Museum der Stille

The Museum der Stille sits in Berlin-Mitte, one of the city's busiest districts. Nikolai Makarov, a Russian painter, founded it in 1994 as an oasis of calm. It serves as a secular meditation room, a place to step out of the chaos and let your thoughts settle.

The interior does much of the work: earthy red walls, sound-absorbing carpets and dim lighting pull the rooms toward quiet. Makarov's own paintings hang there, rendered in grisaille, a technique that gives them a transparent, serene appearance. Beside them stand seven architectural models by architects such as Stephan Braunfels and Sergei Tchoban. Each one sketches a future building that would house a single artwork, nothing else. The thinking comes from wayfinding architecture, where the design leads you to the work and leaves you alone with it. The idea echoes the Mark Rothko Chapel in Houston, which likewise joins art with meditation.

Among the models stands Tchoban's round room, lit like a crystal ball. It is a design imagined for one piece of art and the single person standing before it.