Paris, Winter 1998

Dear Friends,

Herewith some notes after our last visit to Schöngrün and the various meetings that day. First, thank you for your welcome. The site visit with Monsieur Sulzer confirmed the first impressions we shared with Monsieur Bernard Plattner on our last visit.

By using the site to the full, from the extreme South to the extreme North and the cemetery, we can create an atmosphere of silence, not only in sound but also visual, which will be the starting point for the Museum. And so the position of the Museum itself is becoming more and more precise.

But this isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about, as I mentioned at length in my last letter. What I would like to do, however, is say a few words on the talks we had with people after the meal.

There is one idea, or ethic, I might even say functional, which is taking shape and which will surely be the subject of much to-ing and fro-ing between the architect and the members of the foundation.

The exhibition galleries which will hold two or three hundred of Paul Klee’s work, then the conservation rooms, probably a floor lower, where the rest of the treasures will be kept; but open to being visited by specialists, an iceberg, we might say, where what you see is only a very small part of what is below the waterline.

By this very act, a highly mobile, dynamic relationship will be established between the reserves and the exhibition itself, which will enable the Museum to reinvent itself at a rhythm to be decided. All this is vital if this Museum is to be something new, but the conservation rooms will be able to interact with other Museums, with the Academy next door and researchers. And, in the exhibition rooms, a fluid continuity between the drawing galleries (70 lux), the painting galleries (250 lux) and the reception areas (1,000 lux, open view right across the protected site).

And, in an honest relationship between the sacred and the profane, places to meet, places of rest, enjoyment, restaurant, bar and shops.

And, of course, the Academy, a living place of study for young researchers: as far as possible from the static and boring.

My thanks for this meeting, and I look forward impatiently to your call to start work. It means a lot to me (and to Bernard Plattner, my associate), and, rest assured, if I accept this project, I will give it all the attention, energy and strength it deserves.

My thanks to you, and see you soon,
Renzo Piano