Natural history museum : De Berlin

This concept stems from an inherent need to bring the dead to life, to bring about an awareness of what once was and how we got to where we are. It is about luring and inviting people to learn about their past and evolution while being in sync with their present. The best architect to ever exist is Mother Nature itself. To design a natural history museum is to honor its splendor. It is to bring the outdoors inside; almost like trying to frame a beautiful view where the interiors work in harmony to accentuate the design of the landscape with all its inhabitants. The ultimate vision is to create a Natural city that does not compete or overpower but rather conforms to and enhances the work of environment. Our plan aspires to breathe life into this project by facilitating a delicate balance between compatibility and transition of past into the future. This design proposes to integrate and flow with the natural elements of history to tell a story that is fascinating, and irresistible in a structure which is inviting, affordable, accessible, and hospitable to the general public. The Natural City – where one becomes a part of the past and, the Past and the present come together to build the knowledge about the future. Through our design of the Natural history museum and research wing – we have tried to achieve a great level of interaction between the past and the present, as specified. This interaction is highly important to us, as at an urban scale also, we want people to gain the knowledge about their Natural History. It needs to be understood – an awareness about Natural History cannot be achieved just by building a Museum alone. It needs a magnetic quality to pull people in, which is hard to resist but comfortable to be in. The Natural City – proposed at one of the non-active sites of Berlin – needs a high level of urban interaction. This site though surrounded by great monuments and streets like – Ku’damm, the Berlin Zoo, and the Tier garden – still experiences a negligible amount of foot falls, as compared to the areas around. To draw inhabitants towards this Natural city, it is really important to build the urban space that would hold an allure for people and bring big flows of them to the site. Another key feature worth a mention is the connection of the site with the urban grid of the city of Berlin. Also a major consideration is the accessibility factor which makes it imperative to create the site as a part of the urban grid – so as to make sure that it is as easy to travel in and around the site, as it is in the whole Berlin city. Thus this becomes another facet of our urban goal for this project. The other significant objective, we intend to attain through our design are divided in two levels- the Urban and the Architectural. It can be understood by further reading how the aim of urban interaction, urban illumination, the interaction of the past/ dead to the live, the link of the entire built fabric, and much more has been accomplished through our design.