When A Starchitect Designs A Major Project He Doesn’t Want You To Notice

David Chipperfield is doing a gut renovation of Berlin’s New National Gallery – designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – to, as a reporter puts it, “fix problems caused by age, as well as some that have plagued it since birth. … [He wants it] to perform as well as the most modern, assiduously climate-controlled and carefully lit museum – without any visitor noticing that he was ever there.”