The topping-out of the James Simon Galerie on Berlin’s Museum Island was celebrated this morning at an event attended by nearly 1,000 people.
Named after one of city’s greatest patrons, the building forms an integral part of the masterplan for the Museum Island approved in 1999. David Chipperfield has described the James Simon Galerie as ‘both a building and place’, explaining that ‘as well as its role to supplement the museological programme, its purpose is to reorganise urban relations and accessibility within the Museum Island’. It is not so much defined by its function ‘but rather by its responsibility as a public building in the centre of the city’. The completion of the new entrance building is scheduled for 2018.
The official speakers at the ceremony were Petra Wesseler, President of the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning; Monika Grütters, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media; Barbara Hendricks, the Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety; Hermann Parzinger, the President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation; as well as David Chipperfield and Alexander Schwarz from David Chipperfield Architects Berlin.
Image ©Ute Zscharnt for David Chipperfield Architects