Nicht winken! In der Großstadt!

Ulrich Müther's bus shelter

2011-10-04T18:34:00.000+02:00

This disused bus shelter - buses now have to sail around the traffic island it sits on - has become a tourist destination viz somebody had the good sense to put two huts selling postcards right next to it. Plus a fake fire hydrant. Yes, thank you very much.

Ulricht Müther's Book Kiosk

2011-09-28T11:49:00.002+02:00

Ulrich Müther was born in Binz on the island of Rügen, and seemed to consider it his duty to beautify the place a bit. Without him, the rather run-of-mill seaside resort would have to do without a spacey lifeguard tower on the beach, several restaurants, a bus shelter and this unassuming book kiosk. It has a hypar shell in it, indeed.

More buildings were photographed by this gentlemen a few years ago, and show how little has changed since then: Kopftuch für den Herren

Ulrich Müther's Inselparadies

2011-09-28T11:43:00.012+02:00

The "Island Paradise" in Baabe on Rügen used to be covered by a sky of stars at night from the lights in the ceiling. It was quite something. Refurbishment plans haven't been coming to any results since the early nineties, so what used to be the place to go for ice cream and mocca, is staring silently out at the sea while feeling quite draughty around the kidneys.

Walk like an Egyptian

2011-09-06T12:05:00.000+02:00

Railings at Sassnitz train station. They move and follow you.

Ulrich Müthers Kurmuschel

2011-09-04T16:02:00.000+02:00

From 1987(!). This music pavilion's moniker is the 'Kurmuschel', the spa shell. It's the best shell I can imagine for being buried under. Just this above me and the sea in front.

Ulrich Müther in Neubrandenburg

2011-08-02T15:54:00.001+02:00

I went for yet more Ulrich Müther the other weekend. To Neubrandenburg, where they have a Kulturfinger (a tiny Socialist highrise intended for cultural purposes) and medieval city gates in red brick. Plus two Müthers: the Catholic church of St Josef and Lukas from 1980 and the Municipal Hall from 1969. Apart from some lacklustre annexes, the latter is Candela-ish funkiness,

More images over here.

Spielplatz Neubrandenburg

2011-07-20T20:32:00.000+02:00

Neubrandenburg hat noch gute alte DDR-Spielplätze - mit Tiergerüst.

Ulrich Müther's planetarium in Cottbus

2011-06-11T17:42:00.000+02:00

The Yuri Gagarin Space Flight Planetarium by Ulrich Müther from 1974.

It's the best preserved of all Müther's buildings that I've hunted down so far but no longer all the rage or much beloved. We were quite pitifully asked to stay for the afternoon show but had to turn the lady down, the train was leaving... As we were the only people around my feeling is the planets then played to an empty house, like a fair number of times before that, or perhaps not at all.

Sign at the Botanical Garden Berlin

2011-06-10T16:44:00.001+02:00

Da geht's zu den stillen Örtchen im Botanischen Garten. / That way to the restrooms in the Botanical Garden.

Cottbus - East German Modernism

2011-06-05T19:55:00.031+02:00

Cottbus may be small but still symptomatic in urban planning terms. It has the East German representative city centre, with civic hall, hotel (no longer there), warehouse (replaced by the usual shopping mall) and fancy bit to set it all off, in this case a milk bar (also no longer there) but more frequently a fountain or two (none were to be found here). And of course public art. Educational and a bit wacky. As the game goes, whenever town planners try to undo this style to bring it up to today's perceived needs, it turns a cheetah into a poodle. See the beach hut on top of the respectable place where people used to go for a knees-up in the Socialist state.

Ulrich Müther (he of the hypar shell) also got to put his finger in the pie and came up with a planetarium which will the next post.

East German folklore. The people of the Sorbs has been resident in this area for ages and is celebrated here in all its gherkins glory, as pickled veg is what they do best.

Sorbian family with tractor and electricity. So not just veg but also contribution to peace in the worker state.

Civic centre. Hailed in its day but took years to built because of shortage in materials.

Funkhaus der DDR - Nalepastraße

2011-05-30T17:45:00.000+02:00

Ninety degrees to the right of this wall of time sticks an enormous picture of the Black Eyed Peas who recorded here, with Sting. Not at all fitting. East Germany's broadcasting house in Nalepastraße is so far out in the acoustics department that it's three main recording rooms are hardly ever left alone. It has kept it's time capsule spirit though. All the grandezza and plush design so beloved for representative buildings of the the early Fifties are shot through with the architect's (Franz Ehrlich) Bauhaus education. It's a proper DDR chair shop, like the Palast der Republik was the lamp shop.

As before, Flickr has more pictures.

Schlangenbader Straße in Wilmersdorf

2011-05-25T21:59:00.000+02:00

"If the devil wants to do harm to this city, he will make sure that another Schlange is built", Berlin's reigning mayor at the time admired the large-scale housing project Schlangenbader Straße. Incidentally, Schlange means snake. Just Beelzebub's domain. This is the only example of an integrated complex of 1060 flats sitting on top of 600 meters of motorway in Berlin - the first of its kind and the last, as costs ran far beyond the original estimate. Sound and vibration proofing are so efficient, all you hear of the motorway while standing underneath it is a slight drumming, and nothing while walking through corridors of polished linoleum above it. The devil comes in silence.

For a better idea of the place, my Flickr here will help with all sorts of hallways, staircases, doors and signage.

Sports hall Charlottenburg by Ludwig Leo

2011-05-23T10:32:00.000+02:00

For more shots of the auditorium, refreshment area, bleachers, and an oozing tree, see my album here.

For once, this place has largely not been tinkered with. It still sports the look Leo had designed for it in the early sixties. Save the beer hall tables, that is.
Ludwig Leo is also responsible for the whale wash near Tiergarten, which I adore on a regular basis.

Forgotten Architects and Forgotten Houses

2011-05-14T08:29:00.000+02:00

I live in the childish hope that constructions can be eternal. Which this online book (sadly not a book to touch which I wish very much it was; the initiators Pentagram call it a miniseries) about the forgotten Jewish architects who practised in Germany at the beginning of last century, still hasn't managed to cure me of. Because not only did the creators have to leave, their buildings followed them suit. As far as I can see, not a lot of them are still standing.
The Huns irrecoverable loss, however, appears to haven been England's gain: a striking number of architects set up business in the UK after leaving Germany.

Fromm rubber Factory by Arthur Korn & Siegfried Weitzman, '30. This means rubber as in "perservative", the only brand available later in East Germany. The factory stood in Friedrichshagen until not so long ago. For more on the Fromms go here.

The residence of Arnold Zweig by Harry Rosenthal, '30

British Ambassador's Residence by Hans Sigmund Jaretzki, '32


Diner by Rudolf Fränkel, '31

Alte Kaufhäuser. Teil 1: Schöneberg

2011-05-11T21:05:00.000+02:00

In den kommenden Blogger-Tagen (die in Wochen gezählt werden, weil ein Blogger ja nebenher immer sooo viel zu tun hat) geht es hier mal ganz monothematisch um Kaufhäuser. Die nicht mehr existierenden. Die bestenfalls einer anderen Einzelhandelsnutzung zugeführt wurden, schlimmstenfalls leer stehen. Und sich zu Tode langweilen müssen.
Dies hier ist steht in Schöneberg, in der Nähe des Kleistparks. Heute werden dort Fahrräder verkauft, und das Obergeschoss soll wie eine Blockhütte aussehen, weil die Kette "Little John Bikes" heisst. Man fährt ja auch im Westen der USA so viel Fahrrad ...Über den Architekten konnte ich nocht nichts herausfinden, werde das aber schnellstens nachholen. Es wurde allerwahrscheinlich am Ende des 19. Jhds gebaut, womöglich auch ein bisschen später.

The comming days on this blog (which are counted in weeks, as bloggers always have such a whole lot to do on the side) will be exclusively devoted to warehouses. Those that are no longer among us. That at best are are being used by some other retail establishment, at worst are vacant, and probably dying the slow death of boredom.
This particular one is located in Schöneberg, near Kleistpark. Nowadays they sell nothing but bikes there, with the top floor made up to look like a log cabin because the chain is called Little John Bikes. Of course cycling is so commonplace in the American West ... So far I have not been able to unearth any information about the architect but will try to remedy this very soon. It is very likely from the late 19th century, probably a bit later.

Sign Friedrichshain

2011-05-06T21:14:00.000+02:00

Some more of rest of the Moderne

2011-03-17T17:14:00.002+01:00

Apartment block with multi-storey car park on Steinmetzstraße in Schöneberg. It unexpectedly jumps at you out of the bushes.

Shopfronts Neukölln

2011-03-06T19:18:00.000+01:00

The faded glamour of the Seventies on Hermannplatz in Neukölln.

1950s housing in Kreuzberg

2011-02-26T18:09:00.000+01:00

Even though this estate near Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg still sticks to the flower theme with original shop signs intact, it has clearly seen better days. Shame, because closer inspection reveals the attention to detail and colour that the Fifties couldn't do without.

Booksigning for Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed

2011-02-11T12:54:00.001+01:00

Anybody who would like to go to Taschen's Flagshipstore on Friedrichstraße, buy and then have the author sign your copy of Frédéric Chaubin, Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed, which not only looks splendid but also comes in several languages on one page thus satisfying all your multilingual needs, can do so on coming Wednesday, 16 February from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
More on the tome itself later, once I've grilled Mr Chaubin on whether or the places described therein make good holiday destinations.

Stadthalle Magdeburg

2011-02-08T09:31:00.002+01:00

Magdeburg, which would rather be known for its Medieval remains was indeed a breeding ground for Modernist architecture in the early Twenties; it had Bruno Taut , Johannes Göderitz and Albinmüller. The latter developed a plan for a spacious theatre exhibition park, the majority of which - surprise, surprise - was turned to rubble during the Second World War. What's remained is still an Expressionistic playground: The Exhibition Hall and observation tower, the Horse Gate by an appropriately named gentleman Rossdeutscher (literally translates as "Horsegerman" but in fact means con man), and two extremely cool light columns with masks, of which I can't for the life of me remember who did them. It's all sitting about like an abandoned stage set, waiting for somebody to start wheeling out the champagne trolley and hoover the red carpet again.

Mural Eisenhüttenstadt

2011-02-03T13:46:00.000+01:00

By Walter Womacka, who gave the working man a face and plenty of doves. He died recently and by rights Prince should have sung at his funeral.

