This was a long awaited dream of mine. On our recent Euro trip we made it all the way up to Berlin and spent an entire day, if not two, on the Museumsinsel, devoting most of the time to The Neues Museum. It was built from 1843 to 1855 according to the plans by Friedrich August Stüler (1800-1865), a student of the prominent Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841). Over the decades, time took a heavy toll on the museum and it was in danger of being demolished. In 1997, David Chipperfield and Julian Harrap were chosen to overview the rebuilding and renovating of this UNESCO world heritage site. The museum officially reopened in 2009.
I thoroughly enjoyed wandering through the museum and catching myself time and again being more fascinated by the renovation than by the actually art collection itself. I loved how Chipperfield and Harrap accomplished to gently restore and touch up the building while leaving murals, mosaics, columns or sculptured unfinished or just filled in and juxtaposing them with modern materials.