The Bavarian State Exhibition tells the story of the emergence of cities in High Medieval Bavaria. Within 100 years, between 1200 and 1300, the Wittelsbachs established a network of cities that still characterizes the region today. The two towns of Aichach and Friedberg, near Augsburg, are also among these founding cities.
The exhibition's presentation in two completely different locations—Friedberg's historic halls of the renovated ducal castle and Aichach's multifunctional fire station hall from the 1960s—required fundamentally different approaches. While valuable exhibits were displayed in a museum-like manner in the castle, the same theme in Aichach was presented in a multimedia and family-friendly way.
In Friedberg, the core idea is based on the concept of "expansion." Just as cities grew in breadth and especially in height, the exhibition architecture changes throughout the course. In the first rooms, the furnishing elements remain conspicuously low. In the banquet hall, which inherently strives upward and tells the story of the already developed cities of the late Middle Ages with their walls, towers, and parish churches, the skyline of the furniture is fully developed, reaching two meters high at first and over three meters high towards the end. This creates surprising vistas where each visitor can discover their own frame of reference. Wooden partitions evoke construction fences, gridded surfaces on pedestals recall the first attempts at parcelling out cities. Room-in-room volumes evoke neighborhoods grouped around the central marketplace with its side alleys. Concrete surfaces also emphasize the new building material, stone, which now replaced wooden construction everywhere.
