Museum of Modern Literature Marbach, Germany

14

David Chipperfield Architects

David Chipperfields haunting Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar, near Stuttgart, southern Germany, is extraordinary for its reduction of architecture to the barest essentials. The museum houses and displays books, manuscripts and artefacts from the extensive 20th century collection in the Archive for German Literature including the original manuscripts of Franz Kafkas The Trial and Alfred Doblins Berlin Alexanderplatz and sits in parkland, embedded into a ridge overlooking the pretty valley of 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 from 1903, and a contorted brutalist affair from 1973, of which it forms a part. As with nearly all of Chipperfields architecture, this work is an exercise in rigorous restraint: a classically-inspired, minimalist temple of glass and slender concrete columns atop a concrete plinth. But what is more interesting, perhaps, is that Chipperfield won the commission for the museum at all. That in a country still plagued by memories of Nazi monumental classicism Hitlers neo-Grecian House of German Culture, with its massive stone columns, is not far away in Munich and its ongoing dilemma of how to achieve a suitable expression of monumentality in its architecture, an architect, a foreign one at that, would dare propose a neo-classical colonnaded structure for a building of such national importance. And won in open-competition, to boot! Maybe it had to fall to an auslander, a foreigner, to convince the jury that at this distance from the Second World War an abstracted reduction of Nazi classicism might be okay to contemplate. After all, a few other foreigners James Stirling with his Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart of 1984 and Norman Foster and his renovation for the Reichstag in Berlin of 1999, among them had stamped their own peculiar imprimatur on Germanys post-war reconstruction. Challenging an unwritten rule that post-war German buildings should never have columns, Chipperfield nevertheless entered the competition with his spare, rectilinear temple. We felt we were bringing back a sort of classicism that hadnt been seen in this part of Germany since the war, he says. And the period was far enough away that the discussion could be interesting. Germans are willing to analyze what things mean. Its a great climate to work in. I wanted to reduce the architecture to its most simplified, almost primitive form. Still, mischievously, he had to reassure one concerned juror that the slender pre-cast concrete columns werent fascist columns at all but mullions! Given the parkland site, Chipperfield came up with a scheme for a temple on a podium, where the base, containing six exhibition galleries, would be partially embedded into the side of the hill, with entry provided via a glass and concrete colonnaded pavilion on top. Visitors enter the museum through this upper level lantern, reminiscent of Mies van der Rohes 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 of skinny concrete columns, without capitals or bases, wrapped around its four regular, symmetrical sides. It sits ever so lightly, transparent-like, over the exhibition galleries where the columns more frequently turn into mullions for glass walls or pilasters set against solid panels. Roof terraces, podium walls and parapets are formed of stringently linear planks of sandblasted pre-cast concrete with a limestone aggregate.

issue 09 National Museum of Modern Literature

Mindful of concerns about the columns and overt classical symmetry of the scheme, Chipperfield and his project architect, Alexander Schwartz, pared the columns until they became almost impossibly thin, mere matchsticks, but still capable of being pre-cast in concrete. They also played a subtle game of sorts with the march of the columns: while on the upper lantern all elevations share a single column where that turns a corner, on the lower level the colonnades each stop a column-width short of the sharp edge of the corner itself. Columns are also omitted where they signal entrances. The greater challenge though, you suspect, lay within the museum itself, where the books and manuscripts were required to be housed in dimly lit (50 lux) spaces to protect them from daylight. In order not to create a gloomy or claustrophobic environment, Chipperfield tried to expand the sense of enclosure with extra layers of outdoor terraces that take advantage of the views across the landscape. We wanted these galleries to be dark in a positive way, not just dark boxes, but rooms with architectural integrity, he says. Entering the museum, visitors find themselves in a large hall where Ipe, a dark Brazilian wood, clads much of the walls. Daylight bathes the limestone floors and in-situ concrete walls and soffits in an ethereal glow. Museum goers then work their way down a series of grand stairs in a carefully choreographed journey of axial turns and views to prepare them for the dimly lit lower ground galleries, subtly reducing light levels as they descend. Once on the lowest level, a suite of exhibition spaces is arranged around three anterooms. Rigidly contained in plan, space is permitted to shift beneath the external terraces that rise and fall. So, while unified by the consistent palette of in-situ concrete soffits, warm timber walls and limestone floors, each space is made unique through subtle shifts in ceiling height. Since the main exhibition galleries, for permanent collections and temporary exhibitions, were required to have close-control environments, and as such starved of natural light, Chipperfield designed these windowless rooms to adjoin a space that is either a glazed loggia or illuminated by skylights to diminish the sense of having descended into a tomb. The most spectacular is the smallest room, a temporary exhibition hall, top-lit from a soaring 11 metre high lantern. At Marbach the language is modest, classical references are refined to absolute minimum, the architecture one of exquisite lightness. The Museum of Modern Literature was awarded the 2007 RIBA Stirling Prize. JR

