The Berlin 'Neues Museum' - a Microcosm of Prussian Building Technology Against the Background of Beginning Industrialization

Transactions on the Built Environment vol 39 © 1999 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 The Berlin 'Neues Museum' - a microcosm of Prussian building technology against the background of beginning industrialization W.Lorenz Chair of history of building technology, Brandenburg Technical University, D-03013 Cottbus, Germany email: [email protected] Abstract The 'Neues Museum', situated in the historic center of Berlin, was built between 1841 and 1859. Heavily damaged during world war II and increasingly ruined in the following decades, it is presently awaiting restoration, the plans for which have been drafted by the British architect David Chipperfleld. This paper goes into the role of this masterpiece of Prussian classicism as a high-tech structure in its time, characterized by a wide range of unusual and newly developed construction methods - various light weight brick vaultings as well as hollow pot vaultings, but, of primary importance, a multitude of often hidden cast iron and wrought iron structural elements. The building's design and history, as well as the building itself, express a new, forward-looking understanding of construction against the background of the industrial revolution, that includes all of its aspects - the process of building, the produce of building and the challenge in terms of architectural and artistic expression. Now, 150 years after the building's completion, the rebuilding and restoration post new technical challenges, because as many of the historical structures as possible have to be made to perform their functions again, with due consideration given to conservation requirements. 1 Introduction In 1841, just 17 years after the works for the first great Museum in Berlin, desig- ned by the famous Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, had begun in 1824, Transactions on the Built Environment vol 39 © 1999 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 390 Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Historical Buildings foundation works for another Royal Museum were started. To distinguish this museum from the older one, it was since to be called simply the ,,Neues Museum" - i.e ,,new museum". The kind of fascination that this nameless building held for the vistors in the 19th century as well as that which the ruins still do today, is multi-faceted. J-,»,— A Figure 1: Neues Museum Berlin - view from the Nationalgalerie, photo 1993 You may read this building as a late piece de resistance of classicism of the 1840s, which, in spite of its immense dimensions, remains noble and moderate in its proportions. It may also be interpreted as a compendium of world's cultures, a materialized museum concept that understands the building itself as being part of the exhibition, wherein the character and the decoration of each room are to cor- respond with the different objects of art on exhibit. But you can also read the building simply as a structure - and suddenly you understand that there is another, deeper sense in the distinction between ,,old" and ,,new": Far more than 17 years appear to separate the two museum structures. While Schinkel had based his design of the „ Altes Museum" primarily on the traditional building canon of stone and wooden components, his scholar August Stil- ler and his engineers, less than two decades later, countered with the development of a ,,high-tech" structural concept, characterized by a wide range of unusual and, for the time, innovative construction methods - various types of light weight bricks as well as a great variety of hollow pot vaultings, but, of most importance and hardly visible, a multitude of cast iron and wrought iron structural elements. Transactions on the Built Environment vol 39 © 1999 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Historical Buildings 391 The ,,Neues Museum" demonstrates a new, progressive understanding of the word ^construction" that includes all of the term's aspects, construction as the process of building construction as the produce of building construction as a challenge in terms of architectural and artistic expression. Built right in the middle of the first phase of industrialization in Prussia, dating from 1830 to 1870, the Neues Museum constitutes a unique microcosm of a new Prussian art of construction against the background of the industrial revolution. Heavily damaged during the second world war and increasingly ruined in the following decades, the remaining torso is presently awaiting restoration (Fig. 1). Now, 150 years after the buildings completion, we face a new technical challenge, because as many of the historical structures as possible have to be made to perform their functions again, with due consideration given to conservation requirements. First steps toward stabilisation and new underpinnings were already initiated in the late 1980s. Meanwhile, the building has been the object of extensive structural analysis, including mathematical simulation and computer modelling. Two other papers, written by Josef Seiler and Wulfgang Henze, will provide background detail of the actual measures. I will start with a survey of some of the aspects of the historical concept and its execution. 2 The process of building Let us look first at the stage of the building process. I will give only a short summary of some of its aspects which will serve to illustrate the novel ways implemented by the builders to organize on-site building procedures and the manufacture of structural elements for a building more colossal than any ever previously seen in Berlin. Thus, for the first time in Berlin, a special railway was installed to open up the building site and to transport the building materials as fast as possible from the mooring at the embankment of the river Spree to the site. In the centre of the future museum a 120 feet high wooden hoist was erected to carry the trucks, without unloading and reloading, to the upper floors of the upward growing structure, where they could be moved on on iron rails to any corner. Another interesting aspect was the comprehensive use of steam power. A steam engine of 5 hp, built by the famous iron founder and mechanical engineer August Borsig, served as the central energy supply source on the site. It had many jobs to fulfill. So it had to run the pumps for the lowering of water, run the mortar mixer and the wooden lift. First and primarily, however, it was used for the pile driver which set the 2,344 wooden foundation piles. Considering that we are talking about a city like Berlin, and particularly its historic centre in which other types of foundations often had to be ruled out, and if you realize on the other hand what extremly hard working conditions went along with the use of traditional manually operated hammers, you can easily see the importance of the introduction of steam power for pile driving. Transactions on the Built Environment vol 39 © 1999 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 392 Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Historical Buildings Figure 2: Northern wing, section with bowstring girders, published by the architect, 1862 Moreover, some significant changes in the building process must be emphasized, which evolve as a direct result of the extensive use of cast iron and wrought iron structural elements - changes, that were to become characteristic for the further development of the building process in the 19* century: Important manufacturing operations were shifted from the site to the factory. The site itself was reduced to a mere assembly place for the prefabricated elements. It is interesting to observe that the architect August Stiller and his engineers had obviously still not realized all the new options which prefabrication opened up as well as the consequences inherent for the final planning until they had worked out the first details. When climbing up from the ground floor to the second floor in the edifice and taking a look at the different iron structures, you can really read how they learned, step by step, to reduce the range of different cast iron elements and to think in categories of standardization. The advantages are obvious: The standardization of the girders allowed for their casting in only a small number of different molds, the junctions and the connecting bolts were the same and so on. The standardization of structural elements - as contemporarily manifested, for example, in the already highly developed serial production of railway engines in Borsigs factory some hundred metres far from the Museum Island - took into account the new manufacturing conditions of the beginning industrial age. A quite impressive acceleration in building progress was the direct result of this innovation package. Schinkel, after having finished the foundations, had needed nearly two years to finish the rough construction work of his "old" museum. At Stiilers ,,new" museum, the same works took less than one year. Transactions on the Built Environment vol 39 © 1999 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Historical Buildings 393 ' 'f w Figure 3: Room of Majolicas, details of iron structure and zinc decoration, published by the architect, 1862 Figure 4: Room of Majolicas, details of iron structure, working drawing, watercolours, approx. 1843 Transactions on the Built Environment vol 39 © 1999 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 394 Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Historical Buildings As on the level of execution, changes on the level of design, and on the level of engineering task are also worthy of mention here. These changes in the engineer's approach were to become characteristic for the further development of engineering itself. One thus finds the careful inclusion of theoretically founded dimensioning as a first step towards statical calculation. One also finds draftmanship precision previously unheard of - a new, independent culture of constructio- nal draftmanship apart from architectural draftmanship.

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