Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
realizzazioni
di Fabrizia Morandi n foto/photos: Stefan Mller, Berlin - Archiv Kleihues + Kleihues, Berlin und Dlmen-Rorup
Frames
71
maggio - giugno 2008
opera:
Maritim Kongresshotel Berlin,
Berlin-Tiergarten
Progetto:
Architetto Jan Kleihues
Kleihues+Kleihues
Gesellschaft von Architekten GmbH
realizzazioni
72
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Kleihuess design is in relationship to these
buildings, the spaces between them, the
languages of their materials and forms. The
volumes seen in the floor and volume extension
seek dialogue with the pre-existing buildings and
are shaped accordingly. There are the rounded
edges of the expressionist Fahrenkamp and the
straight corners of the Baumgarten in its design,
put in a specific dialogue. Each sharp edge has a
corresponding sharp edge and each roundness
a corresponding roundness. The architect chose
travertine, the stone of the thirties. In his building,
it becomes a fluid material, in tune with the faade
lines movements in and out, grooves and their
negative space, which form the faades directing
lines, on which the horizontal ribbon windows
open. The entrance on the faade is topped by a
black metal projecting eave reminiscent of Mies
van der Rohe. Next to it is a large plane tree that
seems to have been conserved as a green mark
of the past. A high rise that holds floors of suites
serves as a marker for the entrance and declares
its spatial continuity with the pre-existing context.
The heights are also defined in reference to the
existing buildings. On Hitzigallee, the hotel is
aligned with the height of Shell-Hauss cornice.
It continues in a zig-zag with regular projections
and recesses that move along the street front with
occasional grass plots edged in natural stone.
The side facing Gemldegalerie follows its same
height, and then extends another four floors, set
slightly back from the base, to reach the height of
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74
one of Shell-Hauss structures.
Two large conference halls, two floors high, are
among this projects defining elements. The
conference halls are made highly flexible through
a system of sliding partition walls and can be
divided at will to fit the occasion. The smaller
room is lit from above through large ceiling
windows. The larger hall is lit by a double row
of windows that open on Hitzigallee, providing
a view and natural light. Above these halls there
are flat roofs between the extensions, designed
to become roof gardens with large beams
underneath them.
There is an ultimate sense harmony to the whole
here, one that is compact, graceful, balanced and
allusive.
We can see here an excellent example of how
every now and again to be good architects we
dont need to invent a brand name style and
reproduce it exactly anywhere we can in the world
to win media acclaim.
Kleihues is an architect who knows and respects
this city. For him, the city is still a concentration of
givens and hierarchies that are to be taken into
consideration. He does this with a light touch,
careful to bring his works into harmony with
what surrounds them. For Kleihues, a nouvel
observateur of architecture that manages
historys legacy with a relentless eye for perfection,
the present is nothing other than the future of the
past. Modernity is a simultaneous present, richer
than its past because it contains that past.
Frames
75
maggio - giugno 2008