For the Olympic Games in Munich, Werner Ruhnau developed a play street – so to speak, as a cultural counterpoint to the athletic showcase back then, in 1972. Anyone could participate in the creation of visual or performing arts and engage with the artists. This aim to dissolve the boundary between the audience and the artists was also the foundation for the play spaces he created for numerous theaters: In Essen or in Frankfurt am Main, for example, he equipped his theater houses with freely usable spaces, without separation between stage and auditorium, where the audience could actively participate, not just consume.
Werner Ruhnau began his career after studying architecture in Gdansk, Braunschweig, and Karlsruhe from 1950 to 1952 as an architect for the Agricultural Chamber in Münster, alongside Walter Hämer. From there, he was engaged directly with a team of three architect colleagues for the new construction of the Theater Münster. After its completion in 1956, Ruhnau founded his own architectural office in Gelsenkirchen and built his masterpiece: the local music theater in the Ruhr area.
The democratic approach of making culture accessible not just for an elite is expressed throughout the entire building, particularly in the glass facade in front of the concrete skeleton. There is no longer a separation between the educational elite inside and the people in the Ruhr area outside – culture for all. In addition to cultural buildings, including many renovations, and several administrative buildings, such as Herta KG or Flachglas AG, he was also responsible for the design of subway stations in the Ruhr area and various residential settlements in NRW.
All of these emerged from a particular spirit, in which not only all usual trades but also artists were involved from the beginning. Werner Ruhnau referred to the participating artists as "special experts in design"; they were equal partners to structural engineers in his view. He had a special knack for selecting the artists involved in the construction, as anyone who has seen Yves Klein's blue color reliefs in the music theater in the Ruhr will attest. Werner Ruhnau's son, Georg Ruhnau, recounts how this came about: "My father actually wanted to hang mirror objects in the lobbies, but then he was at an exhibition of Norbert Kricke in Paris and saw in the back room of the gallery DIN-A4 size plaques by a completely unknown judo teacher – he wanted them in the foyer. He thought, they belong here."
"He belongs here" was meant to be taken literally; Werner Ruhnau liked the idea of the medieval construction hut, where artists and engineers not only worked hand in hand but also lived on the construction site. "He wanted to interact with the artists, benefit from the knowledge of others. This approach provides more scope than a design that cannot deviate by a millimeter," Georg Ruhnau says of his father, Werner, who described himself as "Homo Ludens" and saw his professional activity as a grand game.
Werner Ruhnau, who also taught for a short time at the École d’Architecture de Montréal and the Institute for Theatre Studies at the University of Cologne, did not leave behind a vast body of work. But he left a unique one, particularly well understood by those who pursue the idiosyncratic character of the architect. Werner Ruhnau passed away in 2015. He designed his tombstone in the Kassel Artists' Necropolis in 1995 – it is titled "Play Space".
