“…Since I saw how a wonderful model of the corner solutions of Mies van der Rohe’s Toronto buildings was thrown away in Chicago in 1969, I have been consumed by a passion for collecting. From that moment onward, I pursued the idea of founding a museum.” Ten years were to pass before the art historian Heinrich Klotz succeeded in founding the German Architecture Museum (DAM) in Frankfurt am Main. A villa built by Fritz Geldmacher in 1912 in neo-Renaissance style was made available for this purpose. Since the structure was not adequate for the loads it would have to bear and the exhibition space was too small, Oswald Mathias Ungers was commissioned in 1979 to refurbish the building. His redesign was based on the concept of a house within a house. The villa was gutted and the space was raised to four storeys in height beneath a large roof light. Since the inaugural exhibition in 1984, four successive curators have impressed their individual stamp on the museum: Heinrich Klotz was followed in 1989 by Vittorio Magnano Lampugnani, who was succeeded in 1994 by Wilfried Wang. Since 2000, the house has been under the direction of Ingeborg Flagge. The museum can now look back on more than 120 exhibitions. In 1989, a permanent exhibition was opened which describes architecture “from the primordial hut to the skyscraper”.