The Berlin Philharmonic, between the roof and the cover

Abstract

Hans Scharoun Berlin Philharmonic is examinated from two photographs taken fifty years away. Both of Philharmonic covering, one from 2008 from outside and another during the work (1961-63), from the inside. These images are understood as two sides of the same approach: when the collective imagination take pictures to the building shares vision with the architectural proposal of its author, no matter how radical it may be, and understands that the key of the Philharmonic is in the silhouette. This text is focussed in the distance between ceiling and cover and it examines the circumstances that resulted in the exceptional formal condition of the philharmonic skyline. It focuses on the roof as a place that condenses both ideas and contradictions. During the research a characteristic quality of its author is detected that it is interesting to rescue in the practice of current architecture: the continued oscillation between radicality and flexibility was what allowed Scharoun to propose and carry out a work so out of the ordinary.