The men in white

2011-01-25T20:56:00.000+01:00

Back to West Berlin on a pretty cold, pretty dark day. Even though it has the reputation of being a rather genteel, highbrow area, Steglitz flings a few post-modern concrete heaps in the face of the casual observer. There is the Kreisel, a consistently maligned high-rise of the sort that used to feature in helicopter shots in the credits of American TV programmes about lawyers back when I still wore cats on my tights. A few miles down the street the whole science fiction lot of Schloßstraße U-Bahn, habitat of the Bierpinsel (very much beloved by me), sits and laughs. In the opposite direction, the Free University of Berlin has its outpost for all things medical. The campus houses the splendid Benjamin Franklin Hospital (future post because a bit too dark to take pictures by then), the Institute of Virology (tomorrow's post) and this: the animal testing laboratories. The "mice bunker". It still bothers me: why did Brutalism go out of fashion? It can't be because of this. There is plenty to shake your head over while marvelling at the detailing and the point of the yellow paint of the tanks and the relentlessness with which the design tries to put you off by being unashamed about the function it fulfils. The architecture announces bluntly that this is no place where doilies are knitted yet I can't help but like it for its honesty.

Murals Magdeburg

2011-01-21T13:49:00.001+01:00

Two mosaics in the Landesbetriebe für Hochwasserschutz und Wasserwirtschaft (Flood Protection and Water Management) in Magdeburg. Poignant, as the city's very own stream, the Elbe, is bursting its bank left, right and centre.
The man resting his foot on a hemisphere is the Otto von Guericke, who demonstrated the vacuum with a metallic sphere, air pump and 16 horses. No further details are known on the other gentleman.

Colours. All that matters.

2011-01-09T19:55:00.000+01:00

Seeing this for the first time from this angle, I wondered whether someone had rescued it from the sets of Jacques Tati's Playtime movie, the film which did for contemporary taste in buildings what the Albert Memorial did for the Prince Consort. Even though construction finished in 1960, its front especially harks back to Fifties architecture- the tiles in the time's favourite shade of yellow-black beneath the boxy windows hemmed in by the bold curve of the wall.

The longer you look at it the more you're hit by how much teetering goes on here. There is some carefully damped-down brashness about this, an attitude of Ah shucks, why not pull it out here a bit and take it in there and set in on stilts and see if they take it. (It may also be that the architects dropped the model on the way from the taxi to their big pitch and then did their best to whack it back together while in the corridor. I don't know why I think of them as 'them', not even knowing who did it in the first place. Anyway.) It's the kind of stance that the building on the opposite side of the square, crocheted roughly 20 years later in their very own silly Mad Hatter's Tea Party-style by Inken and Hinrich Baller (and the names alone say it all), tries very hard to emulate but shoots ri-i-i-i-ght past.

It is indeed a public educational institution, the Catholic school of Saint Francis (Katholische Grund- und Oberschule Sankt Franziskus) on Winderfeldtplatz in Berlin-Schöneberg and one that has been listed at that.

Soviel zum Thema Winter

2011-01-07T14:58:00.002+01:00

Ich glaub, ich stand schon lange nicht mehr in so viel Schnee rum wie neulich Weihnachten. Vorne weiß, hinten weiß, rechts ganz viel weiß mit Baum, links ein bisschen Pflaster mit Eishuckel, von dem der Herr des Hauses prompt abrutscht und sich den Hinterkopf einbeult. Normalerweise wird in dieser Situation im Familienverband für die nächsten 2 Stunden mit den teueren Fiskars-Schneeschippern gewerkelt, da wir ja mehr Grundstück haben als der Schah von Persien, aber diesmal rückte ein Herr mit einem dicken Räumtraktor an, der in drei Runden die Hacienda freischob. Das hielt dann einen Tag, an dem dann vorsorglich schon mal das Eis vom Pflaster gehackt wurde. Danach ging's von vorne los.
Weil in Berlin gerade der Dreck dem Schnee das Erscheinungsbild versaut, hier das unverdorbene Schauspiel in seiner Urausprägung. Und allen ein gesundes neues 2011!

Mural at Hansaplatz

2010-12-20T15:23:00.001+01:00

I suspect that it may have been photographed to death within an inch of its life, but this mural at Hansaplatz made me think of a fruit cocktail sticking out on the white tablecloth on a slightly pedestrian cold buffet. Not that the modern icon of Hansaplatz underground station (on whose wall this resides) and the Hansaviertel are anything near boring, just that in this great expanse of snow nothing in muted colours has much distinction.

Shopping means destruction

2010-12-13T15:26:00.001+01:00

Online shopping means you get no shop fronts, neon signs, interesting door handles or even grouchy shop assistants to enjoy before you go about the thankless task of buying a new pair of jeans/scissors/scales.
So, after knowing this page for 4 years now, this is still by far the only shop on the net that I would use for each and all of my purchases, come hell or high water - if it wasn't located in the Netherlands.

Hema, with the best entry page ever. Click and wait for a few seconds to find out why.

(Shocking thing is, it doesn't seem to carry tulips.)

Rostock - If you've lost the future, stare at the wall

2010-12-11T20:43:00.001+01:00

The Fifties seemed to be profitable time for wall ornamentists in Rostock. Socialist urban art was strictly instructional, so if the worker ever spontaneously forgot about his fate as a cog in the great machinery of the collective, rescue was just around the corner (or above the door). Next to that mundane four-storey block - which is much like any other found in most East German towns and cities - sporting those clunky murals of daily strife, a much more text book example of dainty post-war architecture suddenly pops up, and it all looks remarkably Western. This is all in the city centre which is a mix between Hanseatic red brick structures and DDR new housing.

Farming

Building

Science

Production

The blue and red of railings and brick is repeated in the Südstadt's prefabricated blocks three pictures down.

And then there is the Südstadt, Rostock's Marzahn, an area of rabbit hutches that benefits immensely not only from the Ulrich Müther gems arranged loosely around it (see previous post) but also from a sky that has pretensions to be the sea. Plus a rather inspired foam rubber display of piranhas, stoned rabbits and a carrot that's in fact a pineapple.

The slow demise of Ulrich Müther in Rostock

2010-12-02T13:11:00.010+01:00

Ulrich Müther is something of an East-German Louis Eifel: Everybody knows his postcard staple, the Teepott in the seaside resort of Warnemünde, but ask who came up with it and people will likely hazard a guess in the direction of the HO official (the state-run trade organisation controlling catering and food) who happened to be in charge of construction.
I had a traumatic dining experience in the teapot as a small child. The place was one enormous restaurant that put food on the plates of about 200 eaters. It had a raised dais – at least in my childhood memory – crowded with tables for six. There my parents planted me to reserve the seats for us until they would return from the self-service counter carrying the prescribed Kännchen Kaffee, Frankfurters and a piece of dusty cake or ice cream with apple sauce (called the Swedish cup) for my mother. Or any other thing that the kitchen could still provide from the menu because choice was rather limited in DDR gastronomy and most things sold like hot buns (but weren't). I sat there, horrified and meekly turning away famished families who came to the table every 30 seconds because they spotted the free seats and only one little blond head to look after them. They didn’t take kindly to this, reproachfully enquiring how large our party was and what about the other three chairs? I turned into a puddle of a stressed child fresh out of the woods.

Free tables, just as the food, were a rarity at that time. If wanted to eat out, you were prepared to queue for at least half an hour and not complain about anything once you had been welcomed into the dining fold. Hence the size of the locations, the simplicity of the grub and the grateful acceptance of the patrons. It was also to be the downfall of most of Müther’s structures. They were designed to house the masses that suddenly found themselves spoiled for choice after Socialist shortage had become Western abundance. Restaurateurs hence-force failed to fill the empty halls and Müther’s brainchildren were consequently closed for service one by one. With the exception of Warnemünde's signature, none of them serve their original purpose anymore.

Eight buildings have survived in Rostock, of which I strictly speaking only saw 5, one of which was too far out to do on the day. The other two remained steadfastly hidden – or more precisely, they refused to fly their construction flag so we felt like we never quite found them. What almost all of them have in common is that straightforward approach of the new users to the curved hyparshell ceilings: just cover it with plastic panels. Why confuse anyone with the feeling that they might be in something a bit special while doing your shopping at Netto?

Penny has invaded the former Kosmos restaurant in the Südstadt.

Blocking people from using the stanchions as runways have brought forth a number of inventive little fences (also see picture below).

The Teepott. The lower half used to be panelled. Now divided into separate retail spaces.

The golden ball has been there for ages. The mischievous gate hasn't.

Interior. Best way to evade all thoughts of a grand space.

The Netto that got us close to heaven. On the way to the toilet at the far side you ended up right underneath the roof where the shells were meeting.


This used to be the former restaurant Riga, transmogrified into a shopping mall of the most modest proportions. The look was so dispiriting, this piece of Socialist art had to do as picture. It's sister construction, Szczecin, may have become a bowling alley. Some things are better left uncovered.

The canteen of the State Combine for Construction and Engineering. It is dying a slow but harrowing death.

More marvels from Rostock to follow.

Institut für Werkstoffwisschenschaft at the University of Technology

2010-10-30T09:19:00.000+02:00

As a matter of fact and actually and if I come to think of it, the point of this post was supposed to be a frightfully clever report on the going-ons at the Shaping Berlins Spaces: Lessons from London talk that Think Berl!n had organised at the TU Berlin this afternoon. It comprised frightfully clever and powerpointed input by Design for London's Tobias Goevert, Matthew Carmona form the Bartlett School of Planning plus Berlin's very own Rainer Nagel speaking for the Senate Departement for Urban Development. The latter had a lot to say on the profusion of trees in Berlin, Tempelhof airport, the other two airports sitting about, and how creative the city is. And oh yes, honey sticks.
It may have been the creaky seats and the badly wiped blackboard in the unassuming lecture hall where this took place but I just couldn't get all in a dither about much of what was being expounded upon. The few items I do remember: Some place around Barking in south London now has a few new benches and the Thames gateway doesn't seem to go quite the way it has been envisioned, and urban planning is a more centralised affair in LDN than it is in Berlin while they're still casting around for a decent idea on what to do about Oxford Street. (My recommendation: just bang in a few more H&Ms like on Friedrichstraße and you're sorted, but no one's asking me.) My favourite word of the day is German at it's most poetic: Kaltluftsee, a lake of cold air. That's Tempelhof.

What occupies my indeed is the fact that I haven't yet found out who is responsible for this bomb of an orange tiled dream. It deserves a medal for effective lurking in the foliage (right at the Spree river, next to a small footbridge beyond the atrocity of Mercedes Benz World on Salzufer), jumping at me while I was sniffing about for a bit of caffeine. That's where the students from the Institut für Werkstoffwissenschaften (Dept. for Materials Science) go to learn about cardboard and wire. It sticks out like a box of Kaba instant cocoa between my mum's flour and barley packs. The surrounding area is made up of 60s student dorms from the rather far, rundown end of International style and other remarkably shoddy 4-storey concrete blocks, considering the spectacular location - river, trees, little Venice.

