The King Of Screws

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About 80 km north-east of the city of Stuttgart, in the south of Germany, is the small town of Schwäbisch-Hall with about 35,000 inhabitants. In 2001 the businessman Reinhold Würth (He is the chairman of the Advisory board of a firm which is a world-wide business with 37 000 employees in 80 countries in the field of assembly and connecting technology with a product range of 50 000 products concentrating on screws, screw accessories, chemical-technical products, dowels, insulation etc.) had a museum built there, the Kunsthalle (meaning: art hall). For the Danish architect Henning Larsen, ‘the challenge in Schwäbisch Hall lay in creating a building that dared to be modern and yet was in harmony with the architecture and scale of the medieval town.‘ He certainly won the challenge! The massive reinforced concrete structure is clad in local Muschelkalk (this German term is used in English, too), which has been split using an new technique that produces interesting effects. The individual slabs are not simply hung on the face of the structure but are layered, with the split edges overlapping one another. A striking façade of steel and glass sets off the stonework and provides an effective contrast, and gives an open view of the town. (from the home-page) Now that the museum stands where it does it‘s difficult to imagine the town without it. The museum sits very close to the neighbouring houses. When strolling through an exhibition the visitors can look out of the large windows directly into the people‘s homes if they haven‘t drawn their curtains. They, on the other hand, can look at the artefacts from their living-rooms without getting up from their sofas. Good, you might say, so they save the money for a ticket. But no, they can‘t derive any pleasure from that. The admission is free anyway. Herr Würth is a genuine benefactor. Three to four changing exhibitions with works of art from the own stock as well as exhibitions providing an overall view of an artist or a specific issue are shown annually. The Museum Würth, integrated in the administration building, reports more than 50,000 visitors from outside every year, and this number is increasing steadily. I've been there several times and am planning to go again. I always go to the Kunsthalle first and then stroll through the town centre. --- Photo: View of the town from the Kunsthalle (Fotocommunity)