Museum island in Berlin: A balcony over the river Spree

a key advantage of A new entrance building to Berlin’s Museum island is its sense of height differences. For the first Time ever, the James-Simon-gallery invites the visitor to the Museum island to rise. Of the Bodestraße motorway, which separates the Old Museum of the four remaining houses on the island, one is led via a wide staircase to the entrance on the main floor of the building, which also forms the top of three floors.

Andreas Kilb

feuilleton correspondent in Berlin.

F. A. Z.

Already, this ascent is a gratification. Where else at the end of the stages in the Dark of a porch waits, opens the view into the Distance. Link hand extends a colonnade, looking out over the copper trench in the Friedrichstadt. It turns and appears behind the trees in the pleasure garden, the Baroque facade of the Humboldt forum. Berlin has many such views. This a solves a promise that all master plans and castle debates of the last decades has secretly fired: the capital gets a center that you can watch. For this center, the Simon will be the gallery for in-service next summer as a distributor lock. From here the roads lead to the Pergamon and the New Museum, and one day, when the underground Archaeological Promenade will be ready, also, to Bode and to the Old Museum. It’s just that this is one day in the stars. The architect David Chipperfield and his Partner Alexander Schwarz designed the building so that each of the three layers acts as a passage, on the upper floor through a wall portal to the Pergamon Museum, on the ground floor across the courtyard to the New Museum and in the basement in the planned Promenade.