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1824-30

Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Altes Museum Berlin

1997.08.05
architectural promenade
A good portion of the architectural promenade formula can also be found in the entry sequence of Schinkel's Altes Museum. The facade/colonnade is the forest, and again the pilotis holding up the box. The dark portal under the stairs is the journey into hell. The ascension of the stairs is the inside/outside experience of purgatory, the middle level. And the museum's central pantheon is paradise, heaven, and the solarium. This interpretation of the Altes Museum, furthermore, sheds new light on Stirling's Düsseldorf and Stuttgart museums.

13092701 Pantheon Altes Museum Danteum Museum for Nordrhein Westfalen Neue Staatsgalerie promenade architecturale plans 2120ci01

detail of the Ichnographia Campus Martius
top right: monuments to Julius Caesar and Augustus in the Area Martis
bottom left: round rooms within the Horti Agrippinae

1997.08.06
Schinkel/Campo Marzio connection 9020e
I just noticed, yesterday, a similarity between the plans of the monuments to Julius Caesar and Augustus in the Area Martis and one of the monuments to Friedrich the Great by Schinkel . Moreover, there is also a similarity between the round rooms within the Horti Agrippinae and the lower level of the rotunda of the Altes Museum . These similarities make me curious as to whether Schinkel was inspired and/or influenced by the Piranesi plan diagrams. Schinkel did spend time in Rome, and there is also the link to Piranesi via Durand.
In any case, it is an interesting coincidence, and whether or not Schinkel actually noticed the plans in the Ichnograpia of the Campo Marzio may not be all that important because regardless of the actual historical truth, the fact that I am now making the connection is now part of history and a comment on the fluidity of architectural history.

98081202 perspectives

The mural formerly on the left wall of the Altes Museum porch.

The mural formerly on the right wall of the Altes Museum porch.

1997.12.23
[hyper]murals @ the Altes Museum
I have decided to design my own mural for the porch at the Altes Museum. This will reenact the original and now destroyed mural. I could also incorporate murals into the upper balcony area.

Stephen Lauf, Hypermural for the Altes Museum (Berlin: www.quondam.com, 1998.08.23), partial view of front elevation.

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