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At the height of its success, the Daimler-Benz Museum was closed in 1985 for thorough renovation and enlargement in expectation of the “100 Years of the Automobile” anniversary in 1986.
The concept for the new design was developed by architects Dieter Herrmann, Knut Lohrer and HG Merz. Their design sought to change the sensation of space by creating new axes of vision and new visual relations between the individual departments. The architecture thus took up connections between individual moments of Mercedes-Benz history which reach beyond a mere chronological sequence.
The 25-year-old building of Gutbier and Kammerer was given a new front with an unbroken glass façade; the inner courts were roofed over to enlarge the Museum’s walled-in space. The previous floors were given the character of galleries and extended by steel ramps and bridges which served simultaneously to access the collection and as exhibition areas. The Museum’s display area grew to 5,760 square meters and offered a refreshing new approach to the collection. The visitor either toured the exhibition chronologically or, depending on interests, could choose to visit one of the 26 main theme areas. This open system corresponded to the architectural solution with its through views and crossings between individual stations. Racing history acquired special importance here, now being installed in large part on the ramps leading from one floor to the next. This made the motorsport vehicles a connecting element rising in a dynamic spiral from the ground floor of the Museum to the second upper floor, from the earliest Daimler racing cars to the current competition vehicles.
Daimler-Benz entered unknown technical territory in 1986 with the introduction of an Audio Information System which supplied the visitor with information about the individual exhibits. The system was without parallel in the European museum landscape because it did not use conventional sound media like tape or records, but played its texts from a flash memory. About 120 seconds of information were continuously issued via infrared transmitter within a narrowly defined area. The digital sound of the “sound stick,” as the audio guides were called, had its counterpart in 1986 in films embedded in the staging of the exhibition: old motorsport films and documentations adapted for the “racing cinema.”
The “Celebrities in Mercedes-Benz” production juxtaposed mid-20th century cinema works and their heroes to the Mercedes-Benz cars shown on a screen. An installation from the Ger-man movie “Die Drei von der Tankstelle” (‘Three Good Friends’) served as eye-catcher here. Following on from the foundation of Mercedes-Benz AG the Museum was re-named Mercedes-Benz Museum in 1989.
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