Building on the past

HE'S known as a modernist, but David Chipperfield's design for Berlin's Neues Museum revives the building without erasing its history.

Neues Museum

DOES a building have a memory? And if the walls of Berlin's bomb-ravaged monuments could talk, what would they say? These are questions that have vexed architects and city planners since the Berlin Wall came down, the country was reunified and it embarked on restoring many of its mistreated monuments to their former glory.

When faced with the task of breathing new life into a once magnificent and grand building that has been bombed, burnt and neglected for decades an architect has several options. Demolition of what's left and building something entirely new is always a possibility. Or if the primary structure is intact, the missing parts could be rebuilt, reclad and refinished to make it appear as though it was never damaged in the first place. With either approach, the history of the building - its memory - is erased in some way. A third option is to keep the parts of the structure that are sound and repair or replace the other parts with work that is clearly identifiable. In other words, make the damage the building has suffered one of its features and, therefore, retain part of the structure's memory.

There is evidence of these various approaches all over Berlin. The Hotel Adlon Kempinski beside the Brandenburg Gate, for example, was originally opened in 1907. It survived World War II, but was gutted by fire soon after. After reunification, the remains of the hotel were demolished and a new building, the facade inspired by the design of the original, was built on the site and opened as the "new" Adlon in 1997. Norman Foster's reconstruction of the Reichstag building, which had been partially destroyed by the war and undergone several attempts at rebuilding and renovation, not only preserves many of the scars of its history but also reinvents the building as the centre of German democracy by making it transparent and open to the people with a new glass

dome. At the same time, Foster's plan reinstated elements of the original building that had been destroyed.

Another British architect, David Chipperfield, was commissioned to restore the Neues Museum to its former glory. The museum, which forms part of a complex of five in Berlin known as Museum Island, was designed by Friedrich August Stuler and built between 1841 and 1859.

The building was badly damaged in World War II and lay derelict for decades until a refurbishment was started in 1986, at which time it was within the territory of the German Democratic Republic, but the project was soon abandoned. An international competition for a redesign was held in 1993-94, with first prize going to Giorgio Grassi - only for the National Museums of Berlin to reject it in favour of the more radical, fourth-placed scheme by Frank Gehry. A second competition was held in 1997 with only five firms invited to submit a scheme and the runnerup from 1994, David Chipperfield in collaboration with Julian Harrap, was declared the winner.

Chipperfield's scheme took more than 10 years to complete and cost a reported 295 million. After more than 60 years as a ruin, the Neues Museum opened in October 2009, the third restored building on Museum Island after reunification. Today it exhibits the collections of the Egyptian Museum and the Museum of Pre and Early History. It is hailed as an extraordinary achievement in architecture and is an important statement about how contemporary architectural intervention can contribute to the re-use of heritage buildings. In 2011, the reconstruction of the Neues Museum won the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the building's transformation is that it was done by an architect many consider to be the quintessential modernist.

Chipperfield's design for the restoration of the Neues Museum followed the guidelines of the Charter of Venice, respecting the historical structure in its different states of preservation. Gaps in the existing structure

were filled without competing with what remained and, according to Chipperfield's project statement, "the restoration and repair of the existing is driven by the idea that the original structure should be emphasised in its spatial context and original materiality - the new reflects the lost without imitating it".

The scheme Chipperfield devised abandons any notion that the Neues Museum could have been returned to its original form and appears modest at first glance.

On entering the building, however, and walking through its series of rooms (the sequence of which was restored by Chipperfield), you get the sense that there is not a square centimetre of this building that his team has not touched. None of the rooms in the original building had survived intact and much of the structure was significantly damaged. The restoration of the museum retains fragments of the original building without any attempt to repair them.

In other parts of the museum, the damage was so great that completely new additions have been made. The main staircase was destroyed in its entirety and has been rebuilt without slavishly replicating it.

The new staircase sits within a majestic hall that has been preserved for its volume and given a new, modern roof structure but it is finished with bare bricks rather than the original ornamentation.

In 1999, Museum Island was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. The five museums occupy the northern half of an island in the Spree River in the central Mitte district of Berlin. As well as the Neues Museum, the precinct includes the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum and the Pergamon Museum. Under construction between the Neues Museum and the Kupfergraben canal is the James Simon Gallery, which will serve as a new entrance building for Museum Island and is due to open next year. The new building and master plan have also been designed by David Chipperfield Architects.