BERLIN.- The Museum for Architectural Drawings opened in June 2013 on the site of the Pfefferberg in Berlin Mitte. To mark the museum’s 10th anniversary, an exhibition now focuses on its collecting activities and presents architectural drawings from its own holdings under the title ArchiVision. Around 120 works from the collections of the Tchoban Foundation and its founder Sergei Tchoban will convey to the public the seemingly unlimited artistic possibilities of architectural representation.

Architecture on paper holds its own independent position within the graphic arts, regardless whether it is in the service of realised or unrealised buildings. Based on this concept, the exhibition arranges the displayed works in five cross period thematic areas, each of which is assigned a specific question. First of all, the exhibition concentrates on the sketch, with the help of which architects fix their first thoughts on paper. The effect of a sketch depends on the chosen drawing technique, for it is here that the artist’s “handwriting” most closely expresses his personality. On display are sketches by Ferdinando Galli Bibiena, Pietro di Gottardo Gonzaga, Hans Poelzig and Ben van Berkel.

The second section focuses on towers and skyscrapers as significant expressions of visionary architectural design. Works by Louis Jean Desprez, Jean Laurent Legeay, Hugh Ferris, Thomas W. Schaller and Gottfried Müller reflect the diverse effects of the highrise building.

Another special feature of architectural drawing is that it can simulate reality. The third part of the exhibition therefore presents representations of urban and residential worlds, including the phenomenon of veduta. Here perspective and its effective moments come into play, which is particularly clearly illustrated in works by Hubert Robert, Peter Cook, Zaha Hadid, Peter Wilson, Zvi Hecker and Moon Hoon.

The fourth group is dedicated to architectural utopias on paper. The issue here is not realisation, but the representational intentions of the designers. Ennemond Alexandre Petitot, Yakov Chernikhov, Daniel Libeskind and Alexander Brodsky, all engaged in this imaginative form of construction.

The last part of the exhibition highlights the grand ideas that architectural artists used drawings to present, which is summarised by the term „world theatre“. Here the viewer will find both designs intended for realisation, such as those by Jean François Thomas de Thomon, Haus Rucker Co and Mikkel Frost, and pure fantasies, as in works by Charles Louis Clérrisseau and Paul Decker the Elder. This genre also includes designs for Baroque festive architecture (for example, by Carlo Marchionni) and above all stage sets by perspective artists such as Pietro di Gottardo Gonzaga, Karl Blechen, Paolo Martellotti and Ezio Frigerio. Drawings by Alexander Rodchenko and Kirill Chelushkin, and with them the question about the limits of the representability of architecture, bring the exhibition to its close.

This 10th anniversary exhibition of the Museum of Architectural Drawing offers the visitor a panorama of everything that architectural drawing can be, ranging from sketches to construction and presentation drawings to pure fantasy that finds its finale in the intangibility of abstract form.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Eva Maria Barkhofen, an architectural historian and officially appointed expert for architecture-related art.

The Tchoban Foundation Museum of Architectural Drawing was built in 2013 on the site of the former Pfefferberg brewery. The Foundation was established in 2009 by architect and collector Sergei Tchoban with the aim of promoting the art of architectural drawing.

Three times a year, the Museum holds exhibitions with works from its own holdings and loans from both private collections and the collections of renowned museums such as Sir John Soane‘s Museum in London, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, the Albertina in Vienna, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main, the Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität Berlin and the Kunstbiblio thek Berlin.