Precedent Analysis- Neue Nationalgalerie

NEUE NATIONALGALERIE Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe Berlin - 1968

The Neue Nationalgalerie

CONTEXT The Neue Nationalgalerie is a dedicated building for the works of the twentiethcentury art. The major project (1965-1968) was completed by Ludwig Míes Van der Rohe. Icon of modernism and testament of the visionary architect. Built on the edge of West Berlin (at the time) as one of the vital cornerstones of the Kulturforum. Following the Reunification of Germany and, thus, Berlin the museum now stands in the heart of the city.

Architecture The glazed upper pavilion of the gallery reflects the architect’s long term preoccupation with creating fluid, open spaces. Idea of large spaces freed from boundaries almost entirely from their surroundings. The space provides 4,000 square meters of exhibition space and 800 meters of wall space. The lower floor opens to the west onto a sculpture garden reminiscent of the sculpture garden of the sculpture garden of the MOMA in New York.

Kulturforum The result of the Foundation’s effort for reconstruction during the years of a divided Germany. It allocates four of the Foundation’s five institutions’ buildings. As an established cultural center point , the Kulturforum brings together internationally significant collections. To mention some, The Gemaldegalerie (old masters paintings), The kungstgewerbemuseum (museum of prints and drawings), The Neue Nationalgalerie, Kupferstichkabinett (museum of prints and drawings), Staatliche institute fur music for shunt (state institute for music research), The staatsbibliotek (berlin state library), and The ibero-amerikanisches institut (ibero-american institue). Collections that reflect every facet of European art, thought and culture since the end of the middle ages The Neue Nationalgalerie opened on September 15, 1968 as the first museum at the Kulturforum. The museum in addition to the Philharmonie, by Hans Scharoun, reflect the history of the last century through modernism.World War II and unstrained post-war demolition created an urban wasteland from which 1960s icons of modernism rose.

Structure

Whole

Layout

Repetition

Function The building form demonstrates a firm methodology of transformation and structurization.

The building squares up over a linear grid and primary pillars that hold the prominent rooftop. In addition, a hierarchal organization mediates the reception and utilization of lighting for the main gallery., while maintaining a symmetrical form. Altogether, the building cares for the optimal functioning of the spaces of a gallery as an aesthetic contributive element of the project.

Spaces The building form demonstrates a firm methodology of transformation and structurization.

The site follows an instructional morphology in transformation through the addition and subtraction of rectilinear spaces. Moreover, the hierarchal implication of wholes and fragmentation spaces praise upon centers of gathering and importance for the building. To further explain, the areas in the plan enlighten the primary quadrangular area of the gallery under the roof making this one the center of attention. Also, the spaces provided in the lower level of the building fragmented the cornered areas of the floorplan allowing for harmonious circulatory flow.

Exhibition The building carries along iconic elements of MIes der Van der Rohe’s modernist, elegant architecture. The repetitive presence of beams and the exposed naturality of the building is the pattern of the iconic used materiality by the architect. Furthermore, the comparative ratio between trans[arency and mass of the steel structure and glass curtains frame the memorable statement “less is more”. The building is an impetus for artistic impression, inciting new forms of showing within his non-existent exhibition panels and continuous floor for exhibition.

Expression The building carries along iconic elements of MIes der Van der Rohe’s modernist, elegant architecture. The repetitive presence of beams and the exposed naturality of the building is the pattern of the iconic used materiality by the architect. Furthermore, the comparative ratio between trans[arency and mass of the steel structure and glass curtains frame the memorable statement “less is more”. The building is an impetus of artistic impression, inciting new forms of an exhibition within his non-existent exhibition panels and continuous floor for exhibition.

Site Map

Der Kulturforum

1

Staarliches Institut Fur Musik

2

Generaldirektionen

3

Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut

4

Staatsbibliotek Zu Berlin

5

Neue Nationalgalerie

6

Gemaldegalerie, Kupferstichkabinett, Kungstbibliothel, & Kunstgewerbemuseum.

LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE

ARCHITECT’S BIO Maria Ludwig Michael Míes/ Aachen, Germany) / 1886 Born son to a master mason who owned a small stonecutter shop, Míes assisted his father in construction sites. Appreciated to several Aachen architects at the age of 15 with no formal architectural training. Sketched outlines of architectural ornaments becoming stucco building decorations. Developed skills for linear drawings which aided his later magnificent works of hand rendering.

In 1905 he moved to Berlin to work as an architect but after a short collaboration, he soon became an apprentice of Bruno Paul, a lead furniture designer. In 1907 Mies obtained his first commission for a traditional suburban house, creating a design that impressed Peter Behring, Germany’s recognized progressive architect. The revelatory encounter resulted in an office job offering alongside Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier.

In 1960, Míes was awarded the AIA Gold Medal by the American Association of Architects, the highest honor in America.

1.1 Other Works Mies Ludwig Van der Rohe’s international style became the propulsion for modernism. Thus his works during the 20th century are the template and inspiration that encompass the style.

The first place, the Barcelona Pavilion, was designed as part of the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain. In addition, it showcases the iconic Barcelona chair, an iconic piece of modernism. In the second place, setting the standard for elegant modern skyscrapers in the new york skyline, the Seagram Building is located in the city’s heart on Park Avenue.

Nonetheless, the largest collection of buildings designed by Mies van der Rohe stands in Detroit’s Lafayette Park. The scarcely recognized building was one of the first ur“I’m not interested in the history ban-renewal projects in the United States. of the civilization. I am Lastly, important to recognize, are interested in our civilization. We are Mies’s contributions to the Chicago skyline and living it. Because… can the Illinois Institute of Technology. The Crown only express civilization we are in and Hall beautifully illustrates his basic steel-andnothing else.” glass construction technique embodying his -Mies Van der Rohe statement of “less is more”.

Míes did not believe in designing with a particular style in mind. Philosophy came first Instead, the looks were a pure expression of its era and its materials. Contributions to the definition of Mid-Century Modern Architecture International works with trademark emphasis in open space brought him fame.

Examples of works include the Barcelona or German Pavilion. This success led him to direct the school of design in Germany, the Bauhaus, until its needed closing in 1933. His arrival in the United States in 1938, quickly led him to the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) where he redesigned the department’s curriculum and campus.

Barcelona Pavilion (German Pavilion) Barcelona, Spain. 1929

Other works of the Architect

Seagram Building (New York, U.S. 1958), Lafayette Park (Detroit, U.S., 1960), and S.R. Crown Hall (Chicago,U.S. 1956.)

Elevations

North

South

Roof

Columns

Envelope

East

West

First Level Plan

Lower Lower Level Level Floorplan Plan

Ground Level Plan

Structure

Exhibition Space

Program

N

1’=1/32” Lower Level Plan

0

30ft

100ft

Structure

Exhibition Space

Program

Garden

Landscape Nature

Sections

A

Sextion A

Massing

Natural Light

Repetition

B

Section B

Isometric View

Exploded View

Function

Structure

Natural Light

Roof

Spaces

Shaping

Circulation

Whole

Expression

Repetition

Silhouette

Prescence

Exhibition

Space

Panel

Layout

Oblique Persepective

Interior Lighting

Writtings by other Authors on this project Mies’s Event Space,

The Endless Museum,

Mertins, Detlef / The MIT Press / Cambridge / 2005

Colomina, Beatriz/ Anyone Corporation / New York / 2009

When the New National Gallery (NNG) in Berlin opened on September 15, 1968, the critics celebrated it as a monumental work by one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century, a homecoming for Mies van der Rohe who had left for Chicago in 1938 and was now eighty-two years old, too frail to attend the event. Yet voices of dissent rose almost immediately: critics pointed to functional problems in displaying art in the great glass hall under the levitated grid, a space that was colossal in scale, dwarfing most paintings and sculpture; that was almost entirely open, without walls for mounting art; and that was enclosed completely in glass, letting light and views stream in unless the curtains were drawn. Many people still think that Mies was indifferent to his client’s needs, the needs of displaying art, impos ing on them a work of art to be valued as an end in itself.

For later critics, the problems of func tionality were symptomatic of the problems of universalist ideology, Mies’s quest for a universal space overriding difference for the sake of sameness and control.

