Museumsinsel Berlin - 2015 - Future Projection
The website for the master development plan of Berlin's Museumsinsel (Museum Island) shows its planned future form. It explains the master plan's basic idea and the restructuring of the museums and presents the history of the island's buildings and collections.
The Museumsinsel (Museum Island), considered as a unique ensemble of an educational landscape, represents 100 years of museum architecture in the middle of Berlin. The reunification of Germany opened up the historically unique opportunity to reunite the collections which had been divided between East and West. In 1999 UNESCO placed the Museumsinsel under its protection as a “World Cultural Heritage” site. The foundation's council had adopted a master plan for renovation of the buildings and modern development of the entire museum area. The master plan was included in the application for the distinctive classification by UNESCO. It treats the five historic buildings as a single unit while respecting their architectural autonomy. Responsibility for implementing the idea behind the master plan was assumed by the Museumsinsel planning group formed in 1998, which consists of the architecture offices commissioned with renovating the buildings and is chaired by David Chipperfield Architects.
The Museumsinsel is situated on the northern part of an island in the centre of Berlin in the River Spree and has an area formed in 1998, which consists of the architecture offices commissioned with renovating the buildings and is chaired by David Chipperfield Architects.
The Museumsinsel is situated on the northern part of an island in the centre of Berlin in the River Spree and has an area of almost one square kilometre. On this island, over six thousand years of human history are presented in a temple city of art and culture. The archaeological museums will be connected with one another at their base level both spatially and thematically by the Archaeological Promenade. This is the contextual bond which will present the cultures of the ancient occidental world in an overall, interdisciplinary display. In a main circuit in the Pergamon Museum the large streams of visitors will be presented the major exhibits of the Berlin museums, i.e. the monumental architecture of the old world. At the same time, these exhibits each continue to be connected spatially with the associated collections. Each building, which also has its own entrance, offers individual visitors a direct, undisturbed, intensive encounter with its collections.
The newly constructed James Simon Galerie between the Neues Museum (New Museum) and Kupfergraben (“copper ditch”, the western arm of the Spree) will welcome visitors and distribute them over the museum part of the island. It will be the main entrance to the museums on The Museumsinsel as well as to the main circuit and will offer central service functions such as cafés, a museum shop, a media room and an auditorium, not to mention the exhibition rooms for alternating presentations of the museums.
The colonnades around the Neues Museum and the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) will be rearranged and the open spaces redesigned and opened for visitors up to the courtyards of the Bode Museum.
Technical administrations with libraries and archives, student repositories and restoration shops, etc. will be housed together in the new “Museumshöfe” (“museum courtyards”) being constructed on the other side of the Kupfergraben so as to gain space for infrastructure and service facilities on the island.
link :
http://www.museumsinsel-berlin.de/flash/index.php
Some historical facts:
The Museum Island was listed as one of UNESCO's world cultural heritage sites in 1999. The ensemble comprises five individual museums, the construction of which spanned a period of one hundred years - from 1830 (Old Museum) to 1930 (Pergamon Museum).
After German reunification, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation assumed responsibility for the museums. Comprehensive restoration work was deemed necessary to prevent further disintegration of the buildings. The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning took on the role of client in a general refurbishment and extension programme estimated to last 20 years. The Museum Island is to be the key location for a concept developed by the Berlin State Museums, in which works of art illustrating the history of mankind over a period of 6,000 years will be on display.
The Bode Museum currently houses the Numismatic Collection and Sculpture Collection, while the Pergamon Museum accommodates the three independent collections - the Museum of Islamic Art, the Museum of Near Eastern Antiquities and the Museum of Antiquities. The New Museum, which has stood vacant since the end of the war, is currently being refurbished. As yet, only the Old National Gallery - as the first of the five museums - has been completely restored.
An "Archaeological Promenade", created at the level still accommodating the depot and administrative offices today, will form a link between the Bode Museum, the Pergamon Museum, the New Museum and the Old Museum and channel the flow of expected visitors. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation anticipates an annual attendance of four million visitors when restoration work has been completed. By then, the mammoth project will have swallowed one billion Euros.
The open spaces at Museum Island will be designed to plans by the Berlin landscape architects Levin Monsigny, who won the open competition in 2001. In accordance the western core area of the Museum Island will become an urban space with carefully bordered edges and calm stone surfaces, while in the eastern area along the River Spree, the green sequence of the Lustgarten, the cathedral garden and the colonnades will present a waterfront with romantic garden images. Unified natural stone furniture and a lighting concept will connect the two sides. Thus the stone flooring of the underground sections of the Archeological Promenade will be marked with transparent points of light and all five buildings individually floodlit with soft lightning.