Staatsbibliothek on Kulturforum

2010-10-19T18:39:00.001+02:00

It's Week of the Ship As Building again. Or for the initiated: I'm due to visit another of Hans Scharoun's structures. This time the state libary on Potsdamer Platz, opposite the second steam ship with the golden conning bridge that is his concert hall. Ships were the architect's favourite metaphor which he indulged in all sorts of portholes. His second favourite gimmick was indoor vegetation, my personal nemesis - here seen lurking behind the far pillar.
11 years in the making and 20 years since Scharoun drew the first plan in 1964, it was to house the institution whose function it is to gather the whole of the West German book stock that WWII had scattered over libraries across the country. East Germany had its State Library on Under den Linden, which is currently being given a new reading room. This house here needs to have the asbestos combed out of its fur, the fate of all buildings from the Asbestos Age, which came right after the Space Age but created a whole new line of environmental business operations.
Most items here are in the closed stack rooms that - different from most other National libraries - rise above the rest of the building (they're in the golden top) rather than sit underground. Which doesn't make them look any more glamorous than pretty poky broom cupboards, as inspection revealed.
Scharoun died half-way through the project in 1972, hanging on long enough to witness the completion of the skeleton of the 'reading room landscape', as it was named at the time (hence the trees and suns and the funky flower pots). On a good day the landscape is hopelessly overcrowded and people do the German thing originally invented for deck chairs at hotel pools on Tenerife - just throw a towel over them to show they are yours for the day. In this case a notepad and two books.

These stones were quarried in the Arctic and are enormously uneven. Bloody hard to push a book cart over it, I was told.

Lamps designed for this by an old friend of Scharoun's. Dandelions.

Scharoun's original model of the Kulturforum complex. Note the lovely Lego plate covering the library's entrance hall on the right. First building on the left is Van der Rohes Nationalgalerie. The structure next it was never realised.

Want to read more? There are two new posts by me about three Berlin exhibitions over on BloginBerlin, full of German words. In case anyone complains.

The Ethnological Museums in Dahlem

2010-10-14T13:08:00.001+02:00

One of the arguments for reconstructing the doomed Stadtschloss as Humboldtforum or whatever, is the fact that the museum in Dahlem needs a new home. Now that I've seen that home, I can only assume that compared to the UN, it must be positively pissing through the roof of these for anyone to have a decent enough reason for wanting to leave that beautiful open-plan space they're in. It's museum design in the International style and it most certainly has it faults but the space - particularly the East-Asian Gallery felt like a continent to itself.
If anybody wants to see an outside view of the museum and learn what the heck I was doing there anyway (voodoo), then go to this blog, BloginBerlin for which I will henceforth be banging on about things that don't fit the box of this here online presence. And the bonus is: It's all going to be utterly and completely in German. Nur uff Deutsch.

It's Raining through the roof of the UN.

2010-10-08T18:07:00.001+02:00

This is the first thing I noticed when I came through the doors of the UN headquarters, having been spit out by the security check, and before I entered the magnificently old-school gift shop. That one really did the job for me: it has everything you never needed in the UN shade of blue. Expect flags, marble desk sets, and objects of each member state (Germany: a nutcracker, Mozart (! ahem, no one from the Austrian delegation has ever been there, obviously) and a figurine of a monk with a beer tankard; all Poland appears to produce is wooden boxes of various sizes; China was essentially represented by the entire stock).

The lobby of the General Assembly building (all other buildings, such as the high-rise Secretariat were closed to the public) must have been cutting edge in its day. Designed by committee with Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier (so spread female thighs meets the housing machine) at the helm, it gives a better Guggenheim than the Guggenheim does. The interior shows clear signs of age, which is a rarity in New York, a city that hates patina and loves the gleam. Lobby, assembly hall and the display cases detailing the UN's humanitarian programmes in the freezing corridors in between are unfortunately all that the organisation wants to share with the common man. Add a cringe-inducing short film about UNICEF starring dog-eye Sean Penn, whom I now dislike at least 47.3 percent more than before, and I felt a bit undernourished on the architecture side. As for the floors: no great shakes in the lobby, absolute carpeted horror on the other storeys.

Giftshop as they used to be in the 1960s. Or still are in Eastern European hotels.

This is were the big knobs hang out.


UN blue


Lovely headsets in each armrest that were shaped like an alarm clock from Star Trek to squish your ear into.

For your comparison: The stacks of the UN.

The stacks of the Guggenheim.

I was aching to see Coney Island, hoping for collapsing roller coasters from the 1920s and an eerie former Army parachute jump training rack turned fairground attraction, but the place has gone Saint Petersburg. The fairgrounds have either been demolished or done up, the board walk is new and so are the loos. I had to forget about faded seaside glamour. There are no rotting piers as in Brighton or Weymouth, the Elephant Hotel (hotel in the shape of an elephant) had burned down a while ago, because burning down is what happens to you if you're a wooden structure at the sea. Oh well. Not that I ever really found anything in New York that wanted to tell a story other than the one about how great this city is and how far you can get here. Well, great city, I'm off now to where real ruins are. Doswidanya.

The Shit Tits. (No, really)

2010-10-05T16:58:00.001+02:00

After a bit of a long morning in an American Diner, trying to locate the five blueberries that were supposed to be hidden somewhere in the ready-made cornstarch batter that passed as pancakes (at a surcharge of 2.75 USD), a ramble through Williamsburg where people look exactly like they do in Berlin, and quite a few were actually from Berlin or make this their current residence or had got the haircut and most definitely their attention to customer service there, I decided to cast off the cosy feeling of actually sitting in Kreuzkölln without the Turkish population and go do something really cool. Like traipse down to the industrial docks to look at a Waster Water Treatment Plant. Which comes with a visitor centre. Hohum.
The locals call it the Shit Tits (real name Newton Creek Digester Eggs). I am now fully educated on the use of the bacterium in the treatment of waste water, the significance of storm water and that the sludge from selfsame is being eaten by some more bacteria in these eggs here. I was full of hope to be able to go beyond the fence but Americans take their company security very seriously. As they do the direction you're permitted to run around the reservoir in Central Park (anticlockwise, don't dare anything else). Or the naming of things after their money sources (a clump of three Christmas trees carries a plaque, declaring it to be the Samuel-Shomacker Pineum; every hall in the public library is named after the person who kindly paid for installing the heating - and very long names they are, these Alice-Faye -Vanderbildt-Blindenstiff Reading Rooms). Speaking of the heating, it was turned on in our house for the first time this morning and I am very much interested in seeing the atmospheric outcome of these tiny radiators coupled with the draughty windows.

I came temptingly close but then there was the fence.

The visitor center is a remarkably gleaming affair and has much going for it.

Sad thing is, the day after I leave, Open House New York is allowing people to go visit the boobs behind the curtain. Bad timing as usual.

Waving From Foreign Cities: New York

2010-09-29T19:34:00.000+02:00

Corona Park in Queens was an ash dump, then became a World's Fair Ground in the 1930s (because the mayor thought it might promote business and generally leave a good impression), with the last show taking place 1967.
There is the Unisphere, sponsored by the American steel corporation.

Next up comes this former helipad turned banquetting hall, Terrace on the Park, no longer in use by the looks of it.

And then were was this. The New York State Pavillion can't claim that it doesn't know what's been going on in the 1960s. It used to be covered with an illuminated "Tent of Tomorrow" made of glass while the floor had the map of the New York State drawn on terrazzo. For a 360° view, go here.

Architecture in Prague

2010-08-18T13:37:00.003+02:00

By rights I should be blogging about nothing but Prague for the rest of the year, but the city is exhausting in its sheer richness of architecture. You don't even need to turn a corner to go ooooh. Or Aaaaah. Or Bugger Me, Look At This There. (Mostly I went 'I need a hot drink now'.) It's all lined up like pearls on a string. If I had to generalise one thing, it's that the authorities in Prague don't seem to be driven by the need to "improve" every listed building. If the old banister/window/toilet/ash tray is fine, why replace it?
So here's the few times my feebleness allowed me to pick up the camera.

The architect who designed part of the garden city Orechkova in Praha 5 (name escapes me) did this as his own house.

Reproduction of the Expo 58 pavilion which looks a lot but feels nothing like the original that was vandalised (not burned down, as the official version would have it).

No idea what it is. But it's designed.

Former insurance association headquarters with - so the guide book says - a big top-lit staircase, now a clinic in Holesovice. Looks lots better live even though we came after office hours. God, can I be reborn as Functionalist architecture?

Whatever it is, I love the spirited paintwork.

Sports palace of some sort. Behind the bins is the entry to the pool. We were denied access. Due to non-familiarity with language couldn't read signs either. Was also a bit hungry.

TV Tower. Build after the one in Berlin. Pops up apropos of nothing in largely Art Nouveau style surroundings of apartment blocks.

Government offices in the Nove Mesto district.

Unbuilt Berlin - Ungebautes Berlin at Café Moskau

2010-08-09T07:19:00.003+02:00

Extract from the book. Show is on until August 15 at Café Moskau, Karl-Marx-Allee 34, daily 10-20. Entry €6.

I need a bit of enlightenment from the professionals here. Is it usual to display architecture models vertically, as in glued to a wall one foot above the spectator's head? Does it help to present most exhibits as A4-photocopies arranged in the fashion of a 4th grade student project at Wandsworth Comprehensive in a space the size of the utility room (while there is a beautiful light room above that appears unused)? I accidentally took the wall with the press cuttings to be an exhibit as well until the game was given away when I couldn't find the numbers on the piece of paper that was handed to me at the ticket desk which contained the titles of the illustrations.
Café Moskau is currently giving up its broom cupboard for an 'exhibition' of the 100 objects described in Carsten Krohn's drool-worthy book on Berlin as planned or dreamed up but never executed. In the case of Peter Cook's design for a closure to Kurfürstendamm from the deepest aesthetic quagmire of the Eighties, it's a definite blessing. Cook can be watched together with a handful of the featured architects on video screens in the basement, and goodness gracious me, does he ramble on. There is something about the west, the American West, an overlay of both, and his granny's knickers. All of which is rendered in appealing purple and yellow hues on the sketches. Sergius Ruegenberg's 1948 plan for an airport at Zoo station on the other hand, is a chimaera appearing to originate in a film set twenty years in the future, so charmingly unfeasible (it's the middle of the city after all), it would merit consideration. I also admire Libeskind's strict adherence to a singular design principle: Take a wood block, saw strips from it, scatter them around the elevated block and top up with trees. Et voilà, Potsdamer Platz. Generally speaking, the high-rises and tower blocks have been ubiquitous throughout all decades - even the to this day unfinished Kulturforum was to get its very own - as the perfect antidote to faux-classical limestone piles. To my eye, though, hardly any of the grand ideas seem to be able to muster a true Utopian spirit. The prevailing mode for buildings in Berlin was to be cosy monumentality as turned into stone in the street outside the Café Moskau, and that's never done any eye any harm, some would say. Or has it?
(For a proper informed analysis, the learned gentleman at Architecture in Berlin has something to say on this too.)

