Re-editing and correction of an article published on Nov. 7, 2021 on studiominhson.com about the Neues Museum, Berlin, re-imagined in 2009 by architect David Chipperfield.
To use the words of architecture critic Rowan Moore in an article in the Architectural Review, David Chipperfield directs his architectural intervention not through a quest for “virtuosity” that is sometimes caricatured and typical of star architects of the 21st century, but through modesty. and humility in the face of a heritage built from another time.
Faced with a ruin, there are a variety of possible attitudes on which the contemporary architect in charge of the project positions himself. In a more or less skillful way, he will attempt to create a dialogue between the ancient and the contemporary. Sometimes he seeks to silence the old by masking it, overwriting it, or simply removing it, often in an attempt to add "his contemporary signature" to an existing context.
At the Neues Museum, David Chipperfield opts for another option: that of remaining silent. This attitude of discretion and humility so unusual these days and precisely what got people talking about him. Through his desire for non-intervention, he created a new architectural language at odds with contemporary architectural gesture and brought to light a new aesthetic in a world where novelty and the new take precedence over memory and the traces of time.
We are then allowed to observe building walls which bear the superimposed remains of fashionable decorations from different eras, and inevitably, the scars of a bombing from the Second World War. Then, through a moment of contemplation, we can find ourselves praising the ruin and the exposure of its entrails. This taste for traces of the passage of time is not unprecedented on a human scale; Hubert Robertcould in his time have appreciated and painted this work of time.
Then comes the moment to analyze the intervention. The architect Chipperfield was nevertheless charged with the mission of restoring the building to its demanding museum function. He decided to do this by stabilizing and healing his wounds without wanting to make them disappear. His intervention seeks to be discreet everywhere and it is through this affirmation of a signature that Chipperfield creates his signature. In contrast to the philosophy of many international offices advocating a globalized and pseudo-futuristic society, Chipperfield stands out for the elegant discretion of its construction, although it is so complex. A gesture that we would describe as an “understatement” in architecture.
The coatings fallen during the war become textures of the interior decorations, the unearthed vaults take as a motif their interiors of brick and clay, and the pieces are presented one after the other to visitors displaying their carefully perpetuated defects, but not never hidden. There are some elements rebuilt from scratch by the architect such as the monumental staircase, but Chipperfield took care to take the design of the volumetry of the original staircase (although we can find the result somewhat massive), completely destroyed by the war. As if to symbolize its previous presence and allow the visitor the pleasure of imagining it without wanting to make a copy.
Through this attitude, Chipperfield not only respects the charters of heritage restoration, and shows that humility and discretion in the face of history can be an elegant and fair response in architecture. A position that we share and which inspires us in our interventions at the Château de Sainte-Sévère, also moving in the direction of a particular aesthetic mixing patina and revealed gestures of sustainability.
See you soon on Château Route! Minh-Son
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