At the site of the Palace of the Republic, Berlin will have a temporary gallery

Berlin - On the site cleared after the demolition of the Berlin Palace of the Republic, former seat of the East German parliament, a temporary gallery of contemporary visual art will be created. The project named White Cube by Vienna architect Adolf Krischanitz was chosen by Berlin's city councilors. The gallery is expected to open in the first half of next year and will operate at most until 2010. After that, a replica of the royal palace, which was demolished in the early 1950s, will begin to be built in its place.
    The gallery is designed as a simple wooden structure with plastic cladding, making it possible to quickly assemble and disassemble. It will offer about 600 square meters of exhibition space intended primarily for exhibitions of young Berlin artists.
    According to Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit, the White Cube will likely open to the public as early as the beginning of next year. The empty space in the center of Berlin at Castle Square will thus have at least two years of use. Until now, this site housed the asbestos-contaminated remains of the former East German parliament, which has been dismantled since last year. The Palace of the Republic replaced the war-damaged royal palace in the 1970s, which was the power center of the country and a dominant feature of Berlin during the time of Prussian electors and kings.
    Construction of the educational and cultural center called Humboldt Forum, which should be built on the original palace's footprint, is planned to start no earlier than January 2010. Thus, discussions were held at the Berlin city hall about how to temporarily use the busy square in the meantime.
    Krischanitz's project gained support also because it is relatively inexpensive. Its costs are estimated at about one million euros (approximately 27 million crowns).
    Sixty-one-year-old Austrian Krischanitz has several gallery and art center designs to his credit. He is, for example, the author of the reconstruction of a former tobacco factory into the site of a fine arts museum in northern Austria's Krems, and currently, a building for the 20th-century museum in Vienna is under construction based on his design.