Museum o Modern Literature Marbach, Germany
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David Chipperfeld Architects
David Chippereld’s haunting Museum o Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar, near Stuttgart, southern Ger many many,, is extraordinary or its reduction o architecture to the barest essentials. The museum houses and displays books, manuscripts manuscripts and arteacts rom the extensive 20th century collection in the Archive or German Literature – including the original manuscripts o Franz Kaka’s ‘The Trial’ and Alred Doblin’s ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ – and sits in parkland, embedded into a ridge overlooking the pretty valley o the Neckar River. It stands like a modern Parthenon on its own small Acropolis, stripped-to-the-bone-elegant, in stark relationship to the National Schiller Museum, a near-Baroque pile rom 1903, and a contorted brutalist aair rom 1973, 1973, o which it orms a part. As with nearly all o Chippereld’s architecture, this work is an exercise in rigorous restraint: a classically-inspired, minimalist temple o glass and slender concrete columns atop a concrete plinth. But what is more interesting, perhaps, is that Chippereld won the commission or the museum at all. That in a country still plagued by memories o Nazi monumental classicism – Hitler’s neo-Grecian House o German Culture, with its massive stone columns, is not ar away in Munich – and its ongoing dilemma o how to achieve a suitable expression o monumentality in its architecture, an architect, a oreign one at that, would dare propose a neo-classical colonnaded structure or a building o such national importance. And won in open-competition, to boot! Maybe it had to all to an auslander , a oreigner, to convince the jury that at this distance rom the Second World War an abstracted reduction o Nazi classicism might be okay to contemplate. Ater all, a ew other oreigners – James Stirling with his Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart o 1984 1984 and Norman Foster and his renovation or the Reichstag in Be rlin o 1999, 1999, among them – had stamped their own peculiar imprimatur on Germany’s post-war reconstruction. Challenging an unwritten rule that post-war German buildings should never have columns, Chippereld nevertheless entered the competition with his spare, rectilinear temple. “We elt we were bringing back a sort o classicism that hadn’t been seen in this part o Germany since the war war,,” he says. “And the period was ar enough away that the discussion could be interesting. Germans are willing to analyze what things mean. It’s a great climate to work in. I wanted to reduce the architecture to its most simplied, almost primitive orm”. orm”. Still, mischievously, mischievously, he had to reassure one concerned juror that the slender pre-cast concrete columns weren’t ascist columns at all but mullions! Given the parkland site, Chippereld came up with a scheme or a temple on a podium, where the base, containing six exhibition galleries, would be partially embedded into the side o the hill, with entry provided via a glass and concrete colonnaded pavilion on top. Visitors enter the museum through this upper level l antern, reminiscent o Mies van der Rohe’s entrance to the Berlin Art Gallery, with its crystalline glass and steel pavilion atop a base. Marbach is sparer, the pavilion marked by a screen o skinny concrete columns, without capitals or bases, wrapped around its our regular, symmetrical sides. It sits ever so lightly, transparent-like, transparent-like, over the exhibition galleries where the columns more requently turn into mullions or glass walls or pilasters set against solid panels. Roo terraces, podium walls and parapets are ormed o stringently linear planks o sandblasted pre-cast concrete with a limestone aggregate.
