Neuesmuseum Dca

Neues Museum
Museum Island Berlin, Germany 19972009
Development of Museumsinsel (Museum Island), previously known as the

Spreeinsel (Spree Island), began in the sixteenth century as a pleasure garden for
the Stadtschloss (City Palace). The Altes Museum (Old Museum) by Karl Friedrich
Schinkel was completed in 1828, and then in 1841 King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of
Prussia ordered his court architect, Friedrich August Stler, to draw up a plan to
develop the land behind the Altes Museum hitherto used for commercial purposes
and create a sanctuary for the arts and sciences. Designed by Stler, the Neues
Museum (New Museum) became the first component of this visionary haven, and
was erected between 1841 and 1859. The Neues Museum was the first three-storey
museum ever built and was organised as a solitaire construction executed according
to a simple ground plan that enclosed two courtyards and replaced the central
rotunda and cupola used in the Altes Museum with a rectangular stair hall that rose
through all floors and occupied the full width of the building.
Extensive bombing during World War II left the building in ruins with some sections
severely damaged and others completely destroyed. Few attempts at repair
were made after the war, and the wreck was left exposed with only a minimum
of consolidation and protection undertaken during the GDR period. After David
Chipperfield Architects appointment to the project in 199798, the building and
restoration took nearly eleven years to complete, and the entire Museum Island was
added to the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list in 1999.
The project was unique given that no earlier reconstruction attempt had been fully
realised over a relatively long period of quiescence. Its patrons original intention of
linking museum design and presentation in a symbiotic relationship of exhibits and
exhibition spaces had not only lost its appeal for the contemporary visitor but in many
cases could simply no longer be created since much of the original material both
artefacts and rooms no longer existed, especially in the larger spaces where this
didactic unity was originally most apparent.
When considering the way forward, it was clear that the ruin should not be
interpreted as a backdrop for a completely new architecture but neither was an exact
reconstruction of what had been irreversibly lost in the war seen as an option. A
single continuous structure that incorporates nearly all of the available damaged
fabric while allowing a series of contemporary elements to be added became the
preferred path, often described as the third way. The key aims of the project
were to recomplete the original volume, and to repair and restore the parts that
remained after the destruction of World War II. The process can be described as a
multidisciplinary interaction between repairing, conserving, restoring and recreating
all of its components. The original sequence of rooms was restored with newly built
sections that create continuity with the existing structure. The almost archaeological
restoration followed the guidelines of the Charter of Venice, respecting the historical
structure in its different states of preservation.
Neues Museum
Museum Island Berlin, Germany 19972009
All the gaps in the existing structure were filled in without competing with its
brightness or surface. The restoration and repair of the existing elements of the
building were driven by the idea that the spatial context and materiality of the original
structure should be emphasised the contemporary reflects the lost but without
imitating it.
The new exhibition rooms are built of large-format prefabricated concrete elements
consisting of white cement mixed with Saxonian marble chips. Formed from the
same concrete elements, the new main staircase repeats the formal idea of the
original without replicating it, and sits within the majestic hall that is preserved
only as a brick volume, devoid of its former ornamentation. Other new volumes
the north-west wing, with the Egyptian court and the Apollo risalit; the apse in
the Greek courtyard; and the South Dome are built of recycled handmade bricks,
complementing the preserved sections. With the reinstatement and completion of
the mostly preserved colonnade at the eastern and southern sides of the Neues
Museum, the pre-war urban situation is re-established to the east. A new building,
the James Simon Gallery, will be constructed between the Neues Museum and the
Kupfergraben, echoing the urban situation of the site pre-1938 when Schinkels
Packhof (Customs House) faced the Spree.
In October 2009, after more than sixty years as a ruin, the Neues Museum reopened
to the public as the third restored building on Museum Island, exhibiting the
collections of the Egyptian Museum and the Museum of Pre- and Early History. The
building bears witness to its complex history while some of its original technological
innovations have been laid bare. The very incompleteness of its decorative pattern
helps to create a holistic understanding of the historic and contemporary structure
and its original and current purpose.
Project start
Completion
Opening
Gross floor area
Client
User
Architect
Partners
Project architects
Landscape architect
Exhibition design
Structural engineer
Services engineer
Site supervision
Project controlling
Photography
1997
2009
October 2009
20,500m2
Stiftung Preuischer Kulturbesitz represented by
Bundesamt fr Bauwesen und Raumordnung
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
David Chipperfield Architects, London, Berlin in collaboration with Julian Harrap
Harald Mller, Martin Reichert, Eva Schad, Alexander Schwarz
Jamie Fobert, Mark Randel, Martin Reichert, Eva Schad
Levin Monsigny Landschaftsarchitekten
architetto Michele de Lucchi S.r.L.
Ingenieurgruppe Bauen
Jaeger, Mornhinweg+Partner Ingenieurgesellschaft
Lubic & Woehrlin GmbH
Ernst & Young Real Estate GmbH
SMB/Ute Zscharnt for David Chipperfield Architects
Neues Museum
Neues Museum

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Neues Museum

Museum Island Berlin, Germany 19972009

Development of Museumsinsel (Museum Island), previously known as the

Museum Island Berlin, Germany 19972009

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