The James-Simon-Galerie in Berlin emerges as an architectural palimpsest where the ambition of modernity dialogues with the echoes of classical grandeur, embodying a contemporary mythopoeia that revives the monumental character of Roman staircases and ancient temples; the imposing staircase acts not merely as circulation but as an experiential threshold, a ceremonial ascent that induces reverence and frames the building as a civic sanctuary rather than a mere museum annex, thus updating the archetype of the urban temple within a radically minimal syntax of slender columns and immaculate stone, evoking both restraint and solemnity; the relationship with the surroundings intensifies this interpretation: flanked by historical facades and museums of imperial legacy, the gallery neither mimics nor contradicts but rather infiltrates the Museum Island ensemble with a new civic mythology, where the scale becomes a device for collective choreography, rendering visitors momentarily insignificant yet existentially elevated as they ascend the bleached stone slope; the architecture of David Chipperfield here aligns with a British ethos of stoic refinement but channels a distinctly Germanic longing for order, clarity and public dignity, blending the neoclassical canon with the rigour of contemporary abstraction; in this case, the colossal staircase does not merely reference the past but re-enacts it, creating an intuitive ritual of encounter between body, stone, and memory, demonstrating that to build in Berlin today is to converse with ruins, ghosts, and utopias alike, crafting spaces that are at once grounded in context and suspended in symbolic gravitas.
(Chipperfield, 2018)