However, the palpable discomfort of many of the installations in the NNG suggests that its architecture is not, after all, the same as Price’s more accommodating Erector Set or, for that matter, the neutral white box that has become paradigmatic of galleries for contemporary art. While open to change and new ways of doing things, it is not neutral after all. In Mies’s phrase, it is “almost nothing,” and if we put the emphasis on the almost rather than the nothing, then we realize that it is some thing in fact, something material and tangible that operates between us and nothing, that points to nothing, plays the role of nothing, allows us to imagine nothing and even experience its terror, keeping the chill of nothing at bay while harnessing its catalytic agency.

What if the most radical modernist proposals for the museum were simultaneously projects for a new kind of house? What if the most public buildings of the last century were first incubated in the most private commissions? What if domesticity is the real source of modernity in museums? Take Villa Savoye of 1929-31, perhaps the best known building of Le Corbusier if not of all modern architecture, and his Tokyo National Museum of Western Art of 1957-59. One is a relatively early work, the other is one of his very last. One is small and lightweight, the other is large and heavy. One is a house, the other is a museum. But the basic concept is the same. They are both square boxes suspended off the ground. You enter both by passing underneath through a field of columns and rising up to the core of the building on a ramp. In the house you keep moving up the ramp until your view explodes out in all directions through the horizontal windows. In the museum, the ramp turns into a spiral folded in on itself. There are no windows. You cannot see the outside. There is no simple relationship between inside and outside. Indeed, the central space from which all of the galleries spiral has become a kind of exterior space, with sunlight pouring in from above Le Corbusier could be said to be the first global archi- tect. By comparison, Mies was an almost provincial figure. It’s not just that he didn’t like to fly. Even trains upset him.26 He only crossed the Atlantic when his hopes for practice in Europe had died. Mies lumbered slowly like a large animal, setting up camp in one spot for long periods and concentrating on a very nar- row set of questions. Yet both invented an explosive concept of the house redefined by the exhibition of art that would travel all over the world and spread its logic through not only museums but the entire spectrum of building types. In that sense, both domestic projects became endless. The end- less museum is the endless house.

Exhibition

Panels

“Moma Exhibition”

Interiorscape

ABSTRACT The Neue Nationalgalerie is an art gallery dedicated to 20th-century art pieces of german ownership in Berlin, Germany. The steel and glass structure is the work of architect Mies van der rohe.

Mies Van der Rohe is a german architect whose internationally recognized architectural prose shaped 20th-century modernism through his designs, which he called “Skin and Bones”. I examine the Neue Nationalgalerie within the various contexts that Van der Rohe generated in his buildings and promoted in his teachings. Mies Ludwig Van der Rohe opened up the scope of questioning with which we can understand design and their intended goals for public response to this one.

Analyzed in the depicted diagrams a linear methodology of design takes part with an underlying grid setting the ground for different scales of organization for the gallery. First, the plan has a mediated room division through the grid, putting utility rooms in the outskirts of the space, and leaving a clear space in the central front area of the plan that connects to the garden. Similarly, the upper plan traces over this one with greater exhibit space. Lastly, the grid extends to the exterior of the building into the allocation of ramps and staircases that conduct individuals to the entrances. The symmetrical and calculated planning presents an uncomplicated landscape for the presentation of strong elemental pieces of industrial precedence in its structure, the so-recognized steel beams in Mies’s architecture.

Most importantly, the roof of the building becomes the point of attraction and exploration. Belonging to our analysis’s direction, “Under the Roof”, the Neue Nationalgalerie’s roof becomes an element of sheltering and enclosure against the transparent curtain walls that seamlessly merge with the environmental landscape of interior art and exterior uncultivated exhibition. The heavy massing of prominent height, the roof, becomes the provider for scene protection, limiting the extent of the showing that occurs underneath. Nevertheless, this one remains dysfunctional in shading the gallery for the provision of optimized lighting.

In addition, the simplistic structure results willfully against its purpose. The ample space successfully unlocks the modularity of the art exhibition incited by the architect, opening an infinite number of possibilities of display with its hanging panels, challenging the artwork itself.

First Level Plan

“Free Horizon”

STUDENT

FERNANDA FRAGOSO fmfragos@cougarnet.uh.edu

Details