David Chipperfield, architect, shows details of the restoration in the Niobiden Hall at the Richtfest, or topping-out ceremony, where the roof of the building is added, of the Neues Museum on the Museumsinsel in Berlin, on Sept. 21, 2007. (Photographer: Jose Giribas/Bloomberg)

The Neues Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island was left to decay after suffering bomb damage in World War II. The British architect David Chipperfield is now rebuilding a part of Germany’s equivalent of the Louvre and is conserving everything that remained without replicating what was destroyed. He is filling in the gaps with a sparse, contemporary style and modern materials, a blend that has won both friends and foes. They want the museum to be restored as exactly as possible to its prewar state. Others hail the coexistence of historical evidence and modern aesthetics.

Read article (Bloomberg, September 28, 2007)
See plans for Museum Island in Berlin

The strategy of Chipperfield bears a close resemblance to Rem Koolhaas’ proposal back in 2004 to do almost nothing to the authentic decay of the General Staff building of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. ‘Is it possible to do “nothing” today?’ he asks. ‘Can we abstain from modernisation?’ And, he persists (with the vast Hermitage in mind, rich in objects but poor in resources), might there be a virtue in neglect? Might neglect be used ‘to expose value’?

Judging from the plans for the Neues Museum, no matter how controversial, the answer to this question is ‘yes’.

Images by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) for the Hermitage

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This entry was posted on vrijdag, september 28th, 2007 at 10:17 pm and is filed under Heritage, History, Museum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.