Haus der Statistik Berlin

2010-08-06T18:45:00.003+02:00

It's the house you can get on a t-shirt (available in eleven appealing colours). The House of Statistics is a classic object of East German utilitarian architecture from the late 1960s that also did a good job as a public address: Look here, this is our Central Square and we are an Important Nation. We Accomplish Things. Like Big Office Blocks with Ornamentation.
But all of this will soon have the gentle kiss of the wrecking ball bestowed on it, bringing us to a neat a cycle of demolition.
The interior contains a large wall painting by Ronald Paris and a smaller copper relief somewhere near the entrance (that I couldn't find, the relief that is) by Fritz Kühn, who did both the fountain on Straußberger Platz and the carpet of As on the central library in Breite Straße. Almost directly facing the library is another GDR office block that is adorned by a mural by foremost Socialist artist Walter Womacka (his most visible work is the large frieze on the Haus der Lehrers which stands just a few meters across the street to far side of the Haus der Statistik). In order to save them from annihilation, the government has been trying to give away Womacka's artwork on Breite straße and Paris' painting to whoever can raise the 18.000 Euro each for their removal and transport before the buildings buildings that house are torn down. Without success so far. Ironically, Womacka's artwork on the former Ministry for Civil Engineering in turn contains a reference to the Ahornblatt, a unique concrete shell construction by a man that I have lauded elsewhere on this blog (here). Of which, of course, there is nothing left to see any more, as it was called to the heaven for concrete shells ten years ago under the watchful eye of the mural. If I had been the man depicted on the mosaic tiles, I would have fallen off in solidarity.


I confess, I am fiercely attached to this metal sign. There used to be a shop with Russian products of the name of Natascha on the building's lower floor, which might account for the enormous display of a coffee cup. It most certainly can't be a symbol for Socialist statistics. Ironically, Socialism was rather notorious for its lack of comestibles containing caffeine. In that line of thinking I suppose the other wall should have had a banana on it.

Call for ideas

2010-08-03T11:52:00.003+02:00

Nichtwinken will stumble around Prague for a few days next week - and the guide book I have doesn't look at all promising on funky architecture. Can anybody help me, please?
I want to look at anything that (a) either passes as industrial architecture, (b) was built from the 1920s onwards and (c) is slightly creepy. I am going to try very hard to avoid Baroque piles and National Museums of Bohemian Glass, and accordingly will have absolutely nothing to do there.
I would be terribly happy about a few pointers - either in the comments box or drop me an email. In reward you'll get a smarmingly nice, personalised email back. And a postcard, if I have your address.
And does anyone know a good place for a decent meal ... bring it on!
Thank you!
Nichtwinken wird nächste Woche mal für ein paar Tage durch Prag wackeln - und mein Reiseführer hält sich beim Thema interessante Architektur extrem bedeckt. Kann mir hier bitte jemand unter die Arme greifen?
Ich will mir alles angucken, was entweder a) als Industriearchitektur durchgeht, b) seit den 1920ern gebaut wurde und c) ein bisschen umheimlich ist. Ich habe mir vogenommen, Barockkästen und die Nationalmuseen für Böhmisches Glas zu meiden, und werde deshalb wohl dort absolut nix zu tun haben.
Ich wäre furchtbar glücklich über ein paar sachdienliche Hinweise. Schreibt mir entweder einen Kommentar oder eine Email. Als Belohnung gibt's eine anbiedernd nette Mail zurück, oder eine Postkarte, wenn ich die Adresse habe.
Oh, und wer weiß, wo man gut Essen kann ... her damit!
Danke!

Wedding III: AEG complex on Brunnenstraße

2010-08-02T14:29:00.003+02:00

If you're a successful manufacturer of things in this day and age, you have a shed some place in an orange grove valley with billions worth of digital equipment inside. If the walls fall down, so be it. If anyone steals the password to the Engineering lab, you're ruined.
At the time when AEG did most of its work it went like this: The cost of erecting suitable premises was several times higher than that of the machinery inside. The manufacturing halls were designed to outlast the fast-dying labour force. These days (and I got this idea from an article in a book about conservation work on Berlin's heritage) buildings are mainly the "climatic shell" for the fragile high-tech machines under its roof. Finding new uses for many of those listed factories is a complicated process of nitpicking negotiations. Windows play a major role. Conservationists want them just the way they've been from day one. New users have their specific ideas about heat insulations, and want them replaced. Another is dust. Computers don't like it. Old assembly halls like this one probably produced it in higher quantities than their actual artefacts.
The large machine assembly (Montagehalle für Großmaschinen) was like the rest of AEG's (meaning nothing other than General Electrics) production sites the work of in-house architect Peter Behrens. Erected between 1911 and 1912, later enlarged by Ernst Ziesel, it takes up all of Hussiten-/ Volta-/and parts of Brunnenstraße. For a quick English overview of all the industrial monuments in clustered in this corner of Wedding go here. For a longer German overview see here.

I'm sad to say that my pictures convey hardly anything of the silent, sober, completely intimidating loveliness of the complex. There are cranes, for goodness sake! And those lamps that dangle in the air instead of cluttering the ground. (Compare the size of the cars to get an idea of the scale.)

The University of technology has taken over the Montagehalle for testing concrete structures.

Black tiled building to the left by Kleihues.

Nixdorf built this factory after clearing the northern half of the complex in the early 1980s.

The Kleinmotorenfabrik in Huttenstraße is the southern demarcation line.

For those who wish to do Industrial architecture in Berlin systematically, here is a must buy: this book lists all the buildings and is my true primer.

The whale wash

2010-07-28T20:57:00.006+02:00

If you were an engineer who has a dream of modest grandeur with rather a lack of filigree aspirations, wouldn't this be the culmination of your efforts? Enormous pipes, hut on a cross metal frame, fantastic location next to the biggest city park (Tiergarten), slap bang in the middle of the canal, it's all there. I bet the inside is full of dials, binnacles and bleeping lights - well, things that bleep and flash - like a Nuclear plant control room.
In fact, its purpose is a Beluga whale washing facility. The whales pass through the pink cycle to get clean and are blow-dried in the middle, where they are also weighed and catalogued by the experts from the nearby zoo.

Ahem. Most days of the year it is the experimental station for water engineering of the University of Berlin, built by Ludwig Leo in 1975-76, now sadly no longer in use. A wonderful little leaflet explains it all in German online. They'll be doing an opera in there in August, likely one of the only chances to have a peek around.

Buchstabenmuseum - Museum of Letters

2010-07-26T14:40:00.002+02:00

For a shop-front fiend like Nichtwinken, the Museum of Letters is a bit of an internal Nuremberg rally, as the saying goes in German. After moving from its former tiny location on Leipziger Straße into the centre of town near Alexanderplatz, there is now enough room to present salvaged shops names like WERTHEIM or the legendary Zierfische (tropical fish) from Karl-Marx-Allee. The museum is particularly in love with these fish: It ran a long campaign to activate people to donate for their acquisition (and just as they were a few days away from being legally transferred into the care of the museum, they had to be bodily rescued from thieves who tried to dismantle them in broad Friedrichshain daylight one morning; the main Keeper of Letters who lives around the corner then had to sit right under the signs to guard them for a day while the thieves kept coming back every two hours intend on finishing their business - the yellow fish that can be seen in the picture link above was left dangling from just one screw).

Just sitting about on the floor of an unspeakably unglamorous shopping mall without the expanse of the Stalinist wall behind it, the fish looks like it has exchanged the wide sea of Socialist freedom for a poxy Capitalist aquarium.
I still feel it would make a quite good bathroom light.

Buchstaben Museum

Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 13 (near Alexanderplatz) in the Berlin-Carré

Open: Thur - Sat, 1-3pm

Rundfunkhaus Grünau

2010-07-24T19:26:00.002+02:00

Rowing. Big deal in B's Grünau district. They do nothing else there day in and out.
Next to about 25.7 rowing clubs and water sports centres on Regattastraße, the Federal school for Excellency in People Doing Things on Water (can't remember the exact name) has built itself an enchanting Brutalist headquarter. Note the crumbled edges at the two left-hand blocks of the middle tiers.

I haven't been to Wannsee lido yet, but I reckon it can't have finer lettering than Grünau's babe. Hard to believe, it's the only location near the water where rowing is not permitted.

Rowing also not enjoying its heyday here . In fact, not much seems to be heydaying in this building at all. Although a former boat house (yep) in 1929 by Otto Zbrzezny - biggest agglomeration of Zs in a name ever -, it became East Germany's radio broadcasting house and later college for journalism in the 1950s. One couldn't tell. Now it's just transmitting a proud sense of loneliness.

From what I can tell after 2 minutes search, Zbrzezny was a rather utilitarian architect, who did a few cinemas that haven't survived, and this. As much as I hate linking to Wikipedia, they're at least mentioning him.

The Beach and the Glory

2010-07-22T21:28:00.001+02:00

I've been to the sea. Beach is beach, give or take a few jellyfish. Totally unremarkable.
This here, however, is different. It's where silence goes to breed, I thought. Wrong. Turns out the manor house of this estate, Hasselburg, is rented out to Heikedine Körting. She is responsible for the best part of my aural childhood entertainment as the director of the Flitze Feuerzahn audio plays. The ones with Wildsau Schnurche-Grunze in them.
That's the view she has when comes home from the supermarket. Wonder whether it makes her believe in a God. The kind of God who came up with architectural ensembles in red hues before he went and delegated Schönefeld airport on the seventh day.

(More on Flickr.)

Mural in Reinickendorf

2010-07-14T16:21:00.003+02:00

This is on the corner of Schubart und Holzhauser Str. in the Reinickendorf district. Which is mainly famous for not much*. But at least twinned with Greenwhich where time is being produced every day.

* Architecture connoisseurs would bang me over the head with a frying pan for saying this. Reinickendorf has indeed the biggest, best and complexest complex of industrial architecture from the early 20th century anywhere in B. Among them the DWM, the former munitions factory. But that, kids, will be tomorrow's post.

Rutsche unterm Alex

2010-07-09T12:23:00.000+02:00

Manchmal ist man wie vernagelt. Diese rote Rutsche wurde neulich auf die Treppe, die zu den U-Bahnen unterm Alex führt (wenn man vom dm und der M4 kommt) gebaut. Wo ich mehrfach dran vorbei lief. Und natürlich eines, - erstklassige Schafsnase- nicht gemacht habe: mal drauf zu steigen. Jetzt könnte ich mich in den Hintern beißen, weil das nach einer Menge Freude aussieht. Da wäre mir dann auch wurscht gewesen, dass ich damit für Autos werbe. Menno!

Sometimes my wits are dimmer than the inside of my closed fridge. This red slide was recently installed over the stairs leading to the underground trains below Alexanderplatz (when you're coming from dm and the M4). Passed it by several times. Also neglected to do one thing (veritable twit that I am): to get onto it. Now I feel like kicking myself because it looks like a whole lot of delight. Couldn't cared less that this means I would have been in an ad for cars. Bugger.

