The plans that David Chipperfield presented for the Haus der Kunst in 2016 made such waves! Some complained that they were not appropriate for the monument with its problematic history as Hitler’s temple of art. The tree protectors were upset because the Brit wanted to have the lime trees that were subsequently planted in front of the house cut down in order to pull away the “green curtain”, as he said, behind which Munich shamefully hid its history. The palace administration, on the other hand, definitely did not want what the Briton was planning for the back facing the English Garden: to create a new line of sight into the park through the botany.
Nothing has come of all of this so far. But not because of the doubters from a wide range of camps. Construction never began, although the state parliament approved the usual preparatory measures at the time. The explanation for this is simple: the general renovation designed by Chipperfield – with comparatively few complex changes to the old building – costs money. And that’s exactly what the Free State didn’t want to spend. Not before the pandemic, when the coffers were supposedly oh-so-full, not during it and certainly not after.
But now the renovation of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg is to be carried out by David Chipperfield’s office. The plans for this were presented this Friday and work is scheduled to begin in 2025. The sum involved is modest at 67 million – one might almost say unbelievable. The “Germanic” as the people of Nuremberg call it, is a complex of several buildings and different periods that are grouped around a former Carthusian monastery on the southern edge of the old town.
In Munich, meanwhile, no one disputes the need to renovate the box from the 1930s, which is perfectly suitable for presenting contemporary art. For a long time now, skilled technicians have literally only been patching up the house with gaffer tape. The old pipes are porous, the roof is leaking, and the building services that are housed in the basement are not only reminiscent of the engine room of one of those cruise ships that the architect Paul Ludwig Troost otherwise designed. It is similarly antique.
Daylight from above and with a view from the entrance to the back: the central hall of the Haus der Kunst as it appears in the designs by David Chipperfield.
(Photo: Photo: Chipperfield Office)
Because it was clear that even the best self-healing powers cannot help against rust, corrosion, etc., the Free State put the renovation out to tender and, with the help of a jury, chose Chipperfield as the competition winner in 2013. Not least because his office is one of the few that has experience with such complex webs of monument protection regulations and political pitfalls as those surrounding this building. In 2018, the State Building Authority was commissioned to plan ahead and determine the expected costs. The results should be available in 2020 and the state parliament should be informed. A sum of around 150 million euros was circulating, which was never official. But since then the state government has remained silent. To a large extent, anyway.
Markus Blume, Minister of Art and, in addition to the Germanisches and Haus der Kunst, responsible for at least half a dozen complex and expensive renovation cases among Bavaria’s cultural buildings, said in spring 2023 that “adjustments were currently being made” for the Haus der Kunst. You have to check whether the old plans are still up-to-date and affordable. The green state parliament opposition went even further, with its spokeswoman Sanne Kurz describing the Chipperfield draft for Munich this week as “as old-fashioned as it is backwards”.
Of course, no one who has observed government construction in this country over the past decades is surprised by this diagnosis. Because it’s not just in the case of Haus der Kunst that what takes a long time doesn’t turn out well in the end, it’s just talked to death or an old joke. It’s just a shame that millions of dollars in planning costs are wasted along the way.