James-Simon-Galerie, Berlin

The James Simon Gallery on Berlin’s Museum Island is an unusual build­ing through and through. It was long billed as a simply a ‘re­cep­tion build­ing’ by its owner, the Pruss­ian Cul­tural Her­itage Foun­da­tion.

Locals re­ferred to it as ‘the most ex­pen­sive cloak­room in the world’. But re­duc­ing the build­ing by David Chip­per­field Ar­chi­tects to its func­tions is not being fair. It holds every­thing that until now has been missing or in­ad­e­quate in the museums: an au­di­to­rium, a hall for tem­po­rary ex­hi­bi­tions, a café, a shop, ticket box offices, toilets – and, of course, a cloak­room.

And once all of the build­ings on the Museum Island have been ren­o­vated, the James Simon Gallery will connect them to each other, both above and below ground, through the ‘Ar­chae­o­log­i­cal Prom­e­nade’. This unusual new build can perhaps be com­pared to the pyramid at the Louvre in Paris. Ul­ti­mately, the glass struc­ture de­signed by I. M. Pei also opens up a museum complex and directs the flow of vis­i­tors through all service sta­tions. But the build­ing in Berlin, with its slender colon­nades, can do much more than just provide ser­vices: despite being a land­mark, Pei’s pyramid is a form of in­tro­verted ar­chi­tec­ture that iso­lates vis­i­tors from the city, while the radiant James Simon Gallery con­nects to its city.

For example, through the rows of pillars that take the clas­si­cal colon­nades of the Museum Island and con­tinue with this design. The motif of outdoor steps and the raised base are also fea­tures that David Chip­per­field Ar­chi­tects took from the neigh­bour­ing build­ings, like the museums by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Friedrich August Stüler and Alfred Messel. The ar­chi­tects laid the final piece of the Island, hiding its mundane func­tions behind a grandiose ap­pear­ance.

The James Simon Gallery is by no means a purely func­tional struc­ture on the inside, either. Thanks to gen­er­ous steps and foyers, vis­i­tors are taken on a leisurely stroll through the build­ing – where they just happen to also be able to buy tickets or hire audio guides. The high point of each visit is surely the terrace framing the build­ing on the upper floor. From here, vis­i­tors can enjoy a coffee in the summer and take in brand new views of the sur­round­ing area – Kupfer­graben, the Old Museum, the Lust­garten and the re­con­structed palace.

Even long-es­tab­lished Berlin res­i­dents dis­cover their city anew from this per­spec­tive, framed by the pillars of the colon­nades. This is where the ar­chi­tects meet their aim to use the build­ing as a cel­e­bra­tion of culture and the public space. It is not without reason that the James Simon Gallery reminds one of an ancient temple. But the ar­chi­tec­tural design is modern and austere, with clear cubic struc­ture and lots of con­crete. The sim­plic­ity is em­bell­ished, however, with almost pre­cious ma­te­ri­als and fin­ishes.

Start­ing with the fine ar­ti­fi­cial stone of the facades and colon­nades, and con­tin­u­ing inside with a backlit wall made of thin marble and in­stal­la­tions and cladding made of nut-wood. The fit­tings are from the FSB 1004 col­lec­tion de­signed by David Chip­per­field himself, in a pati­nated, waxed bronze finish. An unusual build­ing through and through, right down to the last detail!