ALTE NATIONALGALERIE

In Berlin last week, I was surprised that the Alte Nationalgalerie ended up being one of my favorite buildings in the city.  And given the enormous architectural wonders of Berlin, that is saying a lot.

These pages have not given much time to historical architectural traditions, other than to lambast them.  We are down on the Greeks for setting all of this representation in motion.  We have derided the Beaux Arts for their slavish embrace of everything classical.  This building is in the neoclassical chapter of most architectural history books; and let’s not forget that we are down on those.

The Alte Nationalgalerie was finished in 1876.  The architect, Friederich August Stüler, died before the building was finished.  So Carl Busse is also given credit for finalizing many of the details of the building.  It has an iron frame which is structurally assisted by bricks.  Some of the resonances of the building are greek temple, cathedral (with the apse at the back) and theater, with the exterior staircase.

I was prepared for my typical walk in, walk out dismissal of a building: a pile of neoclassical mishmash, who cares?  Yet from the first experience of entering, I became fascinated by it.  The first component that deserves attention is the vertical circulation.

There is a grand exterior staircase.  And right behind it as soon as you enter the building, there is an equally grand interior staircase.  In my drawing, I wanted to knowledge how these staircases work and interrelate.  The exterior stair assembly is pulled away from the building.  This allows for the introduction of a porte cochere, where no doubt the hoi polloi were dropped off in their horse drawn carriages.

The exterior staircase, one could competently argue, is the building.  Can you imagine this building without the staircase?  Yet what an incredible expenditure for the duplication of this vertical circulation.  And, of course, the exterior staircase is roped off so tourists like me can’t experience it.

Another facet of the building are the floor plans.  There are three floors, and the gallery disposition is different on each floor.  On the first floor, there are a series of long and narrow galleries, and they are ever so slightly narrower at one end than at the other, which gives them a forced perspective.  Also on the first floor, in the apse, there are these wonderfully oval galleries with an eggshell shaped ceiling that you arc thru.

After taking my photos and then sitting down in front of the building just to look at it, I continued to marvel at that staircase.  And then I thought, Ando.  So many of Ando’s buildings have, as a defining element, an elaborate circulation route to enter the building.  Two of Ando’s buildings that these pages have covered so far are Minimadera Art House and The Clark.  Even Minimadera has a clearly defined circulation path thru, around, and then back in before you actually enter.  So Schuller’s elaborate staircase is no different than an Ando pathways shaped by concrete planes.  Ando, alas, is neoclassical at heart!

So the Alte Nationalgalerie was an unexpected wonder.  It has all of the mysticism of the neoclassical mode.  The interior spaces are uniquely interesting.  And it is a bridge to modernism.