On the overhaul of the New National Gallery by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Berlin

The con­ser­va­tion-com­pli­ant over­haul of Berlin’s New Na­tional Gallery by David Chip­per­field Ar­chi­tects is costing around 110 million euro. And in the end there will be next to nothing to show for it; the ar­chi­tects are for­go­ing all form of re-in­ter­pre­ta­tion out of a huge sense of respect for Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s mas­ter­piece. The build­ing is to re-open next year. What is likely to await vis­i­tors?

Despite the New Na­tional Gallery’s aura of ab­solute clarity, it is ac­tu­ally beset with con­tra­dic­tions. Un­com­pro­mis­ingly modern though it may be in design and ma­te­r­ial, it is rather more con­ven­tional in spirit. Its glazed ex­hi­bi­tion hall em­bod­ies mag­nif­i­cent ideals and yet, in the base­ment area, Mies op­er­ated with car­pet­ing, wooden skirt­ing boards and wood­chip wall­pa­per. And the museum isn’t really a museum either, since the Berlin project is based on plans for the Bacardi head­quar­ters on Cuba.

Nothing became of the blue­print, which Mies adapted in 1961 when he was con­tracted to build an ex­hi­bi­tion venue at the Berlin Cul­tural Forum. It comes as no sur­prise, then, that the huge hall caused prob­lems from the outset. The cu­ra­tors of almost all ex­hi­bi­tions held there had great dif­fi­culty coming to terms with the wall-less space – and, within a short time of the build­ing opening, con­den­sa­tion caused the cur­tains to adhere to the glass panes.

Neither will the hall have been trans­formed into an ideal ex­hi­bi­tion space with rig­or­ous con­ser­va­tion­ist cre­den­tials after it has been over­hauled. A de­ci­sion was made by its op­er­a­tors, the ar­chi­tects and build­ing con­ser­va­tion­ists to retain its sense of pure space and merely to in­vis­i­bly enhance its bold steel-and-glass struc­ture. Over­haul­ing the façade, which had been too rigidly en­gi­neered and was unable to cope with the tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­a­tions to which Berlin is subject, turned out to be a cor­re­spond­ingly awkward affair.

The plan­ners opted to install three mullion posts with ex­pan­sion joints on each face and to fit lam­i­nated safety glass spe­cially im­ported from China – sup­plied by the only company world­wide capable of pro­duc­ing the req­ui­site panes, which measure eleven and a quarter feet across. With in­su­lat­ing glass being ruled out on con­ser­va­tion­ist grounds, it will instead be at­tempted to prevent panes misting over in future by im­prov­ing the air-con­di­tion­ing system.

Indeed, the build­ing’s tech­ni­cal ser­vices have been com­pletely renewed, whilst the ar­chi­tects have ad­di­tion­ally ex­tended the base­ment floor by adding an art store­room and me­chan­i­cal service rooms in the di­rec­tion of Pots­damer Strasse. Vis­i­tors will only in­di­rectly reg­is­ter this, the most sub­stan­tial struc­tural al­ter­ation, by virtue of the service areas in the lower foyer having been ac­cord­ingly en­larged.

Martin Re­ichert, rep­re­sent­ing Chip­per­field, states that the working at­mos­phere between all parties con­cerned is ex­cel­lent. A joint ex­cur­sion to build­ings by Mies in the USA at the start of the plan­ning process was both ed­u­ca­tional and an ef­fec­tive team-build­ing measure. The over­haul in­volves several dif­fer­ent parties after all. Every­one, he stresses, is agreed as to the ex­tremely am­bi­tious con­ser­va­tion­ist policy to be pursued for the build­ing, even though it is one that oc­ca­sion­ally clashes with modern notions of how a museum should be run.

Only in one point was there any real clash of views: the museum’s op­er­a­tors would have all too gladly done without the brown floor cov­er­ing in the base­ment once it had been over­hauled. But the ar­chi­tects and con­ser­va­tion­ists won out and the car­pet­ing was re­pro­duced to extant orig­i­nal pat­terns – very much in a Sixties’ vein. The sim­i­larly orig­i­nal wood­chip wall­pa­per was not, by con­trast, re­in­stated; instead, it will be pos­si­ble in future to ex­pe­ri­ence the art of clas­si­cal Mod­ernism against a back­drop of smoothly plas­tered walls.

There was general con­sen­sus in the end here that wood­chip would have infused the in­te­rior with a touch too much homely in­ti­macy. But maybe this view of things is set to alter, too, and in ten or twenty years time the dec­o­ra­tors will turn up with a brief to restore to its orig­i­nal state a further feature of Mies van der Rohe’s am­biva­lent icon of in­ter­na­tional postwar Mod­ernism.