THE DESIGN OF THE EXHIBITION

Exhibitions are to architecture what the short term is to the long term. As "temporary museums," their duration is limited. It is not the architectural elements that survive but the brief contemplation of what they contain. Because they narrate two-dimensional and three-dimensional histories (and stories), the most important thing is that they be readable. Surface areas, bodies, and space thereby become determining factors of the design.

Unlike other specific thematic types of exhibitions, a historical exhibition has a vast array of material to interrelate; it pieces together the mosaic of an epoch by using many different techniques, scales, and subject matters. The present exhibition runs the gamut of dimensions, from Bismarck's pencil to a colossal painting 15 feet high and 24.5 feet wide. The more heterogeneous the objects, the more subdued the design's effect should be. It becomes the background technique into which everything is woven. The diversity of the materials on display thereby makes it necessary to economize on the actual steps that the observer is intended to apprehend consciously. It leads to a parallel reading of the images and objects, which coalesce into comprehension. Rhythms and pauses underline thematic closure yet simultaneously emphasize thematic transitions.

The design of the Bismarck exhibition is based on the principle of stripping away, or immaterializing, the ornamental language of the nineteenth century. It purposely refrains from a theatrical presentation of the objects. Instead, the attempt has been made to arrange them in a way that condenses their message and enhances their intelligibility by making the outlines of the historical record "clear." Where the exhibited objects are able to communicate on their own, their message, their effect in space, needs no further treatment.

There is far more heterogeneous material than can be accommodated by the wall space of the rooms in which the individual topics are treated. The architecture of the exhibition must therefore create surface area. Using a labyrinth to do so would communicate the confusion of things but would contradict the principle of order. After all, the aim is also to enable the visitor to see the whole at a glance. To manage the great variety of material in the exhibition, screens have been used. They have the advantage not only of grouping objects but also of illuminating their significance for the themes handled in the various rooms. At the same time, the dynamic narrative aspect of the screens should not become forced and boring. It is therefore discontinuous. The alternation between screen and wall is determined by the individual room itself and the dramatics of the narrative. An additional way to structure and condense the topics is to distinguish between monochrome and polychrome presentation. Employed as a principle of organization, color counteracts this "colorful kaleidoscope" of the representational by means of polychromy.

The discontinuities - changes of screens or coloring in the room - determine the rhythms of perception. They affect the attention level of the visitors, alerting them to the information being conveyed. Enlargements of passages handwritten by Bismarck himself draw attention to the biographical segments dedicated to him.

The inner courtyard enclosed by the theme rooms can function as a synthesis in this large presentation, as an "exhibition within the exhibition," and can unite leitmotifs elaborated upon and reiterated in the rooms. The synopsis of leitmotifs prepares the mood and serves as a prelude. The immense dimensions of nineteenth-century historical painting require space, distance, and clear lines of sight. Connecting passageways are set in relation to each other by breaking up their empty space, while their height can be exploited by a ramp leading to the gallery on the upper floor. Like a film chronology, this shift of levels affords many different perspectives to emphasize the parallel ways of perceiving the various kinds of pictorial information that meet the eye. Taking the visitor along a ritualized path before a row of busts, the ramp thereby offers a new technique for viewing the material. In the final room, the ramp reifies the "legend" that Bismarck became in his own lifetime as a national cult figure. It takes the visitor through the stations of the monuments erected to him. This change of levels makes the message easier to understand without having to resort to any additional technique and at the same time neutralizes the heroic element by penetrating it optically.

The exterior design at the north and south entrances to the Martin-Gropius-Bau is not intended as a billboard. It refers to the subject matter that the exhibition treats in historical context. Thirty-nine steel cables span the building, giving it the function of a reflector that concentrates the rays, so to speak. They represent the individual German states that were combined in the German Confederation and led down the German path to nationhood. As physical, but immaterial, elements of significance, they link the exterior of the building with the themes of the interior rooms by pervading the inner courtyard. At the main entrance, the torso of a monument to Bismarck by Reinhold Begas directs the line of sight to the exhibition. As the focus of this reflector, the figure draws the eye from the outside to the illumination of its historicity on the inside. In conjunction with the title, the rastered eye at the threshold of the entrance invites the visitor to come to grips with the highly dramatic subject matter in the Martin-Gropius-Bau.

Boris Podrecca