Museum for Architectural Drawing


The Museum for Architectural Drawing is a private museum in Berlin, Germany run by the Tchoban Foundation. It was opened in June 2013. Three to four exhibitions are shown each year, made up of drawings from the Tchoban Foundation’s collection and from works on loan in cooperation with other museums and institutions.

Organising body

The Tchoban Foundation, a private trust based in Berlin, runs the museum to promote architectural drawing by hand. It was founded by the architect Sergei Tchoban in 2009. Its aim is to foster the drawing skills of talented young architects and to make the founder’s collection accessible for study. Exhibitions of drawings are presented on site as well as in other museums worldwide. Together with the founder, Dr. h. c. Kristin Feireiss and Dr. Eva-Maria Barkhofen form the curatorship.

Collection

Sergei Tchoban’s collection began with the purchase of a drawing by Pietro di Gottardo Gonzaga. Since then it has grown to consist of more than one hundred sheets dating from different periods from the 16th century to today.
The trust meanwhile owns more than one hundred drawings by international architects from the 20th and 21st century as well as works by Tchoban himself.

Building

Designed by the Moscow office SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov, the Museum for Architectural Drawing, completed in 2013, is a four-storey solid corpus with a glass floor stacked on top. The profile of the four floors is reminiscent of casually piled up blocks. Its closed surface is detailed with strong magnified fragments of architectonic sketches in relief form. The line drawings and the colour of the cast concrete refer to the purpose of the building as a place for exhibiting architectural drawings. The museum shop and library are on the ground floor. Cabinets have been created on the first and second floor for temporary exhibitions. The museum depository is on the third floor. Windows have been avoided on these three floors to provide optimal conditions for the conservation of drawings. The Trust’s office is situated on the glazed top floor. 200 of the 450 available square metres, including the ticket desk and library, are used for exhibition space.

Exhibitions (selection)