Hans Scharoun Berlin Philharmonic: Reflections on context/time and form/performance

Hans Scharoun’s Berlin Philharmonic is a project greatly affected by context both physical and historical. The project is a smaller campus than that offered by Piano’s Parco della Musica in Rome, but it is none the less an important one. The Philharmonic was originally designed in the 1960s to replace the hall destroyed in WWII, its the site near the Postdamerplatz a second choice to the original in Wilmersdorf. When Scharoun won the design competition for the Philharmonic his central stage and organic form strategy were considered revolutionary even in the New Objectivity school of thought. Its existence does not go unnoticed and its effects have been the result of both its physical presence and programmatic success, a combination of time based events as well as intentional and unplanned contextual development; this is a classic question in form v. function.

CONTEXT/TIME:

Stan Allen talks about context as the old and new coexisting “in disjunctive proximity,” a statement that seems true of any city trying to build upon its physical and chronological past. The Berlin Philharmonic is no exception and is a successful project because it both derives from context and adds to it. But how intentional are these relationships? The form of the hall is not directly tied to the physical formalities of its surroundings, but Scharoun was able to defend (or maybe inspire?) the radically unorthodox form by tying it to the undeniable presence of the Tiergarten adjacent to the site. We could say that without the particular territorial conditions the hall would have turned out otherwise, were it not for the fact that Scharoun had originally designed the hall for a completely different neighborhood and only slightly adjusted it to fit the new site. However, the hall had an important role to play for the development of the area – the site chosen by the Senate in 1959 was to be a new cultural center for the postwar city, one that was meant to be more accessible to the growing population. The building of the Berlin Wall foiled these intentions shortly after the Philharmonic was completed in 1963, turning the new ‘center’ into an isolated area.

It’s difficult to define context as timely and geographic locations without talking about both. The arrival of the Wall in Berlin is definitely about both in an inseparable way. Time is a particularly prickly design factor because it is completely unpredictable and only useful as a reference (once it’s too late to do anything but learn from it). That Allen and Hays regard it then as a montage is accurate – time as context can be regarded as the build up of events and occurrences the same way physical context is. In Berlin it scarred the landscape it physically took up (as a guarded void ironically enough) and in the buildings that were torn down to build it, and not as if the Wall came in overnight. I mentioned before it also had effects in the intentional development plans for the city and was a victim of bad timing; however, after the wall was torn down plans were executed for the expansion of the Kulturplatz, and the Hall’s influence is highly evident in them.

PERFORMANCE/FORM:

If we regard time and location as a montage situation, then we can talk about cause and effects of Scharoun’s Philharmonic more objectively. This project lays particular importance on the intertwining of form and function because it breaks from the traditional form in order to improve and deliberately experiment with function.

“Form is an instigator of performances and responses, a frame that suggests rather than fixes, that maps or diagrams possibilities that will be realized only partially at any one time.”

This quote from Hayes captures some of the ideas that makes Scharoun’s vision come to fruition, as is evident in his process. He let the function of the project dictate hierarchy and worked from the inside out; stage to seating to reception to exterior, hence the exterior of the project is a definite result of the function inside, bearing in mind that the designer had a vision in mind to execute. To say that this characteristic of the project is perfectly executed is a gross exaggeration, since the resulting forms (inside and out) have been modified and are not purely in existence for the sake of performance. But the Hall’s eccentric form is validated by the success of its function. I think this is the message we can take away from the project and the relentless commitment of Scharoun’s vision and execution.

I asked Dany Izquierdo about this, and whether he believed it was the program of a building that had an impact on surroundings (physical, phenomenological, social, etc.) or the physical presence – or if the two could even be divided if one is so reliant on the other:

I think the program of a building can have as much of an impact on a society and its context as its exterior presence. The exterior reacts to the forces within the city and the people that live around it. The exterior presence is what is experienced by pedestrians, transportation, and any other spectator of the built architecture, but the program of a building also contributes to these things unconsciously. The Pompidou Center has been a building visited by millions of people since its opening and its success within the city can be contributed to its mixtures of program and bold architectural presence. Years later, the Pompidou Center attracts hundreds of thousands of people, not only because of its bold presence within the Parisian datum, but because of its appeal to a diversity of people thanks to its programmatic triumph.

I think the point he makes about the undeniable presence of the exterior of buildings as being the main experiential component for society is an important one that I often personally forget or feel could become radical if ignored – imagine a world where only the interior mattered? What then is the purpose of space making if all the opportunities afforded us are not used?