Abendstund hat Gold im Mund #philharmonie #philharmonieberlin #hansscharoun #berlin #Kulturforum #kammermusiksaal #architektur #moderne #modernarchitecture #organicarchitecture #functionalism #goldimstadtraum
TURN AROUND II ( - (what I see if I turn around from the image before).. beholds a big surprise indeed – this is the rear side of Hans Scharouns’s Staatsbibliothek (1967-78), a side of this building which is hardly visible, except from this narrow alley. The golden „book casket“ with it’s enigmatic slant lines thrones on long battered concrete/ window socle, an impressive piece of architecture, which is kind of hidden from the city. The Library is one of the 5 most outstanding pieces of architecture in Berlin, in the same class as Scharoun’s Philharmonic Hall or Mies’ National Gallery. Its main virtue though lies in the inside, a unique flow of organic spaces, from small to very large and its Scharoun-typical invitation to promenade in the vertical and horizontal. Besides all those wonders (unfortunately nowadays not open to the non studying public any more) there are two aspects, which I want to show with the following Arial views (thanks to the great Apple maps device!): The building stands in the middle of the former ‘Potsdamer Straße’, Germany’s Route no.1 (red line on the view) – why ? Scharoun as town planner wanted to change the layout of the destroyed post-war-city completely, freeways were planned to wriggle through a ‘landscape’ city, with hardly any references to the old streets and blocks. So exactly where today stands Piano’s Musical theatre should have been the ‘Westtangente’, a motorway that was never realized, alongside the sector-border to the East, thus the alignment of this rear-side. Now Piano, in the 90ies, saw the blockade this complex means for the city fabric and left the gap in his building, to enable, one day, maybe, at least a direct foot connection between the business centre and the ‘cultural-forum‘ (blue line and last pic). So far the officials of the library hampered this idea. Interestingly Herzog & de Meuron have catched up with the idea of connecting the Library with their to be built Modern Art Museum next to the ‚Neue Nationalgalerie‘.