The Neues Museum, Berlin - Restoration, Repair and Intervention
David Chipperfield Architects at Sir John Soane's Museum, London
20th June – 6th September 2008

Sir John Soane’s Museum in London is to host an exhibition on the Neues Museum project by David Chipperfield Architects.

Südost Risalit (South East Dome)
Re-built with salvaged bricks

image : David Chipperfield Architects

In October 2009, the Neues Museum in Berlin will open to the public for the first time since the Second World War. The main staircase hall was bombed out in 1943, and the South East dome and the North West wing were destroyed at the end of the war. Most of the surviving applied art subsequently suffered further deterioration by being exposed to the elements. In 1997, David Chipperfield Architects, in collaboration with Julian Harrap Architects, was commissioned by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin to turn the Neues Museum back into an active ‘museum for art treasures of international reputation’. The brief called for the existing building fabric to be treated as ‘an architectural monument of the highest historical, artistic and scientific importance’.


image : David Chipperfield Architects

The focal point of this exhibition is not so much the delicate infill of the missing parts of the actual building, but the sophisticated unravelling of two dimensional layers as annotated in a series of ‘working drawings’. Dubbed ‘the coffee-stained drawings’, they have been updated on a daily basis, recording every move on site, inch by inch. They are not the work of a single genius but a palimpsest drawn by many hands. The process and the conceptual approach of the Neues Museum project have been described by many as ‘creative restoration’. It is clear that each decision is the result of an elaborate process involving designers, curators, historians, restorers and specialists. This bespoke preservation on a room-by-room or fragment-by-fragment basis is both daring and sensitive. The drawings testify to a profound renewal of the building creating a precise equilibrium between restoration, repair and intervention.

The exhibition will be held within the Soane Exhibition Gallery and will run from the 20th June – 6th September 2008.

Sir John Soane's Museum - Opening Times: Tue to Sat from 10am - 5pm
Admission : Free
Address: 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3BP



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