The urban strategy implemented is based on the existing condition of the Kulturforum as ‘Urban Landscape’, as conceived by Hans Scharoun. The project seeks to reconcile two opposed intentions, that of the autonomous object and the relational object. Thus, while assuming the status of an isolated element, like the other buildings in the forum, the new museum is placed contextually: the empty space around its perimeter constructs a delineated and therefore identifiable series of space, in front of the church and the Neue Nationalgalerie and according to a traffic corridor from New Berlin State Library to Herbert-von-Karajan Strasse.

In this sense, the placement of the built volumes minimises the domination of the public space, respecting a certain density of constructions, which preserves strong visual relations between the existing buildings, and certain current visual breaks and perspectives between the structures of the Kulturforum.

The exhibition has become the favoured means of bringing people into contact with artworks. The history of art in the twentieth century saw the emergence of a wide range of places and settings in which artworks were produced and exhibited: the private salon, the museum, the ‘white cube’, and outdoor institutions with land art and the multiple forms of conceptual art. The great formal and conceptual liberty that prevailed in twentieth-century artistic creation means the spaces in the new museum must be flexible.

The indoor spaces of the project are developed as an index of different types of exhibition spaces and open, transitory areas. There is a combination of small spaces and monumental ones, places for intimate conversation and spaces for large public events, timeless spaces and others geared towards experimentation, suited to the new museum’s dual role of mausoleum and laboratory.