S-Bahn station Wannsee

2010-07-01T18:44:00.006+02:00

Coming by these pictures (taken a while ago - now put up here with a big HEJ to Riikka in Oulu in Finland, where they built saunas into all newer flats, while all older ones have them in a hut in the courtyard, which makes me quite want to live among the Fins because it would save one the trouble of having to traipse down to the local pricey establishment which pretends to be a spa for Beautiful People only, or alternatively, the preliminary stage for later swinging shenanigans if you avail yourself of facilities of the public pool) was a classic instalment of the usual picture taking scenario chez Nicht Winken!: We've got 1.34 minutes left to make for the train, I go 'Ooooh look at this lovely ceiling' *groping around for camera in 3 feet deep handbag*, 'I'll just snap a few quick ones' *lengthy running about determining the right angle ensues*, while in the meantime the initial course of action has been abandoned. And then we have to wait for another 10 minutes on the platform because the train's gone and I have photographed everything I thought I wanted, so can't be bothered to take more pictures. Only later do I realise I haven't taken the crucial one, such as the outside of this station or the booking hall.

(It also illustrates another behavioural instinct for Nicht Winken: Every time I stare pensively at something and can't hear you talking to me, odds are it's a piece of 1930s architecture. Or a very comely pair of boobs.)

(I fail to determine why this photo refuses to go into the middle, so I allow it the free expression of its personality and let it sit where it wants so it can grow into a well-rounded adult. You can see here that I stood at a completely different vantage point from picture above.)

Königliche Hochzeit in Schweden

2010-06-19T20:53:00.000+02:00

15.33 Uhr Man könnte locker 2 Letitzas in eine Victoria stecken, sogar die Kinne würde sich ineinander stülpen lassen. Prinz Albert hat das Erscheinungsbild eines windigen Gebrauchtwagenhändlers angenommen.
15.45 Uhr Ich habe eine neue Lieblingsstelle im offliziellen Hofprotokoll für Köngliche Hochzeiten: Das Kleider-Wegraffen in dem Moment, in dem sich der Vater der Braut in die enge Bestuhlung quetschen muss. In diesem Falle Königin Margrethe im schweren Lindgrünen Brokat zur Linken und Königin Sylvia in Mittelrosa zur Rechten von Karl-Gustav. Es dauerte eine ganze Weile ehe König auf dem Sitz und Königinnen aus der leicht eingeknickten Haltung entlassen waren.
15.53 Uhr Margrethe hat den Dreh wieder raus und ist bei jeder Einstellung in der Fernsehkamera präsent. Dahinter ein Adelsfossil in Knallblau. Ansonsten sind die Kleiderfarben alle ein erschreckendes und vom Geist schwer zu verarbeitendes Fuchsia. Die Königin von Holland wurde auf dem Weg zur Kirche von marodierenden Rüschen überfallen, derer sie kaum eine abschütteln konnte. Es scheint außerdem, sie schmuggele mehrere Furbies in der Frisur. Hinter allen anwesenden Kronen sind die Haare enormst toupiert und von einem mir nicht unbekannten Blaustich durchzogen. Der Spanische Troll hat sich für eine pfirsichfarbene Laubsägearbeit entschieden, in der sie wie immer wie eine schlimme Imitation eine Käthe-Kruse-Puppe daherkommt.
16.00 Uhr In starker Formation im Publikum vertreten: die Perlenkette.
16.02 Uhr Der Schwede hält den Gottesdienst von der Redezeit her kurz, singt und fiedelt dann aber ewig.
16.24 Uhr Die Redezeit ist dann doch länger als es ursprünglich den Anschein hatte... Man singt enorm bescheidene Popmucke.

Brause-Plus

2010-06-05T17:01:00.003+02:00

I was only going to get potatoes in discount wonderland Netto and ended up leaving with this (without potatoes). Perfect fifties packaging. Guaranteed to make me buy, frame and love it 'till the day I die.
It's advertised as a remake of the best ever East German sherbet power, which I had typically never heard of in my childhood days where sherbet making would have been the order of the day. I had a fondness for condensed milk at the time. It came in these fab triangular containers of which my
mum would cut off an edge and give to me to drink while we were making hay, a rather a) drying activity as always done with the sun blasting all it's got, b) sticky activity, as all the seeds and stalky bits in hay would cling to sweaty skin and c) calf-shaping activity as our hayloft is 25 insanely steep steps up. The process practically called for condensed milk.

The flavour given for this drink here is a vague 'fruit'. Ahem. As said, I purchased it for decoration, not consumption even though anybody who wants to is free sample its fruitiness.

Ich wollte eigentlich im Discounterwunderland Netto nur Kartoffeln kaufen, und bin dann am Ende damit raus (ohne Kartoffeln). Einwandfreie Verpackung aus den 50ern. Sowas muss ich kaufen, einrahmen und lieb haben bis in den Tod.
Es wird als das beste DDR-Brausepuler beworben, obwohl ich typischer Weise davon in meinen Kindertagen, wo Brauseherstellung wohl an der Tagesordnung gewesen wäre, nie was gehört habe. Ich hatte damals eine Vorliebe für Kaffeesahne in dieser sagenhaften Dreieckspackung, von denen meine Mutti eine Ecke abschnitt, um sie mir dann während des Heumachens zu trinken zu geben. Heumachen ist eine a) recht austrocknende Tätigkeit, weil das macht, wenn die Sonne brennt wie Hugo, b) eine recht klebrige Tätigkeit, da die Samen und Halme einem auf der schwitzigen Haut kleben bleiben, und c) eine wadenformende Tätigkeit, da unser Heuboden 25 idiotisch steile Stiegen hoch geht. Der Vorgang verlangte quasi nach Kondensmilch.
Der Geschmack dieses Getränks hier wird auf der Verpackung schon unbestimmt mit Frucht angegeben. Aha. Wie schon gesagt, ich hab's für die Dekoration und nicht zum Verzehr gekauft, obwohl hier jeder Interessent gern mal von der Fruchtigkeit kosten kann.

Wedding II: Straßenbahnbetriebshof

2010-06-01T11:27:00.003+02:00

People in stovepipes and impossible haircuts whipping out cameras and frantically zooming for the right angle - the bus garage on Müllerstraße in Wedding has seen that at least twice in recent weeks. Once me, the other time the gentleman from here. And gorblimey, have we taken the same pictures! Like that one:

Or that here.

It's a wonder the tourist office hasn't stuck red arrows with 'Hipster blogger Photography Vantage Point' on the pavement yet and done a little leaflet on where to go if you run an urban architecture web presence. Whatever. The gynaecologist who has his (or her, I forget) practice on the ground floor at number 79c has probably never had its house so thoroughly documented on the net.
This being the current place where injured buses go to have their valves fixed, I was more than strangely affected to see that the BVG has a ticket machine within the perimeter of its grounds. Does that mean their employees don't get to ride home for free when they've put the weakening bus to bed?

I doubt they still live in the adjacent flats that were designed for them by Jean Krämer - who became known as the official Straßenbahn architect because he had his fingers in every public transport building pie - in the middle of the Twenties. Only it was tram maintenance back then and probably fewer blue collar and more white collar workers as the intended inhabitants. Which places us firmly in my favourite territory again. Pointy bits on intimidating building with some gratuitous alto relievo on splendid dark klinkers. Plus the houses are located on Londoner Straße which makes every old bus shed all right in my book by default.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, this comes along (speaking by the compass, this came before the garage complex on Müllerstr. but we'll ignore that for comic effect). Somehow the Twenty-firsts design managed not to ruin the Fifties shop front. Round of applause.

Einsteinturm, Potsdam

2010-05-28T19:52:00.003+02:00

Erich Mendelsohn designed this, according to his own words, "in an urge". Urge is most certainly at work here. (These sketches were nicked from a fellow blogger's post that covers the early years of the tower, erected 1921-24, with a bunch of fascinating images.)

It appears licked clean now, but its main feature for decades has been that the render kept coming off. Like a particularly rotten piece of asparagus. (Or a shoddily executed bit of steel-enforced concrete which Mendelsohn led everyone to believe this was, while in fact the tower is a brick structure that never quite made friends with the concrete attached to it, hence the self-demolition.) As a matter of fact, the tower functions as a solar research laboratory devoted to finding the proof for Einstein's theory on, well, frankly, I didn't quite understand what exactly, but that's what it does. Still being in operation, it is closed for visitors throughout the summer months.
Set in gently rolling parkland and painstakingly restored to, I assume, just the right shade of eggshell that Mendelsohn would have chosen himself had it been available at the time, for a minute there I thought I had come across Frodo's hut. I take my Expressionism with a dash more morbidity.

More images at Flickr, as per always.

Shell-Haus

2010-05-26T15:20:00.002+02:00

Built for the Shell Oil company in - guess when- 1930 by Emil Fahrenkamp as instant hot topic of discussion because of the waves, the windows, the steel frame construction, the weirdness among surrounding Kaiser Wilhelm villas, then taken over by the public transport company for Berlin for several decades, it will until the end of this year house the offices of gas provider GASAG. Then it'll close. And before that happens, the nice press lady was kind enough to let a group of people with special interests inspect it, me included. The historic interior has, as is usual, been entirely removed, with a few doors salvaged from the original design. They have wavy fronts as well, so they were used to denote the entrance to the loos. Not sure what I'd make of this if I used to be a respectable Deputy Head Accountant's door and now hang in front of the Ladies for the Complaints Dept., but at least that's something in terms of conservation endeavours, I suppose. (The loos, by the way, looked more like an austere twenties design than anything else in there, even though we were assured they were barely a few years old. I refrained from taking pictures.)

Wedding I: Rathaus

2010-05-25T13:03:00.001+02:00

If industrial architecture is your cup of tea, go to Wedding, the strictly working class district in the middle of B, where you will become a human with camera permanently attached to your face. Like me the other week. The architectural loveliness there is endless.
This is the old Rathaus (town hall), dating from 1930. The entrance hall reminds me of something between a very good lemon drizzle cake and a swimming pool with lights stolen from a Hollywood film set. The round public phone looks like a lost little 70s fossil not quite sure how it got there, hiding behind the information sign.

Steglitz - Eduard Winter, Titania Palace and the Unknown Shoe Shop

2010-05-24T11:28:00.008+02:00

A good floor a building makes. The Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) in Hansaviertel is enormously satisfactory in that way. The ground floors are made of the finest granite slabs, and the staircase is one long piece of light wood, while the upper floor has got those little wooden tiles that must be hell to hoover but great fun to poke around with a toothbrush in the joints to get the dirt out. That's one present I would like for birthday: a voucher of one hour of mindless scrubbing and poking three square meters of the Academy's upper floor, cordoned off for me especially. But that is just a digression, because we're still in Steglitz, the posh district with faded West German glamour. The problem of these still rather affluent but staid areas is that the young plus tourists have ignored them ever since the former eastern neighbourhoods have started to draw the crowds. So they update and refurbish and improve until all character has gone. I'm saying this as someone who can't get enough of the old expensive nylons-and-hustlers-parking-their-BMWs respectability of the former West but has had Friedrichshain et al up to here.