issue 09 National Museum o Modern Literature
Mindul o concerns about the columns and overt classical symmetry o the scheme, Chippereld and his project architect, Alexander Schwartz, pared the columns until they became almost impossibly thin, mere matchsticks, but still capable o being pre-cast in concrete. They also played a subtle game o sorts with the march o the columns: while on the upper lantern all elevations share a single column where that t urns a corner, on the lower level the colonnades each stop a column-width short o the sharp edge o the corner itsel. Columns are also omitted where they signal entrances. The greater challenge though, you suspect, lay within the museum itsel, where the books and manuscripts were required to be housed in dimly lit (50 lux) spaces to protect them rom daylight. In order not to create a gloomy or claustrophobic environment, Chippereld tried to expand the sense o enclosure with ext ra layers o outdoor terraces that take advantage o the views across the landscape. “We wanted these galleries to be dark in a positive way, way, not just dark boxes, but rooms with architectural integrity,” he says. Entering the museum, visitors nd themselves in a large hall where Ipe, a dark Brazilian wood, clads much o the walls. Daylight bathes the limestone foors and in-situ concrete walls and sots in an ethereal glow. Museum goers then work their way down a series o grand stairs in a careully choreographed journey o axial turns and views to prepare them or the dimly lit lower ground galleries, subtly reducing light levels as they descend. Once on the lowest level, a suite o exhibition spaces is arranged around three anterooms. Rigidly contained in plan, space is permitted to shit beneath the external terraces that rise and all. So, while unied by the consistent palette o in-situ concrete sots, warm timber walls and limestone foors, each space is made unique through subtle shits in ceiling height. Since the main exhibition galleries, or permanent collections and temporary exhibitions, were required to have close-control environments, and as such starved o natural light, Chippereld designed these windowless rooms to adjoin a space that is either a glazed loggia or illuminated by skylights to diminish the sense o having descended into a tomb. The most spectacular is the smallest room, a temporary exhibition hall, top-lit rom a soaring 11 metre high lantern. At Marbach the language is modest, classical reerences are rened to absolute minimum, the architecture one o exquisite lightness. The Museum o Modern Literature was awarded the 2007 RIBA Stirling Prize. JR
issue 09 National Museum o Modern Literature
A spare pavilion marked by a screen of skinny concrete columns, without capitals or bases, wrapped around its four symmetrical sides
issue 09 National Museum o Modern Literature
West elevation
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Project Statement The museum is located in Marbach’s scenic park, on top o a rock plateau overlooking the valley o the Neckar River. As the birthplace o the dramatist Friedrich Schiller, the town’s park already held the National Schiller Museum, built in 1903, and the Archive or German Literature, built in the 1970s. Displaying arteacts rom the extensive 20th century collection rom the Archive or German Literature, notably the original manuscripts o Franz Kaka’s “The Trial” and Alred Döblin’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz”, the museum also provides panoramic views across and over the distant landscape. Embedded in the topography, the museum reveals dierent elevations depending on the viewpoint. By utilising the steep slope o the site, terraces allow or the creation o very dierent characters: an intimate, shaded entrance on the brow o the hill acing the National Schiller Museum with its orecourt and park, and a grander, more open series o tiered spaces acing the valley below. A pavilion-like volume is located on the highest terrace, providing the entrance to the museum. The interiors o the museum reveal themselves as one descends down through the loggia, oyer and staircase spaces, preparing the visitor or the dark timber-pane timber-panelled lled exhibition galleries, illuminated only by artifcial light due to ragility and sensitivity o the works on display. At the same time, each o these environmentally controlled spaces borders onto a naturally lit gallery, balancing views inward to the composed, internalized world o texts and manuscripts with the green and scenic valley on the other side o the glass. A clearly defned material concept using solid materials (airaced concrete, sandblasted reconstituted stone with limestone aggregate, limestone, wood, elt and glass) gives the calm, rational architectural language a sensual physical presence. David Chipperfeld Architects
An exercise in rigorous restraint; a classically inspired, minimalist temple of glass and slender concrete columns atop a concrete plinth
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ground foor plan lower ground foor plan
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oyer/entrance area auditorium double-height lightwell terraces hall exhibition spaces temporary exhibition loggias wc technical rooms archive link
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The columns are impossibly thin, mere matchsticks, but still capable of being pre-cast in concrete
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Project Museum o Modern Modern Literature Literature Location Locat ion Marbach am Neckar, Germany Architect David Chipperfeld Chipperfeld Architects, Architects, Design/Project Architec t Alexander Schwartz Project team Harald Muller, Martina Betzold, Betzold, Andrea Hartmann, Christian Helrich, Franziska Rusch, Tobias Stiller, Vincent Taupitz, Mirjam von Busch, Laura Fogarasi, Barbara Koller, Hannah Jonas Site supervision Wenzel + Wenzel Wenzel Project manager Drees + Sommer Structural engine er Ingenieurgr Ingenieurgruppe uppe Bauen, Bauen, Services engineer Jaeger Jaeger,, Mornhinweg Mornhinweg + Partner Partner Ingenieurgesellschat, Ingenieurges ellschat, Stuttgart; Ibb Burrer + Deuring Ingenieurburo Gmbh, Ludwigsburg Photographer Christian Richters
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