Pergamonmuseum: Giant scandal for building delay and costs - Berlin citizens calls for rethinking

Pergamonmuseum: Giant scandal for building delay and costs - Berlin citizens calls for rethinking

Again Pergamon Museum, do you moan? But we shouldn't just dismiss this giant scandal. For this purpose, the two -time delay of at least 15 years and the cost jump from 240 million to 1.2 billion euros are simply too huge. And then there is also the architectural -historical responsibility. No, we have to remain vigilant.

Even if the building and its additions were completed around 2040, it would be according to a draft by Oswald Mathias Ungers from 1999. 1999! That is even for the slow discipline architecture Äonen.

In addition, Ungers (1926-2007) was already quite old, so the draft breathes his claim of the 1970s to the last square joint that architecture was ultimately a pure, abstract art. That's why he never thought he had to be considerate of "existing buildings". The "manifest" was more important.

Even at the Pergamon Museum, Ungers was never really interested in the new -classical monumental building of his predecessors Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann, for whose heavy, new baroque tinted pathos: With Unger's pillars, for example, against all classic method in the Middle axes. For the fourth wing, a giant showcase on the copper ditch, foundations were even torn out that had already been built for the construction of an airy pillar hall intended by Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann.

there is a risk of a doctrinal architecture

The new entrance building to the east wing is already largely finished. It shows us what threatens to this fourth wing: a doctrinal architecture that absolutely wants to compete with the undoubtedly huge facades of Messel and Hoffmann's instead of inserting them. Around 1999, this may have been acceptable as an honorary rounding of the life's work, even around 2010 - but in 2040 it will simply appear incomprehensible and dried up.

By the way, Ungers has pathetically called the entrance building "Tempieto". He is anything but a temple, and certainly not a rervolution of architecture that succeeded in the 16th century through the Renaissance "Tempieto" Donato Bramante in Rome. Such a revolutionary mood would be quite appropriate for the very state -supporting Pergamon Museum.

Therefore: Let's dare a new competition to update Unger draft at least in architectural terms. It would not be the first time in architecture history - see the Dome of Florence, Siena or Milan, the Louvre or the Berlin Castle - that survived designs are updated by new architects.

Yes, that will also cost money and a little time. But apparently both are available. And without any new thinking knowingly to build something totally fallen out of time - we shouldn't want to afford that.

according to a report by www.tagesspiegel.de ,