With that in mind, I am relieved that at least they didn't muck up the floor of this here. The rest went horribly wrong. A few miles past the Bierpinsel up the Steglitzer Schloßstraße, a wonderful 1950s pavilion sits and quietly cries to itself. It appears to have had better days, at least to judge by the signature above its door. Eduard Winter was a local car dealer who build this as a showroom. The Mercedes star rotated on the top. Now it's Dahlback, aka faceless pastry shop. Albeit the one where I've had my one and only diabetic cake.

And then Steglitz hastened to supply beaver with some more wood. A neon shop sign and a refurbished but thankfully not demolished Art Deco cinema. (That's another birthday voucher: Two hours in a not yet converted 1930s cinema, with floor hoovering please.) Thank you, Steglitz.

Ulrich Müther - Seerose

2010-05-22T20:46:00.005+02:00

I have subliminally wondered why the spaceship ramps at the foot of the Fernsehturm rock more than the television asparagus itself. I should have known.
They're by Ulrich Müther. The man who made concrete believe in itself, learn belly dancing and eventually become an astronaut. The most prominent pavilion he did for Berlin, the Ahornblatt - maple leaf- is the spiky cousin to this, home to the canteen of the former Building Ministry of the GDR, and was demolished in 2000. There is a short film about this. (He did the Planetarium in Prenzlauer Berg as well, that is going to be my next target).
The pavilion Seerose in Potsdam is one of his later works and suffers a bit from the miserable window design that the window material shortage in the GDR is most likely responsible for. At least I can't imagine that Müther seriously liked the square peg in the round shell.
Neither would he love the way they turned this restaurant into a beach bar, complete with sand on the floor, rubbish music, orange drapes (NOT to mention the pot plants) to the complete ruin of all sweeping shapes.

That is the sign at the door of the men's room. The ladies are pointed by a mermaid.

Since Müther's constructions allow my happy hormones to get their party hats out, there will be much more of his goodies here in posts to come.

U-Bahnhof Fehrbelliner Platz

2010-05-19T11:06:00.006+02:00

The western end of the U7is characterised by the groovy look of the stations, mostly below ground though. This one stands out, in the literal sense - and has probably been photographed to death. I just stabbed the carcass a few more times in the chest. Opened in 1971, it is the work of the second greatest architect involved with the Berlin U-Bahn after Alfred Grenander (who did something just as fancy in the 1920s with Bülowstraße station's exemplary Jugendstil), Rainer G. Rümmler. He clearly didn't believe in understatement but instead in mosaic tiles.

I'm just glad they kept the roundness going in the shop on the platform, because a renovation in 1999 obliterated all further uniqueness, making the area rather faceless, particularly when compared to the walls you see when looking out at stations Blissestraße and Jungfernheide on the same line.

Bierpinsel Steglitz

2010-05-15T16:25:00.003+02:00

(Image courtesy of MutterErde, used under Common licence)

The Bierpinsel - beer brush, typical of the way Berliners have of merging form and function in a poignant moniker: it looks like a brush and you can drink a beer in there - used to have a vivid orange finish. Until a few weeks ago, when the new owners decided to paint the "faces of the great scholars of Dahlem" (of the nearby Free University of Dahlem) as part of an art installation onto it. (Art installations are to me what the tumble dryer is to the African tribesman - great idea, and someone somewhere most certainly will find a use for it, but why bother?) The paint is supposed to wash off. Hopefully soon. Like, today, when it's pouring anyway? That would be mere one day after it's completion according to today's paper, but seeing as life itself is a fleeting thing anyway ...

The Brush is just the pinnacle of a whole street complex. It sits next to a flyover whose underbelly is made up of two shops on either side and which rests on the glorious spaceship that is the U-Bahn stop Schloßstraße. The overall feeling of the area being durchdesigned is what I love about it: the glass pencil at the side of the shop selling toys and stationary, the orange panelling on the bridge's underside, the dark green tiles that dominate the middle floor of the station before it dips into Lego territory. Round edges dominate below ground . You don't want to walk around there as much as swim through it.

Yellow Food Day

2010-05-15T14:38:00.001+02:00

I'm fine with the weather (for people in other corners of the planet: pissing at 5°C). But I reckoned I'd like it even more if I had something suitably mummy-ish to eat. Hence all yellow food this lunch. Asparagus with eggy vinaigrette, fresh spuds and lemon curd pud.

Ich hab jetzt mit dem Wetter kein Problem (für alle in andern Ecken des Planeten: schifft bei 5°C). Aber ich hab mir so gedacht, dass ich damit noch besser klar käme, wenn es was passend Mutti-mäßiges zu Essen gäbe. Daher heute zum Mittagessen nur gelbe Sachen. Spargel mit Eiervinaigrette, frischen Knollen und Lemon Curd Pudding).

Vintage in Stockholm - Judits Second Hand

2010-05-13T19:30:00.000+02:00

Promised, this is the last Stockholm post I'm doing this year. I'll return to foraging around Berlin from tomorrow noon again.

As far as the vintage shops I've visited go, Judits holds the Golden Belt. Located on Södermalm, the portion of Stockholm where the Scandinavian Hipster roams wild and free and pokes his/her monstrous spectacles out of awfully out there cafés, I wasn't expecting anything beyond salvation army chic. Aka boots, old skirts and your grandma's ruined handbag. Boy, was I wrong. Judits' is stuffed full of actual DESIGNERS. How about a list? All Saints, Chanel, Chlôe, Dior , Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair, Gucci, Hermès, Kishimoto, Louis Vuitton, Nakkna, Marlene Birger, Pucci, Rodebjer, Sonia Rykiel, Whyred, YSL, and, well, the ubiquitous Swedish retailer, too. A Rykiel top I inspected cost 490 SEK (around 50 Euros), while a sweet pair for limited edition H&M shorts went for 99 SEK. The clothes are all in impeccable condition and there is loads of them! Handbags of high-class origin beckon, as well as a corner reserved for anything jeans. There are beautiful vintage dresses, again looking completely unworn (probably being just that), at perfectly justified prices.

The biggest plus is the shop itself. Large, high-ceilinged, with chandeliers, wooden floor and two well-lit changing cabins with a full-sized mirror.

I mourn the fact that Berlin can't come up with anything as well thought out as this.

Style/Stil: Strictly designer, with genuine vintage pieces./ Reine Designer mit echtem Vintage.

Assortment/ Auswahl: 10/10

Concentration on Big Names/ Designerdichte: 11/10

Shop till you drop/ Einkaufsvergnügen: 11/10

Damage to purse/ Schaden am Portemonnaie: Ist sein Geld wert./ Value for money.

Judits Second Hand
Hornsgatan 75
Södermalm
Tunnelbana Zinkensdamm

Stockhom. Skogskyrkogården by Gunnar Asplund.

2010-05-13T16:48:00.001+02:00

Skogskyrkogården means Waldfriedhof which in turn means forrest cemetary - and that's exactly what most of this place looks like. Litte graves with daffodils and lots of fir trees around them.
However, that is but the backyard, so to speak. This straightforward combo of crematorium and chapel are the representative entrance, built during the late 30s. Which set me instantly on the low smoldering fire of adoration. My snappings do it's sublimity no justice at all but simply sitting there and staring into space unwinds the very tightest inner coil. Definitely helped by this most attractive clock face.

And these are the toilets.

Vällingby. Swedish suburbs from the drawing board.

2010-05-07T16:28:00.001+02:00

Vällingby, south of Stockholm, is the kind of suburb one might want to live in. Then again not.
It was thought up in the early 1950s, with a shopping centre as the heart and the church as the kidney (albeit the former looks a lot edgier while the latter is more of a boxy affair, but that's metaphors for you).
It has been a popular dwelling site ever since. Even though recently spruced up a bit, the main relics are still there:

(Note: Taken in my absolute second favourite Swedish institution: the coffee place. Had apple pie that day.)

(Why do the nicest looking cinemas always show the least nice films? Not to say, utter rubbish films?)

(Churchyard. Note bellfry.)

The prettiest lamps of them all can be found three posts back.

Mies van der Rohe Haus , ehemalige Villa Lemke

2010-04-30T12:28:00.001+02:00

Clutter-free house with a view. Empty more or less, floor to ceiling windows.
Would have loved to find out what the kitchen looked like but the public is only allowed into three rooms on the ground floor.

More views of the actual building on my Flickr - top right.

Waving from Foreign Cities: Back, with strumpbyxor in the luggage

2010-04-22T18:14:00.004+02:00

The Swedes really know how to make strumpbyxor. That is Strumpfhosen or tights. Bought one and put it in my 8 kilogram Ryan cabin luggage. Which was useless by the time but meant that I could freely jump about without a suitcase banging into my heels.
I am finally back (have been for a day). Took 4 trains, and twelve hours, one free coffee, several free snacks, one Elle, one Mojo Magazine, the first pages of White Teeth by Zadie Smith, the entire Fever Ray album, PJ Harvey, The Charlatans, BBC2 podcasts on food and an Irishman with a MacBook Pro to keep me quiet and nip all murderous urges toward my fellow travellers in the bud.
Enjoyed the journey quite a lot. Better than flying which is just in - up - down - out again. A bit like that advertising campaign Ford had a while ago. You slowly leave one place, go to another, cross a big bridge across the Oresund, arrive at Copenhagen, traipse around the city, back on the ICE, more free snacks, arrive at night time and think that you've actually DONE something today.
Travelled first class, 'cos I figured that I wasn't going to do this any time soon again.

Here are a some groovy 1960s lamps from suburb-deluxe, Vällingby. Where there were very good cakes indeed.

God, I miss those Swedish cakes.

Waving from Foreign Cities: Strumpbyxor

2010-04-18T20:04:00.000+02:00

All the muddle with volcanic ash (ich mein, was ausser so halbwegs Björk hat Island eigentlich jemals Gescheites hervorgebracht?)- ok, the cancelling, rebooking, finding a cart and some horses and a ferryman, and if that fails buying a fetching bikini to swim across the sea to Rostock then walk from there - all this has made me forget to mention that the city has grown on me. Ther is something about Stockholm, the Stockholmers all enormously relaxed, and by Jove, would I kill for those cakes!
1) The cakes. Just to stress them again. No faux American carrot rubbish or those poxy muffins that I can't stand and consider a waste of flour. When you go for Kaffeetrinken, you get old-style filter coffee with free refill. Free whipped cream and vanilla sauce, too. As Shakira coined it : Hips don't lie.
2) One of the greatest words (phonetically) in all the Germanic languages: strumpbyxor. (Was mich dran erinnert, wie mein Papa bei der länger dauerenden Vorbereitung seiner Damen vor grösseren Ausfahrten immer entnervt ins Schlafzimmer bruellte: "Na seid ihr endlich mal in der Buechs drin?" Und dabei kommt bei uns in der Familie gar niemand aus dem Norden.)
3) The city is completely graffiti-free. If all Berliners swore on oath that they would abandon their rickety fleamarket furniture and the Korean cars, and for the next 10 years bought nothing but Billy and Saabs: Would the Stockholm officials let the Berlin officials into the secret?
4) It's a bit dim to pick up the architecture guide on the last but one day and realise accordingly that there are 483 cool buildings you haven't seen yet. Gives me sleepless nights.
5) The underground cars do an utterly lovely thing: Train stops, doors stay closed for 5 seconds, then noiselessly slide open all at once. Seeing it from the platform looks like choreography. No jerky banging open as in Berlin.
Life doesn't seem like such a drudge here. (Might be the cakes.)

