Stealth Museum

stealth museum

Ian Olliv ier Thibaut Pierron

A rchipelago A rchitectureGuest-Prof. Mark Lee

Master Project 2010 tu Berlin

“BERLIN AS A GREEN ARCHIPELAGO” OSWALD MATHIAS UNGERS 1977

5

In a series of essays, O. M. Ungers, H. Kollhoff, R. Koolhaas and A. Ovaska suggest a new interpretation of Berlin’s urban space after its partial destruction : Berlin as a green archipelago. Berlin is then described as a collection of selected “places of reason” scatered on a green grid. They are fragments of architecture, History, culture, places of plurality and confrontation in vast garden of the city.

These statements set the base for further urban renewal strategies ; and it is these statements that we chose to inject and transcribe into the process of our architectural production.

6

MASTERPLAN

7

Our new building implements itself parallel to the preexisting factory. Its massing is clear and simple.

We chose here to transcribe Ungers’ vision of “Berlin as a green archipelago” into the scale of the architectural object. The hybrid program (housing and exhibition spaces) allowed us to literally transpose the urban grid and architectural fragments into a single building. In order to concretize this process, we decided to use the lodgings as a structural grid : the garden in which the exhibition spaces will be scattered as architectural fragments.

The art galleries are hidden, bathed in the mass of lodgings as a Stealth Museum. Each exhibition space is given singularity through the nature of its zenithal lighting. They create a plotted route through the building by means of successive compression and dilatation. The route ends in a tunnel leading to the preexisting factory.

The building is schizophrenic. It houses a spatial and programmatic duality.

8

GREEN GRIDARCHIPELAGO

9

HOUSING GRIDEXHIBITIONS ROOMS

10

11

DIAGRAMMATIC PLANS AND SECTION - NEW BUILDING

GROUND FLOOR

FIRST FLOOR

SECOND FLOOR

THIRD FLOOR

12

ENTRANCE - NEW BUILDING

13

FIRST EXHIBITION ROOM - NEW BUILDING

14

SECOND EXHIBITION ROOM - NEW BUILDING

15

DETAILED SECTION -- NEW BUILDING

16

PLANS AND SECTION - NEW BUILDING

GROUND FLOOR

SECOND FLOOR

THIRD FLOOR

17

From the outside the visitor can not be aware of this dichotomy. The building presents itself as a banal housing block. Once having crossed the threshold of the stealth museum, one is confronted with this reality : the two systems are independent, autonomous.

They do not interact visually but exert pressure on one another. It is an invisible confrontation between the banal and the exceptional.

WEST ELEVATION - NEW BUILDING

18

CROSS SECTION ALONG BOTH BUILDINGS AND UNDERGROUND PATH

SOUTH ELEVATIONS OF BOTH BUILDINGS

19

While working on the first building, we wished only to transcribe at the scale of a single architectural object Ungers’ postulate about Berlin as an Archipelago. Nevertheless, now unfolding the museum route into this second part, which is the preexisting factory, we decided to adopt a different strategy.

20

21

In this building, a grid has already been established by the structure, the posts and the beams. After having set the base of the work of Ungers, we now follow one of their strategies : the implementation of a new typology on an existing grid.

As a reference to the preexisting state of Berlin after partial destruction, we keep the ground floor clear and disperse architectural fragments : an auditorium, staircases, a restaurant...

22

23

On the next floors, we tend to crystallize into one building, one image or cliché, the different phases of Ungers’ strategy for the renewal of Berlin’s urbanity. Our work is organized in three phases :

We first systematically fill the grid with lodgings, as Berlin’s dense urban tissue was before destruction.Then, we recreate the conditions of an in-between, by suppressing some of the apartments. What results are cavities, blind walls between tightly gathered apartments.Finally, these “in-betweens” will be able to be requalified threw the introduction of a new typology, the exhibition rooms.

24

WEST ELEVATION AND SECTION - PREEXISTING BUILDING

25

The result of this dual use of the building is expressed on the façade. While the lodgings respect the building’s structural grid and façade composition, the “empty” spaces or gaps of the art galleries tend to react as foreign bodies. The façade sheltering these spaces is frozen, windows are blocked, the moldings become nothing more than an elegant industrial wallpaper. New wider openings pop out freely in order to accommodate this new typology.

26

PLANS - PREEXISTING BUILDING

GROUND FLOOR

FIRST FLOOR

SECOND FLOOR

27

Going from one gap to an other through catwalks, the visitor crosses the factory and loops all the way back to the entrance of the first building.

29

FINAL PRESENTATION - JULY 2010 - BERLIN

[email protected]