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Berlin’s renowned architecture firm, Kahlfeldt, will build the new Schauhallen complex. Their brilliant draft – which won the competition organized by the Senate of Berlin – sets a high standard concerning the creative handling of the historical industrial architecture.
The existing halls will be wrapped in a new facade and united into a new building complex.
The individual objects will remain independent and will be joined to one another through an added structure of steel and enamelled tin.
 The unique exhibition areas will be created over a space of 15,000 square metres. (Click to enlarge.)
The existing structure determines the character of the space as well as the premises. It remains untouched and authentically preserved in effect and appearance.
The architectural concept of the project takes care to avoid modifications based on mere fashionable or trendy inclinations, thus preventing disfigurement through change.
The new facade will fulfil, in a simple and cost-effective way, all constructional requirements related to thermal protection, air-conditioning and light setting. Thus, the existing halls, especially the attractive Reinbeckhallen, can be extensively preserved with their original substance.
As a result, a unique building will comes into existence, allowing the visitor to get a vivid experience in the area of tension between a highly modern outer appearance and de facto preserved industrial architecture of the 20th century.
Within the halls, the floor plan of the rooms will be created by mobile wall systems, specially conceived for this undertaking, which will be moved on crane rails. In this way the rooms can be partitioned with the greatest possible flexibility.
With every exhibition opening, the visitor will, therefore, not only see new art, but also have a new spatial experience.Along the crane rail track, a motto wall as well as a new tower in the Spree will symbolically link the new building with the urban context.
"The
Berlin exhibition halls are a place much like Berlin itself: a
heterogeneous mix, which have grown together from various elements of
varying quality and from a variety of eras. Lively, confident,
creative, urban. As an energetic workshop for contemporary art, Berlin
needs just such centres of development, that open up new (art) spaces
in which artistic potential can unfold. We believe that the
Oberschöneweide district, because of its indeterminate nature, is an
ideal location for such art areas. Our architectural intervention,
symbolised on the outside by a façade banner in bright orange, binds
the four halls together into one whole, into a new structure that lends
fresh lustre to what was an unspectacular waterside location.” Petra and Paul Kahlfeldt
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 The 2006 edition of the Werkbund catalogue names the Schauhallen as one of the three most important works of architecture in Berlin. The project is both pioneering and exemplary of Berlin’s broad spectrum of activities as a scientific, cultural, and services metropolis. Source: Projekte für Berlin, Jovis Verlag.
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