Humboldt Forum Reloaded: The Federal Building Ministry is planning a competition to rebuild Schinkel’s Bauakademie in Berlin. As with the Humboldt Forum, the concept seems ill-conceived. Here, Oliver Elser (curator of the German Architecture Museum), Florian Heilmeyer (architecture critic) and Ulrich Müller (founder of Architektur Galerie Berlin) comment on the planned project. Their petition, which was first published in the FAZ, was supported by architects, curators and architecture critics such as Volker Staab, Sauerbruch & Hutton and Andreas Ruby. Here are the ten theses that suggest an alternative approach:
What has happened so far:
The windfall of money rained down on the city of Berlin out of the blue last November. Suddenly, 62 million euros were on the table for the reconstruction of the Bauakademie. Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s late work, built in 1836, first repaired after the war and then demolished in 1962 for the GDR Foreign Ministry, was located directly opposite the City Palace. Its ambiguous reconstruction as the Humboldt Forum is currently nearing its end. Now the open design issues surrounding the palace are coming into focus. These include the Bauakademie, which has so far only been discussed in specialist circles and whose former location has been marked for years by a scaffold with a printed construction tarpaulin and a corner of the building built true to the original. The placeholder is the work of the active association “Internationale Bauakademie”, which wanted to reconstruct Schinkel’s work on a private initiative, but did not find enough support. Now the Federal Building Ministry is taking the lead and everything has to happen very quickly. The same fate threatens as with the palace: a competition is being prepared even before it has been clarified what will take place inside. In a frantically scheduled “participation procedure”, a concept is to be conjured up at three public meetings within just three months.
There is a better way. With ten theses, we explain why there should not be a competition this year and what the path to a “Neue Bauakademie” could look like:
1. never again a palace!
The Neue Bauakademie must not become a second city palace! The Humboldt Forum has become a neo-Prussian façade zombie, behind whose surface of natural stone carvings a contemporary cultural machine is hidden. Its content was defined far too late, which has led to the well-known, enormous conflicts with the palace façade corset. The Bauakademie now faces the same fate. An architectural competition with the obligation to reconstruct the façade would produce another debacle. This mistake must not be repeated. A New Bauakademie, on the other hand, can break completely new ground in the cramped reconstruction debate. We have a unique opportunity to do better.
2. no hurry
The timetable issued by the Federal Building Ministry envisages that the architectural competition for the reconstruction will be held this year – before the federal elections! – the architectural competition for the reconstruction will be announced. But there is no basis for this. Who will be responsible for the program of the Bauakademie? Who can say how much space is needed for exhibitions, events, depots, restaurants, a library, bookshop and offices? Couldn’t a competition produce a result that overturns all previous plans? What’s more, the foundations of the original Bau¬akademie still lie dormant in the ground. The heritage authorities have already announced that the history of the building’s destruction should not simply be ignored. Until all these questions have been dealt with, an architectural competition is a pointless waste of creative energy and money.
3. independence
At the first dialog forum in February, two contenders for the future use of the Bauakademie have already positioned themselves: the Technical University of Berlin and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The Ministry of Construction, advised by the Federal Foundation for Building Culture, has the role of arbitrator. By docking onto an existing institution, however, the enormous potential to establish the Bauakademie as a new and independent platform on which the most diverse players can be brought together is squandered. A “Stiftung Neue Bauakademie” is the right form for this.
4. programs through people
The “Stiftung Neue Bauakademie” must develop its program independently. What is needed is a strong directorate that begins its work in advance of an architectural competition. Because everyone knows that the struggle for good solutions only really begins after a jury decision: Good architecture needs responsible clients with the authority to make decisions. This must be the directorate at an early stage. Their selection will also determine the orientation of the Neue Bauakademie in the first few years. The founding directorship therefore has a key role to play. It must be appointed by a politically independent selection committee.
