ceremony, giving a first live impression of the spectrum of the future play of light and colour on the building.

The design and planning of the new building and the refurbishment of the historic optics school are the work of Berlin architects Studio Qwertz. In close coordination with the Optical Museum and the future D.O.M., which is led by the founding director Prof. Dr.-Ing. Timo Mappes, the team of architects is working closely with the globally active lighting design firm Bartenbach from Austria to stage the buildings and the exhibition. The investment volume for all measures is estimated at around 57 million euros, a “significant proportion” of which is being co-financed by the city of Jena, the state of Thuringia and the federation, as the museum says.

During the ground-breaking ceremony, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Timo Mappes emphasized: “I’d like to thank all our sponsors and donors for helping us reach this milestone. As D.O.M., we are building a particularly attractive edutainment centre for Jena and far beyond Thuringia. We educate our guests in a playful way and entertain them at the same time. We make classical and the latest findings in optics understandable through real experiments, we play with art and inspire through the aesthetics of optical phenomena. We always offer explanations of what we see and thus create a new form of science communication.” ■