Jonathan Morrison
David Chipperfield, the Brit who took on the Nazis and won
He helped Germany to absorb its past. Now he’s got the Royal Academy ready for its future
Subsidence. Dry rot. Rodents. Roofs and rainwater. Councils and committees. The Prince of Wales, even. But almost never Nazis. There are many issues an architect may encounter while trying to renovate an important historic building, but Nazis are rarely one of them.
Yet Nazis seem to dog Sir David Chipperfield: he has probably had to deal with the Third Reich and its taint more than any other architect working today.
Last month there were protests outside one of the latest schemes he is involved in: an old Hamburg housing complex that is being turned into shops, restaurants and a hotel. So far, so run-of-the-mill gentrification, but part of the Stadhöfe was also the local headquarters of the Gestapo, which tortured dissidents in the basement.
Before that it was the Haus der Kunst in Munich that drew opprobrium: commissioned by Adolf Hitler to exhibit “Germanic” art, the museum still features a swastika inside its portico and has been carefully hidden by trees since the war. And before that it was the Neues Museum in the heart of Berlin, where opponents of his radical redesign held candlelit vigils.
In Munich in particular, Chipperfield was accused of glorifying Nazi architecture with a relatively simple plan to open up the building and pare back the foliage. But rather than taking offence, the British architect — who dresses in the standard modernist’s uniform of dark polo neck and thick-rimmed specs, but also incongruously sports an enormous gold Rolex — is unperturbed by the suggestion. He is keen on dialogue, even with the most incensed opponents.
“It wasn’t my decision to save the Haus der Kunst,” he says. “It got through the war untouched and for many years it has been a museum.
“My provocation was thinking how it sits in the city. We asked the citizens, ‘Do you forgive this building? Do you still want to punish it, and how do we punish it? Do you still want the trees planted in front of it because you are embarrassed or is it time to take the trees down?’
“Like all things in Germany, it was a well-articulated discussion. They have a society that is very self-reflective — they turn over issues more than anybody. An architect has to know how to listen.”
It was familiar territory for the architect, who is still better known in Germany than his native land, if only because of the Neues Museum. Turning a bomb-blasted neoclassical wreck into one of the finest cultural institutions on the planet fixed him in architecture’s upper firmament for good. However, the project was initially greeted with widespread hostility.
After nearly 12 years of work and about 300 critical newspaper articles, the museum reopened to comprehensive acclaim in 2009. Once-sceptical Berliners queued for three hours to get an early peek. A knighthood and the Royal Gold Medal awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects soon followed.
Nonetheless, Chipperfield was subsequently introduced to David Cameron at a dinner — by the German chancellor Angela Merkel — as one of “Germany’s most famous architects”.
Merkel could perhaps have been forgiven her mistake: at that point, he had built little in Britain. There was an understated rowing museum in Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire that had been praised by Prince Charles — Chipperfield called his remarks “professionally, the kiss of death” — and little else. After the Neues, that would begin to change: the Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire opened in 2011 and the Turner Contemporary in Margate, Kent, was finished the same year. His “series of interventions” at the venerable Royal Academy in London will be revealed in May.
Does Chipperfield mind that he’s more famous in Germany than in the UK? “It’s too late to worry about it,” he replies with a wry smile that belies his habitual hangdog expression.
Born in London in 1953, he grew up in Devon, where his father had bought a farm, and was educated at Wellington School in Somerset, where he split his time between the art department and the playing fields. He progressed to the Architectural Association in London and, after working for Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, he set up on his own and initially struggled. “It was the 1970s,” he says, “and architecture was on its knees.”
He got his big break when Issey Miyake, the Japanese designer, commissioned him to create a store on Sloane Street in London. More work in Japan then arrived, confirming his faith in a style that he is happy to have labelled as “understated modernism”. And projects in Germany — which included the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, for which he won the Stirling prize, and an office in Dusseldorf — soon followed.
Designs for the Royal Academy’s 250th anniversary revamp (DAVID CHIPPERFIELD ARCHITECTS)
Today Chipperfield divides his time between homes in Portland Place in London, Berlin and Galicia, which he shares with his Argentine second wife, Evelyn Stern (he has four adult children). He still leads a peripatetic existence. While that suits him fine, however — “I’ve cobbled my career together that way” — he worries that the next generation of British architects will have to do the same.
“They still have to duck and dive. It’s different in the EU — there’s enough public work that, if you’re reasonably good, you can build yourself up. Here you’re not protected, you have to underbid. The young will do projects for almost nothing as they don’t want to lose out. In Switzerland the same projects would make a nice fee and allow them to take on a secretary.”
