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The future of Berlin's Kulturforum begins: SPK launches ideas competition for the Museum of the 20th Century
Press release from 09/03/2015
New museum complex will house the important holdings of the Nationalgalerie - ideas competition to deliver architectural concept and submit proposals for urban planning organisation
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is launching one of its most important new building projects. Over the next few years, the Museum of the 20th Century will be built at Berlin's Kulturforum, which, together with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie, will offer a tour of art from the early 1900s to the end of the 20th century. The SPK is organising a worldwide ideas competition to find an architectural concept for the building and its integration into the urban and open space planning.
The architects Roger Diener (Basel), Heike Hanada (Berlin), Arno Lederer (Stuttgart), Hilde Léon (Berlin), Till Schneider (Frankfurt), Enrique Sobejano (Madrid) and the landscape architect Undine Giseke (Berlin) have been selected as specialist judges. The judges are Minister of State Monika Grütters, Foundation President Hermann Parzinger, Director General of the National Museums in Berlin Michael Eissenhauer, Senate Building Director Regula Lüscher as well as Herlind Gundelach (CDU), member of the Bundestag, and former SPD parliamentarian Petra Merkel. The competition will be advised by the artist Katharina Grosse, the director of the North Rhine-Westphalia Art Collection, Marion Ackermann, and the State Conservator Jörg Haspel, among others.
The construction site is located on Potsdamer Strasse between the New National Gallery, the Chamber Music Hall and St. Matthew's Church and covers an undeveloped area of around 10,200 square metres. The President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Hermann Parzinger, called the launch of the ideas competition a huge opportunity for the Kulturforum: "I am grateful to the Minister of State for Culture and the budget holders of the Bundestag that we are able to further develop this place of modernity. With our collections, our collectors, but also with courage and boldness. The Neue Nationalgalerie will be a museum with two buildings, which can of course also be experienced independently. Over the past decades, we have read a lot about what could happen at this intellectual hub in Berlin, but nothing happened. Today we are looking to the future: the Kulturforum is no longer located at the Wall, but in the heart of the city. We not only need space for art, we need an inviting gesture! For the first time, we have the opportunity to use the language of contemporary architecture to continue Mies' thinking and enter into a dialogue with Scharoun. Not an easy task for those who will apply!"
According to the Minister of State for Culture, Monika Grütters, who took the initiative for the new building and was able to convince the budget committee of the German Bundestag last November to make 200 million euros available for the project, this decision was groundbreaking: "At last we can exhibit the great works of the 20th century, most of which were previously stored in the depot, on a broad scale. The decision in favour of the new building is also a signal not only for Berlin as a cultural metropolis and for the collection of the Neue Nationalgalerie, but also for the collections of the Pietzsch couple and Mr Marx and Mr Marzona, which will find a new home in the new building." The Minister of State defended the decision in favour of the Potsdamer Strasse site. On the one hand, the 10,000 square metre site is large enough to accommodate an exhibition space of around 14,000 square metres, and on the other hand, the Potsdamer Straße site offers greater opportunities in terms of urban development. The Federal Audit Office expressly recognised that the ideas competition should only relate to one building site.
The new building should make the Kulturforum more tangible overall and significantly strengthen and improve the accessibility of all existing buildings and functions. It is also a matter of taking into account the diverse interactions and visual axes between Mies, Scharoun and Stüler. Senate Building Director Regula Lüscher called it a "historic opportunity" to provide sustainable urban planning impetus for the overall design of the Kulturforum in terms of the urban landscape: "The state of Berlin is therefore doing all it can to support the federal government in the realisation of the project. A joint approach is already common practice at both political and technical level. I am looking forward to the urban planning ideas from this first stage of the process and am convinced that an architectural design will ultimately be found that will give the site its decisive character for the future."
As far as the requirements for the exhibition spaces are concerned, they should both provide orientation about the overall context of the collections and make individual thematic complexes recognisable. The Director General of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Michael Eissenhauer, is convinced that good ideas will emerge from the designs submitted: "Soon after its opening, the Neue Nationalgalerie was already too small to show our 20th century holdings in all their abundance. It is a great stroke of luck that we will be able to present this collection and the outstanding donations in an appropriate space in the future."
The open ideas competition, in which younger architects who have not yet realised a larger museum building can also take part, will run for six months. In spring 2016, it will be clear which 10 to 20 participants will be nominated for the subsequent realisation competition, and a similar number of architects will be invited to this second phase. From these, up to six projects will be selected at the end of 2016 to go through to the final, decisive round. The new building is to be constructed as a PPP project, i.e. in partnership with a private investor. Minister of State Monika Grütters commented: "We are currently investigating the possible framework conditions for this in the hope of achieving a faster and more economical realisation. However, the decision has not yet been made. Only when an economic feasibility study convincingly proves that PPP is more economical than the conventional method will this option be considered. The decision on this will be made by the Bundestag, which will then have to release the funds for construction."
