BAVARIAN "SCHMANKERL" UNDER COCO VENEER

On 4th June Markus Söder opened the new museum "Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte" in Regensburg. The spacious building is located directly on the banks of the Danube, in the middle of the UNESCO World Heritage Old Town in a location with a historical past dating back to the middle ages. The museum was planned by the Frankfurt architectural office wörner traxler richter, who won the competition against more than 250 submissions.

The Museum of Bavarian History closes a gap in a double sense: urbanistically between the Danube and the old town and culturally between 1806 and the present. The new museum deals exclusively with recent Bavarian history: on a total floor space of 5,100 square meters, visitors will find everything they need to know about the history of the Free State and the history of democracy and culture in a whole European context. On the ground floor there are areas for special exhibitions and events, a showroom with 3D projections, a museum shop and a Bavarian restaurant also called “Wirtshaus” offering delicious delicacies from all regions of Bavaria. On the first floor is the museum pedagogy and on the second floor the permanent exhibition "How Bavaria became a free state and what makes it so special". The exterior of the building is kept in cold grey with a light-flooded and spacious foyer in bright white. It is a building in a prominent location that polarizes both in terms of content and architecture.

The only place where traditional interiors seem to have replaced the modernity of the building is the restaurant on the ground floor. It is a modern interpretation of a rustic restaurant, furnished with old chairs from a traditional Munich tavern, around 300 beer mugs and exhibits from the depot of the museum. The rustic atmosphere is characterized by a homogeneous yet exciting surface design: a perfect symbiosis of timeless materials, state-of-the-art lighting technology and a breathtaking interior design.

The Karlsruhe-based company Schorn & Groh supplied the veneer for the ceiling and wall paneling of the restaurant. The clients were Akustik & Raum AG from Olten in Switzerland, which stands for acoustic innovations and gives the rooms the best possible spatial sound and the Bavarian company Harald Schmidt, which has been producing high-quality windows and doors as well as furniture and interior fittings since 1981. Both companies were jointly responsible for the interior construction of the restaurant and the parlour. The materials were inspected on site at Schorn & Groh. There are veneers from more than 140 wood species and thousands of logs from all over the world in stock and can be inspected personally. The advice is professionally sound and takes place in comfortable showrooms.

Representatives of the architectural office WTR, Akustik & Raum AG and Harald Schmidt GmbH came together for the restaurant with its special character. The main focus of the meeting was on the colorfulness and overall appearance of the wooden surface. Several logs were inspected and evaluated by everyone. The choice fell on four oak logs in the color Coco. These special oak veneers are color changed in an environmentally friendly process and in a natural way. The homogeneous coloring underlines the naturalness of the raw material wood with its calm appearance. Schorn & Groh offers Coco veneer in four different shades of brown, for the interior of the restaurant a mix of Coco Coffee and Coco Cognac was selected.

In total, the restaurant has 150 square meters of fleece-backed spliced veneers for the ceiling paneling and another 150 square meters for the wall paneling, plus a few cubic meters of solid wood in smoked oak for the mouldings to coffer the ceilings. Akustik & Raum AG combined the warm wooden surface with an acoustic panel. Therefore not only the visual appearance is perfect, but also the acoustics in the restaurant. The "Schmankerl" are also highly recommended! Thus, those who visit the Bavarian Museum should not miss the “Wirtshaus”.