David Chipperfield brings understated glory back to Berlin's Neues Museum

摘要

Museum buildings nowadays are all too readily labelled 'iconic' and their famous facades muffle the underprivileged interior spaces, where exhibits may not be very welcome. The quietly spectacular and admirably un-iconic Neues Museum in Berlin (AR May 2009) inverts that situation, as halls resonate with the treasures displayed within. After years of protests and a diligent bout of reconstruction, the museum was opened on 16 October by German chancellor Angela Merkel.