Renovating the New National Gallery by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Berlin

David Chip­per­field Ar­chi­tects are using around 110 million euros to ren­o­vate the New Na­tional Gallery in Berlin in a way that re­spects the build­ing’s history and her­itage. And yet in the end, it will be prac­ti­cally im­pos­si­ble to tell what has changed, as the ar­chi­tects give the mas­ter­piece of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe maximum respect and avoid rein­ter­pre­ta­tions. The build­ing is sched­uled to reopen next year. What can vis­i­tors to the gallery expect when it reopens its doors?

The New Na­tional Gallery seems to be an ar­chi­tec­tural struc­ture of ab­solute clarity, but it is ac­tu­ally full of con­tra­dic­tions. It is un­com­pro­mis­ingly modern in its con­struc­tion and ma­te­r­ial, yet clas­si­cal in habitus. The glass ex­hi­bi­tion hall is a grandiose ideal space, and yet in the lower ground fa­cil­i­ties, Mies worked with carpet, wood base­boards and ingrain wall­pa­per. And the museum is ac­tu­ally not a museum, because the Berlin project is based on the plans for the Bacardi head­quar­ters in Cuba.

Mies adapted the un­re­alised design when he was com­mis­sioned to build an ex­hi­bi­tion build­ing at the Berlin Kul­tur­fo­rum in 1961. For this reason, it is no wonder that the huge hall has created prob­lems from the very be­gin­ning. The cu­ra­tors at the time fought con­stantly against the logic of the wall-less room with almost every ex­hi­bi­tion – and right before opening, the cur­tains stuck to the con­den­sa­tion on the glass panes.

However, even after ren­o­va­tion the hall will still not be the ideal ex­hi­bi­tion space that meets the strictest con­di­tions of con­ser­va­tion and preser­va­tion. The Museum, ar­chi­tects and mon­u­ment preser­va­tion­ists opted instead to retain the pure spatial ex­pe­ri­ence of the hall and re­fur­bish the bold steel glass struc­ture only in ways that could not been seen. This careful sur­gi­cal ap­proach was also applied to re­fur­bish­ment of the facade, which was con­structed too rigidly and could not cope with tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­a­tions in Berlin.

The plan­ners decided to install three posts with ex­pan­sion joints on each side of the facade and lam­i­nated safety glass spe­cially de­liv­ered from China, where the only company in the world able to produce the 3.46-me­tre-wide panels is located.

In­su­la­tion glass was not pos­si­ble for preser­va­tion reasons, so instead better ven­ti­la­tion tech­nol­ogy was in­stalled to prevent con­den­sa­tion from forming on the glass in future.

The build­ing’s tech­ni­cal in­stal­la­tions were com­pletely re­fur­bished through­out, and the ar­chi­tects ex­panded the lower floor towards Pots­damer Strasse to include an art de­pos­i­tory and utility rooms. Vis­i­tors will only di­rectly notice this in­ter­ven­tion, the most major change to the build­ing, in the bigger service areas in the lower foyer, where space was gained for these.

The working at­mos­phere between the stake­hold­ers was amazing, ac­cord­ing to Martin Re­ichert, the partner re­spon­si­ble for the project from the Chip­per­field firm. A joint ex­cur­sion to see build­ings by Mies in the USA at the start of the plan­ning process was not just in­for­ma­tive but also helped with team-build­ing.
Ul­ti­mately a great number of part­ners were in­volved in the ren­o­va­tion. Every­one agreed on the mission to pre­serve to an ex­tremely high degree the orig­i­nal history and her­itage of the build­ing, even if this some­times con­tra­dicted modern ideas of what a con­tem­po­rary museum should be.

Only one point was truly con­tro­ver­sial among the stake­hold­ers: The Museum really wanted to get rid of the brown car­pet­ing on the lower floor. But the ar­chi­tects and preser­va­tion­ists per­sisted, and the car­pet­ing was re­pro­duced ac­cord­ing to the ex­ist­ing orig­i­nal pat­terns – in the true spirit of the sixties. By con­trast, the orig­i­nal ingrain wall­pa­per was not re­pro­duced. Instead, vis­i­tors to the gallery will ex­pe­ri­ence the classic modern art on smoothly plas­tered walls in future. This was not a con­tro­ver­sial change, however, as all stake­hold­ers agreed that the orig­i­nal wall­pa­per would have created too much of an in­ti­mate in­te­rior en­vi­ron­ment.

But perhaps this view will change as well – the dec­o­ra­tors will come in ten or twenty years to bring Mies’ am­biva­lent icon of in­ter­na­tional post-war mod­ernism one step closer to its orig­i­nal con­di­tion.