right at the back, in the passage to the New Museum, the visitor finds the first piece in the exhibition of the house: one hanging from the ceiling, slender pine pole. At the bottom, is sharpened like a pencil, because he is one of the countless piles had to be rammed into the muddy ground of the Museum island, so were able to raise the building. The stake belonged once to those that contributed to the Packhof, a farm building, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Had obliquely erected in front, also soon have the “Old” Museum, the first of those buildings, which gave the island in the river Spree, the name “Museum island”.

The Everyday in addition to the blessed one, stood to his times in the first third of the 19th century. Century, the neighborhood of economic and cultural building. Today it is different. There have been no commercial construction on the island, the museums themselves have become economic sizes. In this respect, it has a double meaning, that Schinkel’s stake is now admired in David chipper fields the entrance to the building. Firstly, because the English architect is the successor of the German architect, on the other, because the Economy has long since entered the sphere of art.

The entrance building, which will be handed over today to the National museums as a future user, to the power of the Museum’s visitors channel. Most of you will start the tour to the Treasures of the New Museum with Nefertiti, and the Pergamon Museum, the altar frieze, and later on in the Old Museum of Classical antiquity. And before the cashier your Ticket, to the wardrobe of the coat, and afterwards in the Café, relax or Shop to shop. Two and a half million visitors a year, 8000 per day, the Museum island. Not all will be funneled through to the largest patron of the Berlin museums named James-Simon-Galerie, because the separate inputs of each of the houses remain. But the majority, especially the tourist groups are in urgent need of a Central point of contact.

you Should rise still occurs?

Now the building is finished. The umbrella organisation of State museums, the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, will very soon decide whether the conditions of the gallery’s new premises are still correct, whether or not admission is to be charged. The end of 2019 to the favor of the audience competing Humboldt Forum will at least be able to offer in its start – up phase of free entry-a Suction, the museums vis-à-vis hardly escape.

Then the need for a cashier, there would be no bar; and soon the room gripping the bar end for an Audio guide, in its place, increasingly, the use of their own Smartphones. The way guide, the the daily mirror characterized in previous Reports as a complicated, could dissolve to some extent fallen in, much to the profit of the visitors of the building.

the entrance to the Museum island, the James-Simon-gallery for more pictures of view 1 of 18Foto: Thilo Rückeis12.01.2018 09:40Blick on the James-Simon-Galerie, the new entrance building on Berlin’s Museum island in Berlin-Mitte.Back Next

For the James-Simon-gallery is a beautiful building, too bad a lot of to be as the place of the crowd in front of cash registers and headphone stations. When the audience no longer has to take the funds and Guide course, the way is clear for the intention-free stroll To and From on the staircase, which leads from the Bodestraße on the upper floor. Or on those stairs, which connects the interior of the building the two main floors; or into the Café, and in warm weather, on the porch, the portico, high above the copper ditch.

Moreover, there is a special exhibition space, he is hidden in the natural light loose Base of the building. If he appears in the empty-condition-too-long and narrow, so it is the walls with the help of alternate or split soon those long-awaited opportunity to organize thematic exhibitions. The museums of the island you should make a priority from their own portfolios in order to increase their appeal. And, finally, sent under the Slope of the Grand staircase is pushed, an Auditorium with 230 seats, arranged in 13 rows without armrests; what this enables in case of need, at the expense of comfort.

a Respectful distance from the New Museum

There’s a certain Puritanism in the works is the clear Form, the pure Material, the strict Aesthetics of a higher rating than the convenience. is probably David Chipperfield defends his reputation, in terms of Material and execution. The concrete is smooth and uniform, in the outdoor areas as a slender pillar with a sparkling marble award; handrails and fittings are made of Bronze, floors, Crailsheim shell limestone, dark brown walnut wood for the creation of a cloakroom and a Shop as well as a acoustic ceiling in the Auditorium. The quality of workmanship is everywhere without Fail. It must be, because such a reduced, straight to the Adolf Loos championed ornament impotence-oriented form of language would be the slightest Sloppy cheap. Here but she is precious.

It was not easy, in the extremely elongated plot of land a building to insert, the respect keeps the full distance to the wide mounted on the New Museum – it obscured nevertheless complete and also a wide flight of steps. Next to her, only a narrow bar remains. This bolt needs to perform tasks, the service functions, for the sake of those has made an investment of around 135 million euros.

The great staircase of the Bodestraße to the upper floor of the gallery.Photo: Kai-Uwe Heinrich

David Chipperfield denies that his building from the functions developed, form follows function is a misconception. The building was a “public place,” he says. His fellows designers Alexander Black adds that it was “built topography”, directly related to the early drawing of the Prussian crown Prince and later king Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who had dreamed of an Acropolis and made them in 1841 as a “sanctuary for art and science” for specific projects.

height and gracefulness

the Museum island grew up over a century as a collection of individual buildings. Chipperfield you are with the entrance of the building a naturally appearing Together. The colonnade around the island, which already Schinkel’s successor, Friedrich August Stüler conceived and produced, Chipperfield, in his slender pillars effortlessly continue and enhance on the balcony of the James-Simon-Galerie in height and gracefulness. On the other hand, he takes up the motif of the mighty base, which is next to the Pergamon Museum out of the water stand out.

Now the entrance is in the building, even its Loggia much too easy to require such a powerful Base. Fortunately, Chipperfield has cut two large Windows, which break up its massiveness. On the left, to the Pergamon Museum, then, has he set a magical light, a glass railing escorted down stairs to the water. Lightness is a key word for what has since grown less as a single building, because, as an Ensemble of designs up. At a distance from the Palace bridge as seen from the arrow forest covered with a flat roof, the unclassified structure of the Pergamon-Museum, looked from this perspective, it is always like a kind of factory, and certainly nothing about its contents revealed.

More about

exhibition David Chipperfield, The invisible

Bernhard Schulz

is Now passed to the new building, to be kept available to Talk, the rooms explored, and the Café on the first test. In July of 2019, so it is called the James-Simon-gallery is to record your service. Those who enter via the staircase and to the left, found embedded in the wall there is an inscription showing the name of the donor. She closes with the words: “The National museums in Berlin are obliged to James Simon to the greatest and eternal thanks”. In such a festive spirit, the building is created.