Sticks and Stones, an Intervention is a prologue to the renovation of Neue Nationalgalerie, which will be carried out by David Chipperfield Architects beginning in 2015. For three months from October to December, 2014, the British architect David Chipperfield (born in 1953) will transform the universal space of the upper glass hall into a hall of columns consisting of 144 tree trunks. From the English children’s rhyme Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me, Chipperfield borrows the first words to refer to the basic elements of Mies van der Rohe’s building and of architecture in general: sticks and stones.

Neue Nationalgalerie, raising of the roof, April 5, 1967 | photo: Archive Neue Nationalgalerie, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Fifty years after its completion, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s (1886–1969) building continues to impress with its modern stringency, shaped primarily by its special roof construction. The steel roof, which seems suspended in air, is borne by eight steel columns on the outside, thus allowing for a column-free interior space of 2,500 square meters. With barked spruce trunks that in a dense grid stretch the eight meters from the granite flooring to the steel roof structure, David Chipperfield directs attention to the basic themes of architecture in general.

Basalt columns of the Giant's Causeway, Ireland

Between nature and architecture, a field stretches that embraces the long cultural history of the column. Against the backdrop of the immanent restoration of Neue Nationalgalerie, the forest of columns also pays homage to the great predecessor Mies van der Rohe and serves as a metaphor for a temporary construction site.

Constantin Brancusi, The endless Column, 1937-1938

The visitors to this accessible installation are offered a spatial experience with a strongly evocative power. At the center of the forest of columns is a meadow, 200 square meters in size, where architectural, interdisciplinary shows will take place, including the Festival of Future Nows by the Institut für Raumexperimente of the Universität der Künste Berlin under the direction of Olafur Eliasson.

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