A Short Architectural History of the Neue Nationalgalerie
- Grace Miskovsky
- Oct 15, 2023
- 3 min read
The Neue Nationalgalerie stands today at Potsdamerstraße 50 at the Kulturforum in Berlin, a conglomerate of modernist cultural centres. The monumental steel and glass building is home to a collection of modern artworks, focusing specifically on twentieth century art and the emergence of European modernism. Its extensive collection, spread out over two main floors, was a point of political contention in the chaos that ensued after World War II, as the original collection dating back to 1920 was split between East and West Germany. The gallery’s directors in the West, in light of the heavy political repression and artistic censorship in East Germany, were unable to recover much of the original collection lost to the East but instead set out to create a new cultural hub in West Germany called the “Gallery of the 20th Century,” which in time, became what we know today as the Neue Nationalgalerie. In 1962, German visionary Mies van der Rohe was commissioned to create the building plan for the new gallery, which would serve as the “start of a new chapter in the cultural rebirth of West Berlin.”
Mies van der Rohe was a pioneer within modernism in architecture, and studied alongside other giants within the industry such as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. He was appointed the director of the Bauhaus under Nazi occupation, but fled Germany due to the threat of the artistic persecution which gripped German modernists under National Socialism. Once back in the country after World War II, his signature style flourished under the non-restrictive expressionism upheld by the permisiveness of a laissez-faire, culture-forward West Berlin. Rohe was interested in the idea of open space as uninhibited by traditional architectural restraints. He wanted to reimagine structures as free entities, rather than ones defined by the constraints of four walls; the interior and exterior flowed in and out of each other seamlessly in his works characterised by minimalism and clarity. His work strived to curtail intersecting planes through “rejecting the traditional systems of enclosed rooms and relying heavily on glass to dissolve the boundary between the building’s interior and exterior.” At the Neue Nationalgalerie, he created a tremendous building, featuring two levels. The upper story, used as an entrance point and space for the gallery’s temporary exhibitions, is 28,880 square feet and elevated from street level, only accessible by three flights of stairs. A massively brutalist steel roof sits atop Rohe’s glass castle and measures five feet and eleven inches thick. It is supported by eight cruciform columns, each absent from intersection of the four glass walls. A fifty-nine-foot cantilever separates the columns and the facade of the building. Air ducts are suspended above “egg crates” which “fit within the grid house lighting fixtures.”
Even though the building's primary architectural expression comes from this top level, the majority of the gallery space lives three-quarters below ground, allowing for indirect natural lighting to seep into the slightly subterranean space. This area hosts the gallery’s permanent collection of modernist works, as well as a shop, library, office space, and cafe. Its total ground floor measurements equal 110,000 square feet. The building was renovated in 2015 by David Chipperfield, who restored much of the roof, steel beams, and glass facade, and officially reopened to the public in 2021.
Although during its construction, issues regarding structural integrity arose due to its complex design, Mies van der Rohe and the gallery’s engineering team worked tirelessly to see the plans through, as this building is a testament to his design lexicon and enduring legacy as one of the most important architects of the modernist period.
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