Und weil ich gerade ein bissl Zeit habe, hier fuer die deutschen Leserinnen ;)
Das ganze Hin und Her mit der Vulkanasche (der Teil ist schon in Deutsch im englischen Absatz)- also, das ganze Stornieren, Umbuchen, Suchen einer Kutsche mit Pferden nebst Fährmann, und falls das nix wird, zumindest einen schicken Bikini kaufen, mit dem ich dann die See nach Rostock durchschwimme, von wo aus ich laufe - hat dazu gefuehrt, dass ich ganz zu erwähnen vergessen habe, dass ich mich mit der Stadt langsam aber sicher extrem angefreundet habe. Stockholm hat was, die Stockholmer sind enorm entspannt, und meine Herren Gesangsverein, die Kuchen sind der Hammer!
1) Kuchen. Wollt's nochmal betonen. Keine ekligen Möchtegern-Karottenkuchen oder diese bescheuerten Muffins, die ich fuer eine Mehlverschwendung halte. Beim Kaffetrinken gibt's hier Filterkaffee zum Nachschenken (schmeckt mir. bin selber ueberrascht). Gilt auch fuer Schlagsahne und Vanillesauce. Wie Shakiiiiiira schon wusste: Hueften luegen nuecht.
2) Eines der am schönsten klingenden Worte in der Germanischen Sprachfamilie: strumpbyxor. (Siehe oben.)
3) Hier gibts nirgendswo Graffiti. Wenn alle Berliner sich fuer die nächsten 10 Jahre auf Eid verpflichteten, ihre Flohmarktmöbel und Koreanischen Autos rauszuschmeissen und stattdessen nur noch Billy und Saabs zu kaufen - wuerden die Stockholmer Stadtväter die Berliner Stadtväter ins diesbezuegliche Geheimnis einweihen?
4) Ist ein bissl doof, den Architekturfuehrer am vorletzten Tag in die Hand zu nehmen, um festzustellen, dass man 483 coole Gebäude noch nicht gesehen hat. Lässt mich schlecht schlafen.
5) Die U-Bahn-Wagen können was Tolles: Zug hält an, Tueren bleiben fuer 5 Sekunden geschlossen, um dann alle simultan aufzugehen. Wenn man das vom Bahnsteig aus beobachtet, sieht es aus wie choreographiert. Keine ruckliges Aufknallen wie in Berlin.
Leben erscheint hier nicht so ein wahnsinner Akt zu sein (kann an den Kuchen liegen).

Waving in Foreign cities: Ash clouds

2010-04-16T21:30:00.000+02:00

It's official now: Iceland has a coughing glacier and all of Sweden is stuck on its island. Me included. Flights cancelled until Tuesday lunchtime, and that's just for the time being. I can't get away
Feel like Greta Garbo now: I want to go home.

Winken im Ausland: Stockholm Tag 2

2010-04-14T20:08:00.001+02:00

Mein Gehirn ist zu schwach um hier noch was auf Englisch hinzukriegen,
und wenn es auch noch in den Fuessen (Achtung, schwedische Tastatur
hat kein U mit Punkten drueber) wäre, dann gänge hier gleich gar
nichts mehr.
Ergebnisse des heutigen Tages:
1. Beim Stockholmer Nahverkehr kann man Streifenkarten zum Entwerten
kaufen. Die werden jetzt aber nicht am Automaten entwertert, sonder
von einer Fachkraft am Schalter beim Betreten der U-Bahn bzw. vom
Busfahrer - mit einem klassischen altmodischen Metallstempel mit der
Zeit drauf.
2. Habe heute tollen Pullover gekauft. Mit der englischen Krone als
Applikation. Wo isser her? Topshop.
3. Wenn der schwedische Architekt was Weihevolles gestalten soll -
sagen wir mal die Tauerhalle eines Friedhofes - dann macht er Säulen,
die aussehen wie der Stiel eines Pilzes und drueber Spitzdach. Alles
furchtbar wie Astrid Lindgren.
4. Mein Lieblingsding hier: Irgendwie scheint Kleingeldknappheit zu
herrschen, weshalb grundsätzlich alles mit -,90 aufgerundet wird. Die
Muenzen gibt man im Supermarkt aber nicht mit zusammen mit dem
Papiergeld dem Kassierer, sondern schmeisst sie in einen extra Kasten
nebern der Kasse, wo dann auch das Wechselgeld wieder rauskommt und in
ein Schälchen fällt.)

Und jetzt kommen grad die doofen Deutschen hinter mir an den Pc,
deshalb weg hier ...¨
Bis morgen.

Waving in Foreign Cities:Stockholm Day 1

2010-04-13T18:47:00.001+02:00

I'm currently doing the tourist and running about in Stockholm,
posting via email. Sadly no pictures therefore.
Here are the day's results.
1. Had the smoothest boarding of a flight ever. Out of commuter train,
straight to security, coat off, bangles off, thank you mam, on to the
gate and passenger number 6 on the Boing in row 2.
2. My room in 'Sweden's most modern hostel' is so small you can't
swing a cat in it. Because you wouldn't get the cat past the door. A
hamster perhaps. And it's on the ground floor. No flinging open of
windows.
3. Did the gentile part of town today. Less than enamoured. Looks like
it was built to impress future tourists. Am very much beginning to see
the funkyness of good old lady B now.
4. All the chicks here have legs like Geldings, wear black tights with
a bit of flimsy t-black/white striped t-shirt on top and dishmop hair.
Not sure I make it till Sunday without accosting one and informing her
that she has forgotten her bottom garments. Her attire are just
nylons, made of see-through stuff.
5. The Scandinavian hipster in its natural habitat. Almost
frightening. Sat next to a bunch at the gate and shook visibly.

Reports will continue. Good night.

(Let's just hope this gets posted.)

Rundhaus by Martin Koerber

2010-04-12T19:02:00.000+02:00

This is the second post on Martin Koerber's round house design (sadly never executed in the scope intended by Koerber but for one example, which is currently the topic of a small exhibition in the state archive of another town with too many castles and not enough round buildings, Greiz).
I've uploaded the pictures I took of the exhibits to my Flickr, hopefully not infringing on anybody's copyright or ideas. There is one image of the current state of the house's interior and it's confirmation of all my prejudices about German taste in interior design - if you can't get the Schrankwand in (especially if you have wall cupboards galore), you go for second best: the monster couch. Accompanied by its evil side-kick, the net curtain.
This is not what Koerber had had in mind. He stressed in the facsimiled article, that all absence of the 'dust ledge' in his cupboards plus the fact that they didn't have an above, below or behind for dirt to go, increased domestic hygiene and made life a lot easier for the house wife.
Not for this house wife, apparently.

Nicht winken! In der "Provinz"!

2010-04-10T09:07:00.003+02:00

(Wobei sich die Provinz jetzt wild beschweren gehen wird, denn in der Provinz gibt es natürlich unglauuuublich viele schöne Dinge zu entdecken und die Häuser haben alle noch ihre alten Verzierungen dran und auch der Kaffee kostet nicht viel und außerdem bieten wir ja auch durchaus was für die Jugend an ! Und da fehlt einem bestimmt nix was man in Berlin sonst auch hat, sagt die Frau von der Zwickauer Pressestelle. Nehm ich jetzt mal an, nicht das ich sie gefragt hätte.)
Ich habe also in der sächsischen Metropole Zwickau auch nicht gewunken, sondern verzweifelt ein bisschen Ostmoderne vor die Linse zu bekommen versucht, wo doch sonst alles schwere Gründerzeit ist im Stadtkern.
Es klappte dann nur am anderen Ende des Marktes mit dem reizenden Äußeren dieser gastronomischen Einrichtung, Name jetzt vergessen.

Die auch gern schon durch ihren Zaun erkennen lässt, was drinnen ausgeschenkt wird.

Das schönste Stück fand sich am Ferienhaus des Verbands des Deutschen Forstwesens (wiederum nur geraten, da weder Schild vorhanden noch Nachfrage möglich) im Werdauer Wald, wo ich immer mit dem Fahrrad langfahre.

Die Eule in ihrem Ekotplasma, nebem dem schwer hibbelig wirkenden kleinen Fuchs. Schön isses.

AEG Turbinenhalle

2010-03-25T17:04:00.002+01:00

The current Siemen's production complex on Huttenstraße in Moabit is flanked by Peter Behren's assembly hall for turbines which just doesn't dick about. It's here to stay and don't you dare to argue.

It also apparently leached the brain powers from the people working there. When queried about whether the hall could be visited, the clerk at the specially indicated Information Desk feigned ignorance. He looked like he was generally unaware of what his position within the greater scale of things was. When prodded he pointed to a leaflet which also didn't bother supplying any information.

Did consider whether I shouldn't just have walked up to the building's outside wall - the one with the ironworks -, ask it to let me in, and then wait for a big crack to open up. It's the type of brain-in-stone construction that I suspect of having no problem at all with this sort of thing.

Another Peter Behrens Halle in Wedding is coincidentally now a test laboratory for the University of Technology.

Another Creative Entrance Mural

2010-03-25T16:14:00.001+01:00

This time on Gotzkowskystraße in Moabit, adorning the office building of the Gewerkschaft Nahrung-Genuss-Gaststätten (Food, Beverages and Catering Union), so we're most likely witnessing a procession of happy people who have just stopped for a bite to eat plus a drink.

Vintage in Berlin - Second-Hand in Berlin

2010-03-20T08:45:00.005+01:00

Garments hat in letzter Zeit in der Presse fröhliche Urständ gefeiert, und weil ich generell nie weiß, wann die Glocke geschlagen hat, gebe ich als Bummelletzte auch noch meinen Ketchup dazu ab (was ich schon seit meiner ersten Expedition dahin im Januar vorhatte).
Der Laden ist es immer schön aufgeräumt, es riecht nicht und weder Ware noch Verkäuferinnen haben ihre besten Tragezeiten schon hinter sich. Hier bekommt man tatsächliche Marken (also kein Esprit) zu kaufen, die streng nach dem Originalitätskriterium ausgesucht werden und bei denen der Reißverschluss auch wieder aufgeht. Wenn die gelbe Strickjacke von Vero Moda weit genug aus der Masse heraus sticht, dann wird sie mit einem Preisschild versehen, dass einem garantiert nicht die Tränen in die Augen treibt und bei Garments prominent auf die Kleiderstange gehängt. Die vorhandenen viereinalb Stangen wirken auf den ersten Blick zwar ausgesprochen übersichtlich, haben es aber in sich, weil sie 1. nach Farben sortiert, 2. dem "wo hast du denn DAS her?"-Faktor folgen und 3. auffallend divers bestückt sind. Darunter sind tatsächliche Vintagestücke, dicke fette Angebermarken der vergangenen Saison, und wenn Anna Sui eine Kittelschürze mit Napfkuchen-Applikation im Angebot hätte, dann würde die auch da hängen. Schuhe sind schmeichlerisch günstig (echte Leder-Chucks in Silber für 39 Euro), aber das Beeindruckenste ist der Schmuck. Klunker wie aus dem Bilderbuch der 80er. Broschen, Colliers, Kettengebilde, bei denen mehr Metall an einer dran ist als bei manchen Leuten im gesamten im Schmuckkasten.