Do we owe architects a living, then, to his mind? “We owe them a profession, like nurses or policemen,” Chipperfield quickly counters. “In Germany employees have incredible protection and I would have said that was terrible when I first started out — it was easier to get a divorce than fire someone. Years later it makes sense. In return you get loyalty, ownership, responsibility.”
His largest office remains in Berlin — with more than 100 staff — but London, with 80, comes a close second. There are also subsidiaries in Milan and Shanghai, and Chipperfield has built a judicial complex in Barcelona, museums in Anchorage, in Alaska, and Mexico City, apartments in China and a skyscraper in New York. He has recently revealed plans for an unusual tower in Hamburg and won the competition to restore the 16th-century Italian Procuratie Vecchie — which forms one side of St Mark’s Square in Venice — in October. “By now I have a reputation for being able to deal with history,” he explains.
Equally prestigious, but again controversial, is his design for the Nobel Centre in Stockholm, which was criticised by the king of Sweden. “The king was concerned by a big modern building going where we wanted to put a big modern building. It’s a prominent site.”
He speaks softly and deliberately; you can well imagine him soothing an angry audience, royal or not. However, he did agree to make changes to the brass-clad block, which will give the prize a permanent home for the first time.
“We always modify our approach in some way, even when we’re pretty confident about what we’re doing. We ask ourselves, ‘Are we sure about this? Is this right?’ ”
Chipperfield blames the media for some of it; the emphasis on protests rather than progress. “It’s not a story when things go well,” he says. “I don’t see opposition as controversy — it’s just the stuff of planning. Still, we always grumble that people aren’t interested in architecture, then say that they’re too interested.”
He may not welcome the media, but the architect is keen on public involvement, especially of the type he is used to in Germany: articulate, open-minded. “There’s something wrong when the only thing people can do is complain,” he says. “Architecture is everyone’s responsibility.”
He took Prince Charles around the Neues Museum and, surprisingly, agrees with his assessment of the profession. “He stuck his head up and said the state of modern architecture was very poor in the mid-Eighties. He was right. What to do about it is another question — he didn’t have answers.”
For his part, Chipperfield would like to see a degree of engagement with society. He accepts that the designs of the 1960s and 1970s — the idealism and naïvety that led to bad housing, bad traffic management and the rest — cost the profession the public’s trust. Yet free-market economics haven’t been much better. “The British think the market tells you everything,” he says. “I’m not sure that’s true.”
We’re sitting in his spartan office by Waterloo, high up a 1970s tower of the sort that ruins reputations. He looks around him at a skyline dominated by cranes. “Can we extract a good city out of this incredible amount of construction? I’m not sure. When I started off I thought planners were the enemy — now I think cities need positive, energetic planning that considers what’s good for the citizens. Instead, we’ve turned into Doha or Singapore.
“And most architects believe that they should contribute to the common good too, but don’t know how to engage. There’s a lot of conviction and talent in the profession, but more and more I’m concerned what it all adds up to. We seem to have lost the sense of a larger idea. The private sector doesn’t do collective vision, so we have to. We’re not sociologists, but we’re not just stair designers either. There’s a balance.”
Has he struck that balance? “Of course. Seemlessly!” The pale blue eyes flicker with amusement.
Doing the right thing is clearly important to Chipperfield. He took on the Procuratie Vecchie because its owner, the insurance company Generali, was also “trying to contribute to the common good”. “Right” is also the term he uses to describe his approach to a project that is arguably even more distinguished — the transformation of the Royal Academy in London.
Founded in 1768 by, among others, Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, the academy had gradually taken over two buildings — Burlington House on Piccadilly and 6 Burlington Gardens behind. Chipperfield was commissioned to knit the two parts of the institution into a coherent whole in time for the academy’s 250th anniversary. That was no easy matter, with floors at different levels and diverse axes creating a maze of corridors, but the successful completion of the project may finally do for Chipperfield’s reputation in the UK what the Neues did for him in Germany. The stars of the show will be a beautifully refurbished lecture theatre, lit by clerestory windows, and a contemporary bridge forming a new thoroughfare, but more importantly, the £56 million scheme will also double the amount of gallery space for exhibitions.
So far, there are no howls of protest. Does he worry that he’s missing a key ingredient — the controversy?
“We’re just knocking a hole in the wall,” he jokes. “It’s more to do with doing the right thing than a big thing. That’s really what architecture should be about.”
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