Cornerstone laid for new Berlin modern art museum

The cornerstone of an ambitious and expensive new 20th century art museum in the German capital, dubbed the "Berlin Modern," was laid at a ceremony on Friday.

The new museum will be the seventh location of Germany's Nationalgalerie (National Gallery). Construction is expected to take until 2027. Initial construction at the site began in 2019.

The new building is located directly next to the iconic Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) building near Potsdamer Platz, which was designed by star US-German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and opened in 1968.

It is also next door to Berlin's famed Philharmonie concert hall, another architectural icon in the city.

Klaus Biesenbach, the current director of the Neue Nationalgalerie who will also lead the future museum, said the museum urgently needs additional space to display its massive collection.

Only 172 of the museum's approximately 5,000 works can currently be shown in the Neue Nationalgalerie space, Biesenbach said.

Plans for the new building have been criticized because of poor energy efficiency. German Culture Minister Claudia Roth said plans for the museum have since been reworked and she hopes for it to become an "exemplar of sustainability."

The design and revisions were made by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, who also built the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, the Olympic Stadium in Beijing and the Allianz Arena in Munich.

The redesign will increase the cost of the building by almost €10 million ($10.7 million) to about €363 million. With additional financing and other costs, the total cost of the project adds up to around €450 million.

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner said that the new museum building would fill a painful gap in the city's cultural scene, calling the construction project "completely justified and absolutely necessary."