Description

The use concept for the Humboldt Forum was the subject of protracted discussion and it was eventually decided that the majority of the second and third floors would house the “Haus der Weltkulturen” with the Non-European collections – the Ethnological Museum and Museum of Asian Art – occupying the greater part. The first floor contains research and workshop facilities and the museum library as well as the “Berlin exhibition”, while the ground floor and its public areas are to serve as a “forum for dialogue with cultural and political impact.” The exhibition halls on the upper floors vary in response to the constraints resulting out of the reconstructed facades on the exterior and facing onto the courtyard.

The Humboldt Forum is a partial reconstruction of the former Berliner Schloss that stood on this spot, and the facades of the portals I to V as well as the dome have been painstakingly reproduced in detail. The remainder of the building was designed by Franco Stella. Behind the imposing Portal III – also known as the West Portal or Eosander Portal – reconstructed with central risalit and passageway lies the main foyer, a spacious hall that extends the full height of the building and is topped by a coffered glazed roof. The three facing walls are entirely uniform, four-storey elevations with a modern gridded austerity characteristic of Franco Stella’s architecture. Turning around, one sees the somewhat incongruous reverse side of the reconstructed portal, a triumphal arch in full splendour with exuberant ornamentation crowning the central arch.

The hall is the central orientation space connecting the various uses of the Humboldt Forum as a 21st century world cultural centre. To the right of the main foyer are halls for temporary exhibitions and the “Eosander Shop” and a staircase leads down from the foyer to an “archaeological window” revealing excavations of the foundations that came to light over the course of the planning and construction works. A route with accompanying information panels explains the finds. On passing through the hall and out the exit on the opposite side, the visitor reaches a long circulation axis that runs crosswise the length of the building and provides axis to the rest of the Forum building. It is the starting point from which one ascends to the upper floors via a broad staircase and two escalators on each side. Glazed on one side, one has a good view of the public passageway through the centre of the Humboldt Forum, which can be reached via two sets of revolving doors.

This central passageway also plays an important role, and even more so when the museum opens as Portal III will still be obstructed by building works. It runs from the north side of the building from Portal IV opposite the Lustgarten, to Portal II on the south side opening onto the Schlossplatz and Marstall. This public passageway passing through the otherwise hermetic exterior of the former Schloss was also one of the key features of Franco Stella’s design that won over the jury during competition judging in 2008.

After crossing this public passageway and heading onwards between the bistro and shop, visitors reach the Schlüterhof. Three of the four elevations enclosing the open courtyard are reconstructions of the original façades by Andreas Schlüter. On the south side of the courtyard is the entrance to the “Museum of the History of the Site” whose walls have been left as exposed concrete. A 27-metre-long video wall shows a panorama of the Palast der Republik that stood on the site during GDR times.

The east façade, the Belvedere, is a stark reminder of the Razionalismo of the architect’s homeland. Described in the competition entry as a “linear frontage with open flights of stairs and loggias descending in opposite directions,” its cold austerity is the antithesis of Schlüter’s inner courtyard. Little remains, however, of the original concept of the Belvedere as an open urban loggia looking out over the city, as all of the spaces in the would-be loggia are now occupied with uses: the ground floor houses a large “Restaurant of the Continents” and only the terrace overlooks the River Spree. Next to it is the hall of the “Friends of the Palace” for patrons of the Forum. The rooms above it have also become part of the circuit of rooms that lead through the museum in a square around the courtyard. As a result, the striking gesture of the end wall of the building as a Belvedere proposed in the competition entry has lost what made it so compelling. And with the loss of its function, it has also lost its raison d’être.

Between the Schlüterhof and the Belvedere lies the central Sculpture Room, a passageway with several original sculptures by Andreas Schlüter that stand raised up high on pedestals. Next to it lies a gallery with the “Café Berlin”. The original sculptures were too valuable to be placed in the courtyard itself where one sees replicas of them. In former times, this was the location of the “Gigantentreppe”, an imposing staircase that led to the parading chambers of the palace.

For Stella, it was important that the Humboldt Forum would become a new urban space. The former palace now contains the main foyer as a kind of piazza, the Schlüterhof as a further open piazza, a passageway crossing through it, and numerous further paths and crossings. He sees the portals not as entrances to the palace but as open passageways into an urban quarter. For Stella, the Forum is composed of these spaces, and it is these that give it its spatial expression. In the octagonal space beneath the recreated former palace dome is an open space that was originally used as a chapel. Beneath the shallow concrete vault that now crowns the colonnaded walls of the tambour, special room installations will show wall paintings from Buddhist cave monasteries in Central Asia. The domed space above it will remain empty.

Originally published in Bauwelt 14.2020, pp. 18-29, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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