Aconference by David Chipperfield was given as part of Architects Speak with Kalebodur at Istanbul Convention Center on the evening of Tuesday, February 24, 2015. It appeared as if expectations were not met after the event which drew the attention of a rather large gathering of architects; perhaps because there was no post conference cocktail party and that the architect’s pace of speech was quite slow. However, for me, it was inspiring, startling and educational to be able to hear David Chipperfield’s approach to architecture in his own words…
Just before the conference, Celal Abdi Güzel, who noted that Chipperfield philosophized architecture, gave an opening address.
As he said that his presence in Istanbul moved him towards thinking about context, Chipperfield added that his speech would be focused on the relationship between architecture and the city. He stated that these relations in recent periods developed on project/development and conservation/urban survival; according to the good architect, these relations directly involve the morphology of cities.
Chipperfield, adding that cities did not rely on just a few buildings that have become symbols, announced that the quality of cities was endangered because of developments and projects. Underscoring that what cities should look like has been forgotten, Chipperfield defined the city as the product of the relationship between the world and the individual. Remarking that the place of the individual is set by the discipline of architecture in this complex world, Chipperfield added that the individual is in a city to work and to live and therefore, projects were realized as a natural return of this process.
Chipperfield, who showed the view of his office in London to the audience, assessed the city on that silhouette. He said that an urban situation arose during the union of urban space and civil architecture which was dependent on architecture. He gave as an example a typical “square” in London.
ssessing the personalized/adapted urban spaces over Naples which has an organic dimension for building a city, Chipperfield categorized the cities built by autocracy, taking also in account informal cities, into two:
• City as the product of architecture,
• City as the product of the human being.
Young Man at His Window, Gustave Caillebotte (1875)
He explained that for some, the silhouette of Doha embellished by the products of architecture may qualify as an element of admiration but that there was no trace of collective awareness any more on the roads of the city. Chipperfield noted that we are at a phase far removed from the old definition of the city, which was created by the relationships between the objects it embodies.
Chipperfield emphasized that these objects/masses were meaningless. He questioned what the relationship with architecture of the city was with objects not much different from statues, asking what the meaning of architecture was. The architect’s response to these questions, although it may seem to be a utopian approach for some, was very simple; as architects, we will either surrender or fight against this process. Developing his professional practice based on the second option which he calls a small probability, Chipperfield pointed out that the main subject was the economic concept of development projects and finding the most efficient power…
Chipperfield, who conveyed his thoughts on the city and architecture in the remaining part of his address through buildings he designed in Berlin, said that he specifically chose that city to make sense of the destruction experienced in the last sixty years.
Stating that monumental buildings and architecture of 2nd and 3rd order significance should be conserved, David Chipperfield lamented that social diversity could not be conserved in cities…
The architect, who noted that Berlin continuously defined itself through renovation, mentioned that there was a complex context in the city because of the history it was the stage of. Chipperfield, who likened his architecture to a play between the old and the new because of all these reasons, explained that he was nurtured by the energy these two concepts added to each other. Pointing out that his projects, which can be said to ensure historical continuity, reflected the values added by each generation; Chipperfield said that they created a new building out of the original one at Forum Museumsinsel.
Stating that they took on the responsibility of urban incompletion in the AmKupfergraben 10 project, which involves a corner lot nearing existing buildings which serves as a gallery, Chipperfield remarked that the architecture of the building regained its identity both with its interior and exterior.
The architect, who drafted a master plan for Berlin’s famous Museums Island (Museumsinsel); when introduction of a new building to the area was required, believed that this should be combined with an infrastructure project. Explaining that they researched how a new building should be designed in a historic and therefore, sensitive environment, the architect created the solution, making use of local qualities, allowing a design which would be an annex in conformity with the context to be created.
NeuesMuseum, which perhaps is the best known project of David Chipperfield, is at the same location; most parts of the building were ruined with the impact of bombs, fires, weather conditions and time. There were ornate walls in its state before World War II because the museum did not actually have a large enough collection.
Inheriting a site of ruins, Chipperfield disclosed that he answered the debates on conservation, which were going on since the war by creating a new architecture. The main idea underlying the accomplishments of David Chipperfield and for me, the approach describing his architecture best is that the architect, just like archaeologists, has filled between the parts remaining from the old with the new during renovation. Hence, a museum, conserving both the figure and also spatial lineup to which a brand new architecture was added, has emerged.
David Chipperfield noted that they created a harmony keeping together the old and the new with a design preserving the soul of the building, the construction of which was ground for major debates…
