Museum of the 20th Century and its Urban Integration (Berlin)
(Mies van der Rohe’s Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts)
Sponsor: Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
Location: Berlin, Germany
Type: Open, ideas
Entrance Fee: None
Awards: The total competition money available amounts to 260,000 euros plus VAT. 10-20 equivalent prizes of 13,000 to 26,000 euros each are planned to be awarded.
Languages: English, German
Eligiblity: The competition is held as an open ideas competition for bidding consortiums of architects with landscape architects in keeping with the guidelines for planning competitions (RPW 2013). Urban planners are eligible to take part in a bidding consortium with architects and landscape architects.
Submission Deadline: 12 December, 2015
Design Challenge: A museum of international standing is to be created for the art of the 20th century at the behest of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation SPK. For the first time in decades, the newly created museum complex Neue Nationalgalerie – Museum of the 20th Century will enable the collection of the Nationalgalerie, so far only exhibited to the public in parts, to be presented in an adequate fashion. The internationally important holdings of the Nationalgalerie of 20th century art, the Marx and Pietsch collections, the Marzona archive and works from the Museum of Prints and Drawings will be permanently and jointly exhibited for the first time. The presentation of the holdings will embrace the lower level of the Neue Nationalgalerie and – first and foremost – the exhibition spaces of the new building.
The new building will thus form a tightly circumscribed unity with the Neue Nationalgalerie in content and function. Both establishments – the Neue Nationalgalerie and the new building – are meanwhile to be understood as autonomous architectures with their own entrances, own functional areas (exhibition spaces, administrations, foyers, visitor services, etc.) and their respective own identities. The target set for the new building is a usable area of ca. 14,700 m² (UA 1 – 6), ca. 9,200 m² of which can be used as exhibition spaces. The construction field at Potsdamer Strasse has a buildable area of ca. 10,200 m². The gross floor area expected, depending on the concept, is ca. 27,700 m², while the clear room height in the exhibition areas needs to reach up to 9 m.
The location of the new museum at the Kulturforum, in the direct vicinity of two of Germany‘s most important architectural icons of the 20th century (Neue Nationalgalerie, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1968 and Philharmonie, Hans Scharoun, 1963), as well as in the environs of further architectural monuments (St. Matthew‘s Church, Berlin State Library), calls for a particularly attentive architectural and development approach.
This competition for ideas is meant to clarify how the new building for the Museum of the 20th Century and its immediate environment can be fashioned architecturally, in terms of urban planning, and in the design of the open spaces. The competition is aimed at gaining insights into the task formulation and framework conditions of the realisation competition to follow. Based on the results of the competition for ideas, its organiser will optionally define further parameters for the urban planning and the design of the open spaces. In addition to this, 10-20 competitors are meant to be qualified for the subsequent realisation competition as prize winners of the competition for ideas. The competition for ideas is thus designed to provide architects who have not yet planned or realised large museums or similar buildings with an opportunity to take part in the realisation competition.
Detroit’s Dia Plaza competition is hardly unique in initiating a search for urbanistic solutions to a cultural cluster. Vienna, Berlin, Mesa, Fort Worth, Chicago’s Millennium Park and Paris’ Parc de la Villette are just a few examples of projects where the focus on spaces between buildings, and arriving at a connective plan to infuse new energy into the site, has been the primary goal of other projects. All of these have been faced with their own challenges: solutions for some have been relatively simple—Vienna’s Museum Quarter and Berlin’s Forum—while others such as Paris’ La Villette and Mesa’s Downtown Plaza represent a more challenging subject spatially. In the case of Detroit, the aim of the competition was clear: “The design competition centers around enhancing and enlivening the DIA’s exterior campus and aims to connect all the institutions with a beautiful series of settings that support all types of programming and public art.”
Form and Dichroic Light Scott Hall at Carnegie Mellon University Michelle LaFoe and Isaac Campbell OFFICE 52 Architecture Forward by Cesar Pelli, FAIA Introduction by Michael J. Crosbie, FAIA Leete”s Island Books, Maine USA Hard cover; 96 pages in color ISBN 9780918172709
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The reunification of Germany in 1989 not only had a great impact on the lives of many Germans, especially those living in the former DDR,but together with the decision to move the nation’s capital from Bonn to Berlin resulted in two major international design competitions in 1992: the first was to convert the existing Reichstag building into a home for the German parliament, the second being the Spreebogen planning competition, which included a chancellery for the head of state as well as needed buildings nearby for the Federal government.
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