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The Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar, Germany, designed by David Chipperfield Architects has won the 12th RIBA Stirling Prize in association with The Architects' Journal. The presentation of the UK's premier architectural award took place at a glittering award ceremony this evening (Saturday 6 October) at the Roundhouse, London and was televised live on Channel 4 at 9pm.

This is the first time a building designed by David Chipperfield Architects has won the prize.

The judges commented:
"Following re-unification, texts of various well-known German authors which had previously been dispersed to east and west have now been brought together in this new museum. In a suitably commemorative manner the building forms a small Acropolis attached to the National Schiller Museum on a ridge overlooking the valley of the River Neckar. The entrance sequence is brilliant. The visitor crosses an open terrace overlooking the valley, negotiates a series of shallow steps to enter the generous portal formed in the colonnade, and then enters through giant hardwood doors. A staircase descends to the collections with their required diminishing lighting levels. It is at this moment of descent that the building shows its pedigree – a sense of a progression to somewhere beyond, combined with a rich but selective palette of materials and illuminated with subdued top lighting. The route concludes in the permanent collection. Here glass cases containing original manuscripts form a magical flickering landscape. There is a particular theatricality about this space, as though the reflections, refractions and multiple shadows from the small intense lights collectively represent the soul of the German imagination.

"This is a building that is simultaneously rich and restrained, a trick Chipperfield pulls off as well as any architect working today. The architect's control and discrimination in the choice of materials has by now become a signature but above all it is in the handling of the 'difficult whole' that the building excels.

"This is a remarkably low-cost building in a high-cost country at just £2180 per square metre. The architects have made a merit of the need for economies. You can see that every penny spent has been carefully considered but that the right way to do things has always been chosen over the cheapest.

"Since the end of the war Germany has been sensitive to matters concerning the neo-classical in architecture. Had it been submitted a decade or two earlier it would surely have been eliminated for its formal manner. It is encouraging that with time, more even handed attitudes have prevailed."

Architect:David Chipperfield Architects
Client:Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
Site supervision: Wenzel + Wenzel
Project management:Drees + Sommer
Structural engineer: Ingenieurgruppe Bauen
Services engineer: Jaeger, Mornhinweg + Partner; Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH; Burrer + Deuring Ingenieurbüro
Contract Value: 11.8m euro
Date of completion: June 2006
Gross internal area: 3,800 sq m

eye lo descubrió en octubre de 2008

listas: EUROPA_alemania , arquitectura-ingeniería , contemplar , cultura museos arte

etiquetas: david chipperfield , museo , riba