Hambacher Schloss

Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Germany

Photo © Stefan Müller

Drawing © Max Dudler

Restaurants, Bars, Clubs

Architects: Max Dudler

Location: Hambacher Schloss 1832, 67434 Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Germany
Year: 2018
Client: Stiftung Hambacher Schloss - vertr. durch Landesbetrieb LBB
Building period: 2005–2018
Volume: Conversion: gross floor area 3,500m² New restaurant: gross floor area 1,300 m² New visitor house: gross floor area 453m²
Procedure: Competition 2004, 1st prize

Hambach Castle, the site of the "National Festival of the Germans," represents European and German history in a unique way. The goal of the contemporary intervention was to carefully clean up, open up and condense the preserved substance. The interventions were only intended to support the historic substance and not to intervene significantly, so that spatial and chronological relationships become legible again. In the south, a new restaurant building was added to the castle, which is architecturally oriented to the historic defense walls. A new visitor's house was built on the outer ring wall, its cubature developing from the archetypal house form and reinforcing the typological character of the outbuilding. Its arrangement reflects the structural hierarchy of the castle complex: crowned by the castle itself, it unfolds over the inner ring wall to the outer wall with the visitor house. For the facades, the yellow Leistädter sandstone typical of the area was used, which had already been used in the historic palace building.

For the work on Hambach Castle, Max Dudler received the DAM Prize for Architecture in Germany 2012, an award at the German Architecture Prize 2013, the German Natural Stone Prize 2013, and the Wüsenrot Foundation Design Prize 2014. The visitor house was awarded a Special Recognition at the German Natural Stone Prize 2018.