KSP Engel und Zimmermann
Since 1949, the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government (BPA) has had the task of collecting the documents of opinion makers and making them available to the public. The BPA, with its current staff of around 600, has moved from Bonn directly to the Friedrichstrasse station in Berlin-Mitte. The designated area for the Press and Information Office was the block between Dorotheenstraße, Reichstagsufer and Neustädtischer Kirchstraße, which was partly destroyed during the war. The heterogeneous building with a total of 43,000 sqm and approx. 700 rooms, which has been used for the press and information office since the middle of the 19th century, was built on the same site. In addition to the offices for the staff, the press and visitor centre with a capacity of 800 people, a cafeteria and kitchen, a library and archive with more than 2,500 periodicals, eight million newspaper clippings and over 1.5 million photographs as well as the 'Briefing Room', in which the Federal Chancellor discusses his programme with the accompanying journalists before going abroad, were to be built. The architects KSP Engel und Zimmermann with their offices in Berlin, Braunschweig, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich came up with a solution to this problem, winning the 1995 European competition. The large number of old buildings, which account for almost 85 percent of the complex, made it necessary to deal with questions and problems relating to the topic of 'building within the existing building stock' and to reassess whether each component should be supplemented, reconstructed or given a contemporary interpretation. The architects made the historical stock visible and supplemented it with a new layer, whose architecture stands out from the existing in its independence.
The exhibition in the Architecture Gallery Aedes follows the three-part title: complement, transform and renew. In addition to the clear focus of the Federal Press Office, the exhibition is enriched by further evidence of this approach to thinking and working by architects.
