A conversation with David Chipperfield

David Chip­per­field hardly needs an in­tro­duc­tion, es­pe­cially in Germany. With his German team, he has run promi­nent pro­jects like the Neues Museum and the James Simon Gallery on the Museum Island in Berlin. The British ar­chi­tect also ren­o­vated the New Na­tional Gallery by Mies van der Rohe, which reopene in 2021. He keeps offices in London, Milan and Shang­hai, among other places, and is in­volved in pro­jects around the world. FSB met with the 66-year-old ar­chi­tect in his Berlin office and got to know him as an earnest, highly focused yet friendly and mis­chie­vous con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist.

Mr Chip­per­field, with the opening of the James Simon Gallery last year, your work on the re­con­struc­tion of the Museum Island has come to an end after about 25 years. Alexan­der Schwarz, one of your Berlin part­ners, once said that the time spent working on the Island was like a doing a second uni­ver­sity degree for him.

Yes, that’s right. The Neues Museum was es­pe­cially an ed­u­ca­tion. Because of the tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties and the design chal­lenges, but mainly because of po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions: how do you do a project that every­one in Berlin has an opinion about? It was very con­tro­ver­sial and con­fronta­tional, even. Too con­fronta­tional for my taste. So our office de­vel­oped a col­lab­o­ra­tive working method to bring all of the stake­hold­ers to­gether. The urban de­vel­op­ment plan­ners, the Mon­u­ment Au­thor­ity, the Pruss­ian Cul­tural Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the cu­ra­tors – every­one needed to believe in the project and help us make the right de­ci­sions. Without this way of working, we would not have managed that project, which is why it is so hugely im­por­tant for the mindset of our firm. I think it will become even more im­por­tant for ar­chi­tects to work col­lab­o­ra­tively. We should not operate like design mas­ter­minds.

You’re working on a museum project now, ren­o­vat­ing the New Na­tional Gallery, which is an­tic­i­pated to reopen next year. You called your concept the ‘in­vis­i­ble ar­chi­tect’.

I don’t think we had a choice. Our job was not to trans­form Mies’ work into a David Chip­per­field mas­ter­piece. The job was to get Mies back to good con­di­tion. Some of the things we did were simple tech­ni­cal ren­o­va­tions; others needed cul­tural in­ter­pre­ta­tion or changes to design for func­tional pur­poses. But ul­ti­mately, the aim is that no one should notice the facelift.

What was your most dif­fi­cult task in this project?

The facades of the glass hall, because they were de­signed in­cor­rectly from the start. We could have said, OK, fine, let’s design them this way so they work. But with Mies the design is in the detail. Chang­ing the facades would have meant chang­ing the whole build­ing. So we had to weigh up the cul­tural and tech­ni­cal aspects. Ul­ti­mately it’s a museum and you can’t spend that amount of money on it and then not have it work on opening day. That was really a chal­lenge.

What made you choose to study ar­chi­tec­ture as a young man?

I went to board­ing school and was not an es­pe­cially good pupil. I spent half the time playing rugby and the other half in the art room, where I felt most at peace. My art teacher was special; he en­cour­aged and sup­ported me. He was in­ter­ested in ar­chi­tec­ture, so he pointed me in this di­rec­tion.

You also design fur­ni­ture and useful objects. To what extent are these design pro­jects rel­e­vant to the work of the firm?

Good ques­tion. I think these pro­jects aren’t that rel­e­vant to the work of the firm. But when I founded my firm in the eight­ies, there was a re­ces­sion. There was hardly any­thing to do. In that first decade I only had small pro­jects, like shop fit­tings, so really I have always worked on in­te­ri­ors. But I can answer this ques­tion in a dif­fer­ent way as well: I think many ar­chi­tects treat build­ings like objects. Whereas we ap­proach them as a setting, like a scene or a theatre stage. Build­ings should create a good place for people.

And when you look at ar­chi­tect as a setting, then you also become in­ter­ested in the objects in that setting. But we only design some­thing when there is an idea, some­thing that ex­presses a certain lifestyle. When I de­signed the table­ware for Alessi 15 years ago, I wanted a set of simple dishes for my home. I don't like all of the dif­fer­ent plates and dishes you find in a typical service.

And finally: what is the most im­por­tant ques­tion you think I should ask you?

Right, the most im­por­tant ques­tion is: what role should ar­chi­tec­ture take in a world that is facing such immense social and eco­log­i­cal chal­lenges? I don't know the answer.

It’s a big con­flict: on the one hand, build­ings are re­spon­si­ble for a sig­nif­i­cant amount of carbon dioxide emis­sions...

For 50 per cent!

...​and on the other hand, many cities are facing a housing crisis. We have to build. Has ar­chi­tec­ture become an un­solv­able chal­lenge?

How we build nat­u­rally has im­pli­ca­tions. But whether we as ar­chi­tects are part of the problem, we can’t do much about that. We’re in an odd, weak po­si­tion. After all, by the time we receive an order, the great­est sus­tain­abil­ity prob­lems have already been caused. Why is the build­ing being con­structed at all? Why was the old one torn down? Does the build­ing really need to be so big? Should it not be built some­where else? These types of plan­ning issues were decided long ago. We ar­chi­tects should not settle for being at the end of the food chain; we should get in­volved earlier in the process.

Is there an aware­ness of this among your col­leagues?

Yes. But in the past 30, 40 years, the pro­fes­sion has become more and more removed from the po­lit­i­cal plan­ning processes. After the war it was dif­fer­ent; ar­chi­tects were in­volved in de­vel­op­ing a city. We should show society that we have some­thing to con­tribute. But plan­ning is being defined more and more by in­vestors. Our role there is to use our skills and ex­per­tise to enhance the com­mer­cial results of the pro­jects. We should be using our skills and ex­per­tise to solve social prob­lems.