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PROJECT / NEUES MUSEUM, BERLIN, GERMANY AS GOOD AS NEW


After more than a decade of restoration at the hands of RIBA Gold Medalist David Chipperfield, the Neues Museum has been brought back to life. Kardorff Ingenieure’s scheme balances natural daylight, artificial light and the needs of a major conservation project


Built around 1850 and badly bomb-damaged a century later, Berlin’s Neues Museum was for many years a derelict reminder of the past; one of the many grand scars scattered across the city. Though other sites were patched up and in some cases replaced by striking contemporary structures, the Neues Museum remained a neglected victim of financial and political factors.


Even when the will was found to undertake restoration work, there remained uncer- tainty over how to proceed. Should it be a faithful reconstruction of the original ar- chitecture by Friedrich August Stüler or was it better to re-imagine the building for the 21st century? The debate was decided in 1997 when British architect David Chipper-


field - working in collaboration with restora- tion specialist Julian Harrap Architects - was awarded the task of bringing the museum back to life. His scheme resolved to give the structure back its original shape, retaining any remaining sections of Stüler’s design and filling any gaps with contemporary - but sympathetic - solutions. Where whole sec- tions of the building had been lost, simple, modern rooms would be created to replace them. It was the first step on the Neues Museum’s painstaking road to recovery. When lighting designers Kardorff Ingenieure began creating their concept in 2000, the museum was still a long way from comple- tion. With ten years of work still to come, the building’s broken bones gave only a


glimpse of what the team would eventually be given to illuminate. With no complete structure from which to take light readings, Kardorff Ingenieure embarked on an inten- sive process of 3D modelling and mock-up tests to find an appropriate solution for the structure.


Using the 3D model, the team were able to produce a film, virtually walking the viewer through the museum under a series of simu- lations that showed the effects of the sun light at different times of the year. As the museum was originally built to be illuminated solely by daylight, Kardorff Ing- enieure set out to find the optimal balance between, on the one hand, retaining the beautiful panoramic views of the surround-


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