London museum to honor David Chipperfield in first UK retrospective

Form Matters, opening on October 21 at the London Design Museum, will take a new look at architect David Chipperfield's work including his ten-year restoration project of the Neues Museum in Berlin.

"The project is like nothing previously undertaken in its attitude to history, and its attempt to make something new out of the old has succeeded in producing a landmark building, not only for Berlin but for museum architecture as a whole," the organizers wrote in an email. The Neues Museum in Berlin, which had been significantly bombed in World War II, reopened on October 16.

David Chipperfield's buildings, which they describe as combining a "variety of materials to create beauty and meaning with appealing clarity. Chipperfield's buildings that subtly inspire without spectacle or fanfare," also include the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany, winner of the RIBA award in 2007.

Chipperfield worked for well-known UK architects Norman Foster and Richard Rogers before setting up his own practice in 1984, which today has offices in London, Berlin, Milan and Shanghai. He is currently working on the Turner Contemporary in Margate, England; the New Entrance Building for the Museum Island in Berlin; the extension to the San Michele Cemetery island in Venice, Italy; and the expansion of the Saint Louis Art Museum in the US state of Missouri among others.

The museum plans to give a comprehensive view on Chipperfield's body of work using new and archive models, sketches, drawings, photographs and film.

Form Matters runs through January 31. Tickets cost £8,50 (€9,90).

Site: www.designmuseum.org