David Chipperfield - Form Matters
21 October 2009 – 31 January 2010

One of the most important architects working today, David Chipperfield produces subtle and sophisticated buildings with an acute sensitivity for materials and a powerful awareness of their environment. This major exhibition celebrates his work for the first time in the UK and spans his entire career to date, including such acclaimed projects as the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, and the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany, winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize for Architecture 2007. The exhibition also illustrates important public commissions including the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin, and The Hepworth Wakefield gallery.

This detailed survey examines a range of projects through new and archive models, sketches, drawings, photographs and film. A major component of the exhibition focuses on Chipperfield’s most complex project to date, the ten year reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin, which was bombed during the Second World War and subjected to decades of neglect. 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.

As David Chipperfield’s practice has grown and matured, he has developed his own distinctive voice. His buildings often combine a variety of materials to create beauty and meaning with appealing clarity. Buildings that subtly inspire without spectacle or fanfare.