Unique in the world, Berlin's new Museum for Architectural Drawing, designed by architects Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov, brings some of the finest 20th and 21st century architectural drawings together in a building provocatively tattooed with its own drawings.
A series of concrete boxes, each carved with an array of large-scale drawings and dimpled with window apertures, function as a Trajan's Column of architectural history in a corner site located on the grounds of the historic Pfefferberg Brewery adjacent to the Aedes Architekturforum. A cantilevered glass box caps the complex and offers visitors sweeping city views and a sunny spot to make one's own sketches as the culmination of the museum sequence.
Built to house the Tchoban Foundation's extensive collection of original drawings, the museum hosts a number of exhibitions each year. Recent shows have featured works by Oskar Niemeyer, David Chipperfield, Zaha Hadid, Aldo Rossi, Gottfried Böhm, and the Japanese office of Bow-Wow. Other exhibitions have had historic or thematic emphases such as Architecture in Cultural Strife: Russian and Soviet Architecture in Drawings, 1900–1953 and Piranesi’s Paestum: Master Drawings Uncovered.
This exhibition showcases the collection — many pieces never before exhibited in the United States — and the development of the museum itself. It traces the museum's designs from inception to construction with sketches, drawings, and photographs, and includes several perspectives by Tchoban.
The Hartell Gallery portion of the exhibition, Legacy, features iconic drawings of Soviet and Russian architects including several Constructivist projects by Yakov Chernikov, the winning design for the Palace of the Soviets by Boris Iofan (famously trumping Le Corbusier's proposal), Andrey Burov's designs for an all-Russian agricultural exhibition, and Alexey Shusev's working drawings for Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square. Stalin-era architect Boris Zhuravlev's stunning panoramic views of Moscow reveal urban design ambitions of the 1950s. Work of contemporary Russian architects influenced by these earlier figures is represented with drawings by Alexander Brodsky and Arthur Skizhali‐Weiss.
Treasury, in the Bibliowicz Gallery, highlights the wider international collection of the museum with sketches and drawings by Hans Poelzig, Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza, Peter Wilson, and Madelon Vriesendorp, cofounder of OMA.
The exhibition is curated by Visiting Associate Professor Mark Morris, director of exhibitions and events, and made possible with the support of the Tchoban Foundation.
Download the information related to this event here.
Title
Treasury, Legacy: A Museum for Architectural DrawingWebsite
Organizers
From
August 17, 2015 12:00 AMUntil
September 25, 2015 12:00 AMVenue
Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and PlanningAddress
129 Sibley Dome, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853