5 Bauakademie for all
In addition to the established architecture collections, Berlin is home to a globally unique variety of highly diverse actors that have been shaping the discourse on architecture and the city for years: AEDES, the magazine Arch+, the House of World Cultures, the German Architecture Center DAZ, to name but a few. The Neue Bauakademie must not become a project in which the diverse, creative, young Berlin is once again only praised but not included in the design of a major project. It must allow for the diversity and liveliness of Berlin’s characteristic provisional arrangements. The Neue Bauakademie must therefore also open its program to these independent actors. At the same time, it acts as a partner in the urban space. It could act as a co-producing cultural festival, comparable to the Ruhrtriennale or the Steirischer Herbst.
6. international profile
Like a burning glass, the Neue Bauakademie can bundle all the energies that are available in Berlin on the architectural issues of our time. But it is not an instrument of city marketing. It must develop a profile as a collegial player among the other Berlin players and at the same time maintain an exchange with international institutions. The goal is an institution that is mentioned in the same breath as places such as the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles or the Cité de l’architecture in Paris.
7 Intellectual foundation
The first task of the Neue Bauakademie must be to clarify the intellectual foundation of its own reconstruction: Schinkel’s radical gesture of building a “red box” directly opposite the royal palace is at the heart of the Bauakademie myth. But what consequences does this warming reminder of the conquest of the feudal center or the visibly industrial character of the Bauakademie have today? Where does this sting sit today? Even if a decision is made in favor of reconstruction rather than interpretation, this debate does not have to start from scratch. In recent years, exemplary projects have been designed that have set architectural standards (even if they have not always been realized): Kuehn Malvezzi’s special purchase for the Berlin City Palace, the Masters’ Houses in Dessau by Bruno Fioretti Marquez or the façade of the Natural History Museum by Diener+Diener.
8. open competition
In a competition, the entire spectrum of possible solutions must be permitted. For example, one solution could be to restore the shell of the building as it was in 1836 and visibly add all the adaptations to the present day as subsequent fixtures. Or a white cube could be built behind the four Schinkel façades, which could be rebuilt again and again like Cedric Price’s Fun Palace. Or will the best solution ultimately be a new building with no angular elements at all? We want to see a truly open competition of such ideas. The best of all juries must come together for this.
9. no compulsion to spend
It must also be possible to build little or nothing for the time being. If the competition does not lead to a result, it will be reallocated: from the construction budget to the program budget. For 62 million, it would be possible to hold top-class architecture exhibitions and events for many years – or to creatively use the overgrown site behind the plans of the Bauakademie. The Neue Bauakademie must be better than what the existing and chronically underfunded actors could have realized with this budget. We believe that the Bauakademie has this potential if it does not compete with the existing players, but becomes a place of joint design.
10 Universal like Schinkel
Schinkel’s Bauakademie was an open-use building. This is the requirement for a new Bauakademie: it must be as adaptable as the original. The architectural competition must therefore be open-ended, but the aim is to find a solution that can stand the test of time. Therein lies the historical opportunity of the competition: a building that is open for use, to be developed from the tradition of the Bauakademie and in intellectual dialog with its revolutionary architecture.
(published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on March 20, 2017)
Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, 16.3.2017:
Oliver Elser, Curator Deutsches Architekturmuseum
Florian Heilmeyer, architecture critic
Ulrich Müller, founder of Architektur Galerie Berlin
Initial supporter:
Markus Bader, Professor of Building Planning and Design, Berlin University of the Arts and Raumlabor Architekten
Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper, Professor in the Department of Monument Conservation at the Institute for Urban and Regional Planning, Technische Universität Berlin
Christian Holl, architecture critic
Louisa Hutton and Matthias Sauerbruch, Sauerbruch Hutton
Andres Lepik, Professor of Architectural History and Curatorial Practice and Director of the Architecture Museum at TU Munich
Andreas Ruby, Director S AM Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel
Volker Staab, Staab Architects
Georg Vrachliotis, Professor of Architectural Theory and Director of the Southwest German Archive for Architecture and Engineering (saai) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology