NThere have been so many praises being given to such a dysfunctional building.The last major project of a modernist master Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, New National Gallery in Berlin It is a perfect square steel and glass temple, standing on the granite acropolis above the street. It was built in 1968, not far from the recently erected Berlin Wall, and was designed to symbolize the freedom of the West. Its large black roof surrounds an epic pillar-free hall for displaying modern art. It has long been revered as the Parthenon in the 20th century, and it is the ultimate example of Mies’ pursuit of “cosmic space.”
But as a museum, it has always been a disaster. Since its opening, the New National Art Museum has been plagued by cracked windows, severe condensation and embarrassing exhibition spaces, which has brought a curatorial nightmare to its staff. Below the impractical hall is an underground gallery for permanent collection, which has the dull feeling of a windowless office building. It is one of the most extreme examples of pursuing formal purity over functional requirements.
“When it first opened, people thought it looked like a huge gas station,” said David Chipperfield. The British architect behind the six-year restoration“But in the decades since then, feelings have grown.” A colorful BMW is now parked on the podium. As part of Alexander Calder’s reopening exhibition, Neatly complete the appearance of the gas station. “It’s amazing how smoothly this building works,” Chipperfield added diplomatically, “once people succumbed to its limitations.”
After a process of forensic archive research and archaeological inspections, 35,000 building components have been meticulously demolished, restored, and restored to their precise positions in a careful renovation of 140 million euros (120 million pounds). Not what you should have noticed.Different from his famous works New Museum in Berlin, Where modern additions were inserted into the bombed shell of a 19th-century building, Chipperfield’s mission here was to disappear. “As many Misses as possible” is the guiding principle. Comparing photos from the 1960s with photos of today, you can hardly see the difference. The glass is clearer, the matte black steel structure is more eye-catching, and the granite and wood are more refreshing. But the real change should be reflected in how smoothly this place operates.
“A window will crack once or twice in the past year,” said the director of the gallery, Joachim Jäger, standing under the five-meter-wide glass window that surrounds the main hall. “We will never find the same glass to replace them. And the door is too small to bring in large artworks-Mies doesn’t know what this space will be used for.” He listed a series of actuals of the huge hangar The problems range from puddles formed in the gallery due to condensation to the lack of walls to display artworks. It’s not that these will cause too much trouble for Mies.
“Such a big hall,” the 81-year-old architect said in response to criticism at the time, “of course it means a lot of difficulty for the display of art. I am fully aware of this. But it has such great potential, I can’t think about these difficulties at all.” Such a high-profile response was expected. After all, this is a statement: “We should treat our clients like children, not people who treat us like architects.”
Pride is the same lesson as Mies. But the quirks of the New National Gallery stem from its origins. By the late 1950s, members of the Berlin Senate were increasingly worried that the city did not yet have a large building built by the son of its most famous building, and his son was about to be his 75th birthday. Mies left Berlin for the United States in 1938. He tried to please the Nazis but failed., And continue to build a global reputation, becoming an unparalleled master of stylish office buildings, apartment buildings and conference centers. Berlin wanted a piece of the pie, so the city gave him full power to choose any location and build whatever he wanted.
“It is generally suspected that this is a building that Mies has long wanted to build elsewhere,” Chipperfield said. “He finally landed it in Berlin.” Mies designed a similar project in Cuba in the 1950s as a Bacardi’s open office headquarters, But cancelled because of the revolution.Then he recycles The same design of the Bavarian town Schweinfurt Museum in 1960, But the director is cold.
Reveling in the sense of America’s super-large scale, Mies is eager to realize the largest indoor column-free space imaginable, and now he has the opportunity to get rid of all the shackles in Berlin. It does not matter what it is used for. “He never needed to defend his decision,” Chipperfield said, with a hint of jealousy. “Politicians say yes to anything he wants.”
