The new museum at the Kulturforum is in close proximity to major icons of German 20th-century architecture – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie, and Hans Scharoun’s Philharmonie and State Library, and in the vicinity of other architectural monuments. This required a particularly careful urban planning and architectural approach.

CMK’s competition entry for the Museum of the 20th Century created a porous, low-threshold building opened up to the public realm as a new destination and location for the Neue Nationalgalerie collection, so far only exhibited publicly in parts. This new building, which included 10,000m² of exhibition spaces, visitor service, archive in a gross floor area of 27.000m², connects the existing open spaces to one another. These are reinterpreted through the structure and bring a continuation of the surrounding urban landscape into the building.

The pierced structure created a loose, three-dimensional spatial flow, with long visual connections between floors and areas in a range of different spatial sequences. Central to the design is an urban foyer, open on all sides around which art gallery for temporary exhibitions, the event area, the restaurant and the café in the inner courtyard, the visitor centre are located. In addition to designated rooms for the collection and the art library, museum education and administration spaces were located on the upper floor. Public and private terraces offer views of the neighbouring monuments. In the basement, a wide internal street led to the exhibition rooms of the pre- and post-1945 collections. In the future these could be directly connected to the Nationalgalerie, enabling a chronological tour.