Detail of the project ed. 2020

GMP·VON GERKAN, MARG AND PART­NERS – ROOM OF SILENCE

Design­er	Hans-Joachim Paap
Loca­tion	Mel­li-Beese-Ring 1, 12529 Schöne­feld, Germany
Design Team	Respon­si­ble for design: Mein­hard von Gerkan with Hans-Joachim Paap and Alexan­der Buchhofer; Part­ner respon­si­ble: Hubert Nienhoff; Asso­ci­at­ed part­ner respon­si­ble: Hans-Joachim Paap; Project leader com­pe­ti­tion: Alexan­der Buchhofer; Com­pe­ti­tion team mem­bers: Sil­via Schnei­der, Jochen Köhn, Ste­fan Both, Clau­dia Busch; Visu­al­iza­tions: Davide Abbonacci.
Year	2012
Pho­to credits	All pic­tures by Mar­cus Bredt

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

At the pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal of Berlin’s Bran­den­burg Air­port (BER), a place for prayer and med­i­ta­tion has been cre­at­ed — the Room of Silence. Con­sist­ing of a Chris­t­ian and a non-denom­i­­na­­tion­al space arranged next to each oth­er with equal impor­tance, it is a place of retreat for peo­ple of dif­fer­ent reli­gions and cul­tures. Inspired by the archi­tec­tur­al design, the vis­i­tors can for­get the hec­tic air­port envi­ron­ment and find still­ness within.
A sequence of rooms of dif­fer­ent sizes leads the vis­i­tor from the com­mon­ly used entrance into the devot­ed area. At first, the vis­i­tor enters the lob­by with the sculp­tur­al ‘Silence’ let­ter­ing in sev­er­al lan­guages. From there the Chris­t­ian area on one side and the non-denom­i­­na­­tion­al area on the oth­er side can be reached.
The archi­tec­ture is reduced to the ele­ments of brick and light. Based on a square floor­plan with stepped vault­ed ceil­ing, the walls, the floor and the vaults con­sist of clay bricks. In their archa­ic appear­ance they refer to the begin­nings of human cul­ture and to the local build­ing tra­di­tion in Berlin/Brandenburg. Indi­rect light­ing serves to cre­ate visu­al still­ness. It back­lights the joints of the vault­ed ceil­ing and results in an imma­te­r­i­al light­ing atmos­phere that, in its restraint, makes the vault­ing appear as if float­ing, and cre­ates a con­tem­pla­tive mood. The upper end of the vault is formed by an indi­rect­ly illu­mi­nat­ed ocu­lus, which opens the space upwards. It is designed to lift the vis­i­tors’ spir­it and evokes notions of ‘heav­en’ or ‘par­adise’. In con­trast to this, the vis­i­tor stands on the brick floor, a firm ground that can be inter­pret­ed as the ‘earth’ or the ‘here and now’. Due to the illu­mi­nat­ed recess at the tran­si­tion from floor to wall, the walls visu­al­ly detach them­selves from the ground. The walls lying in the dark seem to visu­al­ly delim­it the room, cre­at­ing a sense of remote and dis­tance. The result is an envi­ron­ment of high poet­ic inten­si­ty that appeals to both mind and soul and allows con­tem­pla­tion and a return to stillness.
Artis­ti­cal­ly designed reli­gious sym­bols enrich the Room of Silence. The Chris­t­ian area fea­tures litur­gi­cal objects such as a cross, an altar, and lectern, where­as the non-denom­i­­na­­tion­al area con­tains a cir­cu­lar bronze floor fea­ture that indi­cates the four car­di­nal direc­tions, as well as point­ing towards Mec­ca and Jerusalem.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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