Half a century later, the British architect still has some limitations. His Sisyphean mission is to repair the functional defects of the building and improve its environmental performance without significantly changing the structure. Under normal circumstances, you can add heat insulation and double-glazing to the post-war building without destroying the original landscape, but Mies’s work is so stripped that there is nowhere to hide. “We decided to repair it as if it was not a 1960s building,” Chipperfield said, “but something that is sacred in architecture.”
Their persistent methods have reached the height of piety. It took four years to visit Mies Building in the United States many times before finding suitable paint and restoring the steel structure to its original matte black patina. In the visible area, it has been repainted by hand, brushed, sprayed, and then brushed again, just as precious as “The Last Supper”.A similar length was used to match the brown oak used in the lower floors, traced veneers from a dealer in Franconia, Germany, with Wood infected by steak fungus. Then there are windows.
“You will see many window frames of Bauhaus buildings have been modified to double the size to improve their thermal performance,” Chipperfield said. “We obviously can’t do this here.” The solution is to use two pieces of 12mm glass laminated together, each made in China weighing 1.2 tons, instead of a single 16mm pane. Compromise is allowed, provided that the upper gallery never displays paintings when the temperature is too extreme in summer or winter. The ghost of Mies continued to exist.
“exist Germany, You can have a long philosophical conversation about the state of the window mullions,” Chipperfield said, referring to the vertical steel bars between the glass panels. Mies is known for its slenderness. “In England, this is impossible. Everyone is trying to prove that you can do twice the speed with half the money. ”
Due to their strict German determination to be as faithful as possible to the original, his Berlin team was in danger of being more like Mies than Mies himself. For an architect who is known for his attention to detail, the biggest surprise is that the building is so poorly constructed. “It’s like opening the hood of Mercedes and discovering…” Chipperfield’s voice gradually weakened, showing an expression of disgust. The walls that looked like solid oak were actually pieced together with plywood, the concrete under the granite slabs was blown into pieces, and when they removed the ceiling, the electrical and mechanical systems were a mess. “It’s as if everything is glued together on the surface.”
Similarly, for an architect who believes in “material truth”, some of Mies’s surfaces are as thin as paper. The suspended ceiling of the lower gallery-which looks like a high-tech industrial manufacturing system-is a patchwork of wood and lacquered particleboard, reflecting the scarcity of materials in post-war Berlin. “God is in the details,” Mies likes to say. But don’t look too close.
To meet today’s needs, other features have been carefully inserted, including LED lighting, floor heating, two new ramps and an elevator (hidden behind the existing screen), while a large area has been excavated under the podium for technical space and art storage. Two rooms have been opened to accommodate a shop and a cloakroom, exposing the underside of concrete waffle panels and thick pillars. These were never intended to be visible. This will scare Mies, but it gives a good glimpse of the structure behind the scenes.
One of the victims of the tragedy in the renovation project is trees. There are some solid specimens in the sunken sculpture garden of the gallery, But their roots are driving granite paving. Such confusion is intolerable. Sadly, they have been torn away and replaced by neat young trees, buried by new slate.
Elsewhere, the pressure to stay true to the tastes of the 1960s overwhelmed actual demand, especially in the lower galleries, where despite some new lighting, these galleries are still a gloomy time warp. “Carpets are the most emotional aspect,” said Chipperfield, who is more accustomed to specifying the tone of polished concrete. “We had a crisis with the Anaglypta wood chip wallpaper.” Finally, the gray carpet was faithfully replaced, but the textured wallpaper was considered too much for the gallery. It is now restricted to administrative areas.
“We are worried that it looks too 60’s,” Jäger said. “But now that we know there is another building next door, we relax a lot. This will be a time capsule.” He was referring to the fact that after spending 140 million euros to repair this dysfunctional heirloom, the authorities are now on the street. A new modern art museum was built on the opposite side to perform all the functions that this sacred temple could not achieve.
Designed by the Swiss company Herzog & de Meuron as a large brick barn, it is connected to neighbors through a tunnel. 20th Century Museum It has seen its budget rise from 200 million euros to 450 million euros. You can almost hear Mies cheering outside the tomb.
