MIES VAN DER ROHE, NEU NATIONALGALERIE, BERLIN 1968
""In Berlin, Mies achieved his life ambition as an architect, namely to transform engineering into architecture and elevate the structure of the steel skeleton to the level of an architectural order"." F. Neumeyer, 2021
"In Beaux-Art system, design and composition were everything (
) It was typology of form that have been tested historically and empirically, and it was what came to planometric spatial skeleton of a building. Mies began with the structural skeleton. K.F Schinkel Altes Museum would be incomprehensible for Mies. But Mies, of course, loved Schinkel (
) Mies toward the end of this career seems to have decided to remove everything from his architectural work that was compositional (
) he ended with buildings that too often did not make space but stood neutrally." I. Freed, 1989
"Sited on the wide expanse of open land adjoining the Tiengarten, a formerly busy section of Berlin scorched by World War bombing, the Neu National Gallery was part of West Belin Kulturforum , a development of a new cultural institution for the divided postwar city, replacing other institution that had fallen east of the Berlin Wall" C. Zimmerman, 2002
"Despite top and bottom, open and closed, despite the podium and temple, sticks and stones, there is less emphasis on duality, on one thing and another, and instead more on the higher unity, as Mies calls it".A Schwarz, 2021
""The clarity of the structure, the sense of proportions and the architectural coherence between individual elements to form a unity is a hallmark of Mies, as in impeccable execution. Two key aspects have made the Neu National Gallery a unique icon of 20th-century architecture: firstly the expressed synthesis of art an engineering, of classical form and Modern construction; and secondly the incomparable scale of expansiveness and openness that Mies achieved in the hall's floor plan. Mies created an architecturally defined museum landscape leading from open expanse to a closed spatial form and back again"." F. Neumeyer, 2021
""Mies integrated the well- calculated tension arising between the sculptures and the architecture. Mies's gave instructions on the placement of sculptures, in the same way as he carefully defined areas for planting vegetation"." F. Neumeyer, 2021
"A center for the enjoyment of art" said Mies in 1943. He designed a building with attributes that he describe as clarity and strigency".G. Wegener, 2021
""A se stante, in una dimensione di poesia astratta, la Neu Nationalgalerie di Berlino rimane a parlare dello spazio e del tempo. Il quadrato nero di Malevitch si confronta con la cittā: sospeso, modifica le quote in un piano pių basso aperto verso il giardino, in un piano lievemente pių alto rispetto al traffico urbano, e infine su se stesso. Il quadrato, č a sua volta formato da quadrati, disegnati dall'orditura delle travi; trova due punti di appoggio mediani per lato; č copertura, di un sottoinsieme omologo, definito da pareti vetrate. Al di sotto, difesa dalla luce, l'esposizione permanente si rivela all'esterno nel giardino; all'interno, pannelli, pareti mobili, tendaggi rimandano "spazialitā temporalizzata"; negli spazi esterni, l'architettura e gli incontri, in particolare con le teste e la coda di A Calder, rendono remota la cittā. Alcuni brani, le inquietudini di Sharon e i giochi coloristici di Stirling, si riflettono sulle vetrate: sono apparizioni"." N. Ventura, 1996
""I believe these decisions (installation of new cloakroom, book store, and café, renovation of curtains and of carpet, introduction of LED technology) are right: firstly because respective contemporary presentation aesthetic for visual art change as time passes; secondly because the Mies's building with its own aesthetic dedicated to contemplation, rather than today's even culture, can represent a significant enrichment to the current museum landscape."" F. Neumeyer, 2021
"As such as possible".
"The building needed not interpretation or reconsideration, only to be put back into a good condition seemingly untouched" D. Chipperfield, 2021
"It is not about the number two, it about a square. The spatial experience of Neue Nationalgalerie is also primary beneath the square roof, raised by eight columns to open up a space that reaches out into the openness around it, equally in all four direction. A pantheon of the horizontal not the vertical, open not to the sky, but on all sides towards the world surrounding it." A. Schwarz, 2021
"Spatial experience is a central concern: Mies abandoned tightly enclosed architecture and worked with open structures; Calder detached sculpture from its fixed references to the floor or plinth and tied it closely to audience interaction". https://alexandercalderinberlin.de/en/
"Calder still had not invented a name for these large sculptures. He could no longer call them objects, so he asked Duchamp for help. Duchamp suggested the term Mobile.(
) Even when these sculptures are huge and the spectator can no longer move them - the wind has to take over - they function very much the same way as the Bicycle Wheel. They pull the spectator out of the survival mode and give him a glimpse of the happy world of play. As Calder said: Above all, I feel art should be happy and not lugubrious." E. Lurker, 2009
NEU NATIONALGALERIE, REFURBISHMENT BY DAVID CHIPPERFIELD, BERLIN 2021
