Berlin 2009 - Wingender Hovenier Architecten

Neues Museum, Berlin, 1997-2009
David Chipperfield
In 1997 David Chipperfield Architects
won an international competition for
the restoration of Friedrich August
Stüler’s Neues Museum, originally
built between 1841 and 1859. Located
on Museum Island in the heart of the
former East Berlin, the building was
initially constructed to extend the space
of the Altes Museum, built immediately
to the south by Stüler’s teacher Karl
Friedrich Schinkel. The original design
had formed part of an overall
architectural concept for Museum
Island - prompted by Friedrich
Wilhelm IV - of a series of art and
archaeological museums styled so as
to promote a greater appreciation of
classical antiquity. Among these
museums, and in terms of its
construction and rich interior
decoration, the Neues Museum was
considered the most important
monumental Prussian building of its
era. Seen today alongside the four other
reconstructed museum buildings on
the island, Stüler’s Neues Museum was
the only structure that remained ruined
from the war for almost five decades - a
contrast that demonstrated ideas of
history and decay in a compelling
and powerful way, although throughout
the building the degree of destruction
varied greatly. Certain interiors survived
almost completely, with elaborate
finishes and ceiling frescos still intact,
while other building elements existed
only as the enclosures of a gaping void.
The power of the ruin not least
stemmed from this exposed brickwork
shell, investing the building, 150 years
after it was first imagined, with the
indelible presence of a picturesque
classical ruin. Given this evocative yet
inaccessible space, the restoration of
the Neues Museum follows a principle
of conservation rather than
reconstruction - the design gives back
only enough context so that the
significance of the whole structure
and the sequence of spaces contained
within it are legible. Accordingly, the
missing north west wing and south east
bay are rebuilt, the enfilade of rooms
is restored, and the stair and courtyard
spaces are designed so as to maintain
elements of the building’s own decay.
The foundation plate will be sunk,
so that a needed additional level for
exhibition space can be gained, and
providing connections to the
neighbouring buildings at this level. In
this way, the new Neues Museum and
its collection of Egyptian antiquities
should navigate carefully between
dehistoricised reconstruction and
monumentalised preservation.