issue 09 National Museum of 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 of Modern Literature

West elevation

10

20

Project Statement The museum is located in Marbachs scenic park, on top of a rock plateau overlooking the valley of the Neckar River. As the birthplace of the dramatist Friedrich Schiller, the towns park already held the National Schiller Museum, built in 1903, and the Archive for German Literature, built in the 1970s. Displaying artefacts from the extensive 20th century collection from the Archive for German Literature, notably the original manuscripts of Franz Kafkas The Trial and Alfred Dblins Berlin Alexanderplatz, the museum also provides panoramic views across and over the distant landscape. Embedded in the topography, the museum reveals different elevations depending on the viewpoint. By utilising the steep slope of the site, terraces allow for the creation of very different characters: an intimate, shaded entrance on the brow of the hill facing the National Schiller Museum with its forecourt and park, and a grander, more open series of tiered spaces facing the valley below. A pavilion-like volume is located on the highest terrace, providing the entrance to the museum. The interiors of the museum reveal themselves as one descends down through the loggia, foyer and staircase spaces, preparing the visitor for the dark timber-panelled exhibition galleries, illuminated only by artificial light due to fragility and sensitivity of the works on display. At the same time, each of these environmentally controlled spaces borders onto a naturally lit gallery, balancing views inward to the composed, internalized world of texts and manuscripts with the green and scenic valley on the other side of the glass. A clearly defined material concept using solid materials (fairfaced concrete, sandblasted reconstituted stone with limestone aggregate, limestone, wood, felt and glass) gives the calm, rational architectural language a sensual physical presence. David Chipperfield Architects

An exercise in rigorous restraint; a classically inspired, minimalist temple of glass and slender concrete columns atop a concrete plinth

Longitudinal section

10

20

issue 09 National Museum of Modern Literature

04

03 04 02 04 01 04

ground floor plan lower ground floor plan

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

foyer/entrance area auditorium double-height lightwell terraces hall exhibition spaces temporary exhibition loggias wc technical rooms archive link

11

09

09

06

05 06 07 06

10

08

06

06 10 08 08

issue 09 National Museum of Modern Literature

The columns are impossibly thin, mere matchsticks, but still capable of being pre-cast in concrete

issue 09 Museum of Modern Literature

Project Museum of Modern Literature Location Marbach am Neckar, Germany Architect David Chipperfield Architects, Design/Project Architect Alexander Schwartz Project team Harald Muller, Martina Betzold, Andrea Hartmann, Christian Helfrich, Franziska Rusch, Tobias Stiller, Vincent Taupitz, Mirjam von Busch, Laura Fogarasi, Barbara Koller, Hannah Jonas Site supervision Wenzel + Wenzel Project manager Drees + Sommer Structural engineer Ingenieurgruppe Bauen, Services engineer Jaeger, Mornhinweg + Partner Ingenieurgesellschaft, Stuttgart; Ibb Burrer + Deuring Ingenieurburo Gmbh, Ludwigsburg Photographer Christian Richters

27