KARL FRIEDRICH

SCHINKEL
 INTRODUCTION
• A Prussian architect, city planner, and
painter who also designed furniture and
stage sets. Schinkel was one of the most
prominent architects of Germany and
designed both neoclassical and neogothic
buildings.
• After death of his father he became a
student of an architect Friedrich Gilly.
• After Napoleon's defeat, Schinkel oversaw
the Prussian Building Commission and he
was responsible for reshaping his city.
• Schinkel's style focused on only Greek
Architecture, an attempt to turn away from
the style that was linked to the recent
French occupiers.
 What is Neoclassical
architecture?
• Produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th
century. An architecture of Classical Greece and Rome, the
architecture of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio.
• The buildings are elaborate, symmetrical, imposing, and timeless
works.
• Symmetry and balance are the most predominant characteristic of
neoclassicism.
• One identifiable element in many neoclassical buildings is the use of
columns. On the exterior, columns are an obvious and effective
method to ensure proportion in a building.
• Neoclassical buildings are the most ostentatious, ubiquitous, and
timeless style.
• Ex: Piazza of St. Peter's, by Bernini ,Prado Museum in Madrid.
 ALTES MUSEUM

• Built between 1823-1830.

• The museum employs the Ionic order to face of the
building, which is the only part of the exterior with any
visual sign of the Orders; the other three remaining
facades are of brick and stone banding.
• The exhibition rooms of the museum are grouped around
two inner courtyards; the center of the building is the
two-story , skylight rotunda, which is surrounded by a
gallery supported by twenty Corinthian columns. Skylight rotunda
•  The ground floor housed art from the ancient world,
while the second floor contained paintings, organized by
period and style.  
•  A portion of the museum's statue collection is displayed between the
rotunda's twenty columns.
•  The ground floor’s center is rotunda, a direct reference to the Pantheon as
well as the Museo Pio Clementino.  Equally difficult to ignore is Schinkel’s
own writing on the matter in an essay on “religious buildings” he states that
“art itself is religion [and] the religious is eternally accessible to art.  The
religious building alone … can be the point of departure the entire definition
of an architecture.”
•  From behind the entrance lobby rises a two-winged, grand stairway, which
is at once inside and outside, enclosed only with columns. Schinkel
illustrated his idea of the purpose of the building with decorative figures on
the walls of the stairway: it should provide material for direct observation
and instruction (illustrated by a father and son) but also be able to
encourage further thought and discussion.
• The Creator's Words
• "our mind is not free if it is not the master of its imagination; the freedom of the mind is
manifest in every victory over self, every resistance to external enticements, every elimination
of an obstacle to this goal. every moment of freedom is blessed."
• "...the site required a very monumental building. therefore i preferred one giant order rather
than two individual expressions for the two main stories....the building surrounded on all sides
by the ionic entablature or the ionic columnar hall, with ionic pilasters at the four corners, forms
a simple yet grand main structure into which the two floors are inserted in a subordinate
manner."
• — Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
 KONZERTHAUS BERLIN

• The Konzerthaus Berlin is a concert hall

situated on the Gendarmenmarkt square in
the central Mitte district of Berlin housing the
German orchestra Konzerthausorchester
Berlin.
• Built between 1818 and 1821, reconstructed
in great detail between 1979 and 1984
following its destruction in the war.
• Schinkel had the brilliant idea to divide the
structure into three parts with a higher and
wider central structure. With the help of the
staircase, the portico and the gabled,
ornamental crowning of the central building,
he created a steeply rising decorative facade.
The central section housed the large theater
hall.
 Small concert hall
Rehearsal hall

Theatre

The central section housed the large theater

hall, the north wing contained the rehearsal
halls, wardrobe and storage rooms and the
smaller concert hall was located in the south
wing.
Two staircases connected the three phases of
the building.
• Schinkel transformed the walls of the two main floors into a fully new,
almost modern-era like system by making them geometrical. The two-
story pilasters in the corners, together with the crown molding and
beams, frame the large wall surfaces which are accented by the one-
story pilasters and encompassing seams. The in-set windows and fill
walls are located between them.
• Ornamental figures: winged horse and Eros, Pegasus, snakes and swans.
• The Niobe group on the portico represents tragedy, the triumph of
Bacchus and Ariadne on the north gable represent comedy while
Eurydikes' liberation from the underworld by Orpheus at the south
gable represents music. The crests of the staircase were also
ornamented with cherubs playing music atop a lion and a panther in
1851.
• The large, rectangular performance hall measures 45m by 22m and is
17.5m high. The ground level and the additional tiers can seat some
1,500.
• The north wing is accented with Corinthian columns and olive green
walls, the brightly-lit Ludwig van Beethoven Saal in the south wing is
marked by two rows of ionic columns. Both halls have their own
additional rooms for buffet.
THANK YOU