Da der Laden den Anspruch einer Boutique hat, ist munteres Klamottenraffen, mit der Freundin in der Umkleide verschwinden und T-Shirt-Weitwurf leider nicht möglich, aber dafür setze man sich in die U2 bis Nollendorfplatz und mache all das bei Garage. Wo die italienischen Touristen denken, sie kaufen jetzt aber mal den total hippen Berliner Ranzfummel, von dem ihnen keiner gesagt hat, dass der aus dem DRK-Container stammt. Und auch so müffelt.

Garments is the real deal - and has lately had the time of its life in the local press. Never one for missing opportunities when they're almost out the door, I'm ready to put in my three cents now and here, as I had planned ever since my first excursion there in January.
The shop is never cluttered, doesn't smell and neither the goods nor the proprietors have seen their best days yet. Here they sell actual brands (hence no German secretary-on-cycling-holiday uniform Esprit) which are selected by originality and whose zip does indeed close. If the buttercup-yellow cardie by Vero Moda is a real eyecatcher, Garments will slap on a price tag that definitely won't make your eyes water and arrange it prominently on one of it four and a half rails. The quantity of the merchandise on these racks appears rather lean at a cursory glance, but don't be put off - they are 1. sorted by colour, 2. guarantee "Where did you get THAT from" reactions, and 3. run the whole gamut of fashion. You'll find genuine vintage pieces, dress-to-impress names, and if Anna Sui were to make an apron with a cake application, Garments would stock it, too. Shoes are wonderful value for money (a pair of leather Chucks in silver went for 39 Euros), while the most impressive feature of the shop is the jewellery. Rocks straight from the 80's fashion text book. Brooches, necklaces in all weights and structures that have more metal to one piece than other people's entire jewellery box. As the shop wants to be a boutique, trash buying, 2 hour giggling sessions over the rubbish skirt your girlfriend has just thrown on in the changing room and t-shirt throwing competitions are out of the question here, but to that purpose you would be advised to board the U2 to Nollendorfplatz where all of this is perfectly possible at Garage second hand. The place where all the Italian tourists are convinced they're buying the awfully hip piece of Berlin clobber 'cause no-one has told them the clothes are fresh from the big Red Cross collections bins on the street. Pong included.

Style/Stil: Strictly designer, with genuine vintage pieces./ Reine Designer mit echtem Vintage.
Assortment/ Auswahl: 9/10

Concentration on Big Names/ Designerdichte: 9/10

Shop till you drop/ Einkaufsvergnügen: 8/10

Damage to purse/ Schaden am Portemonnaie: Ist sein Geld wert./ Value for money.

Garments - Vintage Clothing
Stargarder Str. 12
Berlin -Prenzlauer Berg
Mo -Sa 12 bis 19 Uhr / Mon - Sat 12 am until 7 pm
U-Bahn: U2 Schönhauser Allee

John Hejduk Petition

2010-03-19T17:16:00.002+01:00

Anybody who wants to see the eyebrows and beaks stuck back onto John Hejduk's Kreuzberg social housing complex - more to the right in my Flickr slide show -, which the house that has a face is currently doing without because investors have decided to do it up, please go and sign this petition.
(Ahem, I got involved because I did the German translation of said missive).

For more information, opinion pieces and learned analysis move over here:
Slab Magazine
Fantastic Journal
Architecture in Berlin (who got all this started)

Auch deutsche Nicht-Architekten dürfen unterschreiben. Petition und Pressetext wurden von der Blogtusse hier und der Coolsten Tusse Überhaupt (TM) ins Deutsche geklopft, was uns beiden das Gefühl gab nicht nur was für die Archtitekturgeschichte im Großen und Ganzen getan zu haben, sondern endlich auch unsere Magister in Germanistik vor der breiten Öffentlichkeit gerechtfertigt zu haben.
Ich bin ehrlich: Ich stand vor den Häusern und war maximal unbeeindruckt. Allerdings sollte man auch endlich mal irgendwelchen Investorenfirmen einen Riegel vorschieben, die gern an baugeschichtlich wertvollen Häusern rumschrauben, um sie gnadenlos aufzuhübschen. Daher ist die Petition für John Hejduks Gebäude prinzipiell was Gutes.

Some people want a creative door buzzer.

2010-03-15T14:57:00.000+01:00

I was on Wittenbergplatz today. In itself not an occurrence of national significance, but nevertheless quite sweet, because I found
a) a nice old-fashioned chemists where I was given a glass of water to go with my Paracetamol and a free packet of tissues
b) the home of the GEMA
c) the rather unplacable (in the sense of point in time of construction) houses along Auguststraße,
d) a generally very empty Tauentzienstraße as 9.30 means nothing is open and
e) this elaborate piece of buzzer embellishment.
If you can call it that.

Harry Rowohlt tells a joke.

2010-03-13T19:05:00.001+01:00

And it goes like this.
The three slimmest books in history: "Italian Heroism", "Great English Food", and "1000 Years of German Humour".

Und der geht so.
Die drei schmalsten Bücher der Welt: "Italienische Heldentaten", "Englische Köstlichkeiten" und "1000 Jahre Deutscher Humor".

Vintage in Berlin. Second-Hand in Berlin.

2010-03-08T18:21:00.001+01:00

Das Berliner Modeinstitut liegt in einer Ecke, die nicht unbedingt überläuft mit guten Vintage-Läden. Oder überhaupt guten Second-Hand-Läden. Der größte Humana Deutschlands am Frankfurter Tor hat zwar das schönste Ladengeschäft mit den beeindruckendsten Beleuchtungskörpern, allerdings ein ziemlich mageres Angebot. Es sei denn, man ist 50, trägt gern quergestreift mit Polyesterhose oder Dirndl. Oder Pelze. Für alte Persianer ist da das wahre Eldorado. Auch wenn die Dinger gern mal die Haare verlieren.
Im Modeinstitut hängen zwar auch die ein oder anderen Pimkie-Kittel, aber wenn man genauer hinsieht, findet sich dazwischen das Herz erfreuende Kleider aus den 60er und 70er, von denen keins eine größere
Schneise als die von 40 Euro in die Barschaft schlägt. Und zwar wirklich hauptsächlich Kleider, alle sehr hübsch, tragbar, keine Blumenkästen in "Präsent 20", die schon an Tante Hulda auf dem Ausflugsfoto zum Wannsee fraglich aussahen. Eine schicke Jacke gab's auch. Fiel mir auf, weil ich eine schwache Sicherung für Jacken habe.

PS: Für die Abteilung Hohe Schuhe: Falls ihr welche tragen wollte, die schweinebequem sind und am Fuß (nicht direkt Bild) schwachmatisch nach Vogue aussehen, dann holt euch die - den Clarks Langford Baton. Heute morgen im Laden angehabt und nicht mehr ausgezogen seitdem. Obwohl die Marke auch immer so die Mutti-Schuhe mit Platz für den Ballenzeh macht, ist das in diesem Falle gut, weil sie a) ein ordentliches Fußbett mit Polster und b) einen federnden Absatz rein- bzw. druntergemacht haben.

Berliner Modeinstitut resides in a corner of Friedrichshain which is not exactly inundated with good vintage shops. Or any good second hand shops. The biggest Humana second-hand shop on Frankfurter Tor is retails in the most beautiful house with the most impressive lighting gear (or as the public relation chicks of the BCC dubbed it: light situations), has nothing much on offer stock-wise. Unless, of course, you are 50 years old, love horizontal stripes and polyester trousers, or Dirndls. Or fur coats. It's a veritable graveyard for furs there. They lose their hairs occasionally, mind.

The Modeinstitut does have one or two dreadful nondescript pieces, but on closer inspection reveals dresses from the 60s and 70s that make the heart and purse rejoice, as they amount to no more than 30 to 40 euros. Mostly dresses, all of them pretty, wearable and far from the flower box in synthetic fibre that made aunt Hulda look rather suspicious on the snapshot of her outing to lake Wannsee.

There was a glamorous little jacket too; just saying because I've got a weak fuse for jackets.

Style/Stil: Usual jumpers/jeans/tops arrangement, with 60s and 70s gems mixed in./ Das übliche Pulli/Jeans/Oberteile-Arrangement, mit echten Schmäckerchen aus den 60ern und 70ern darunter.
Assortment/ Auswahl: 7/10

Concentration on Big Names/ Designerdichte: 4/10

Shop till you drop/ Einkaufsvergnügen: 7/10

Damage to purse/ Schaden am Portemonnaie: Neglectable./ Zu vernachlässigen.

Berliner Modeinstitut
Samariterstr. 8
Berlin -Friedrichshain
Mo -Sa 11 bis 19 Uhr / Mon - Sat 11 am until 7 pm
U-Bahn: U5 Samariterstraße

I have held an Oscar.

2010-03-07T17:48:00.003+01:00

I got to hold an Oscar. And by Jove, was it heavy. (It belonged to the set designer of some Wim Wenders film I'd never heard of. We were allowed to lift it with gloves. Nobody dared, so while the curator wasn't looking, I did it. With one hand. Not recommended. When the recipients look all cringey and strained in the pictures, it's because they're holding a sack of potatoes shaped like a golden bloke aloft.)
I also stood in front of Marelene Dietrich's furniture, dresses (the woman had neither a bump at the front nor the back and would have easily fit into one of her own hat boxes, folded), swan coat, shoes, suitcases and film posters.
The Kinemathek's archive in Moabit opened its doors to the public yesterday, and the public incarnated as middle-aged gentlemen, their wives and me came for a guided tour.
As the archive collects practically everything linked to German film production, there was no shortage of rare gems.

Such as this camera which was used for shooting the main photography on Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I quickly, barely noticeably bowed.

Another instance for almost-genuflection. The original production drawing for a scene of Fritz Lang's Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse. Set-up for exploding a factory.

This time I did go down on my knee. Original model for a scene in Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari. I probably shouldn't have used the flash. Am now filled with remorse.

All this had essentially taken care of three films on my Best Films Forever list.

Now follow the Dietrich exhibits:

Shoes. Not to walk in real life but to wear on stage while having half a bottle of Johnny Walker inside one.

Stage dress from MD's tours as chansonette. Which in my grandma's book meant that you can't sing but at least stand upright in front of a microphone.

Projectors, from the 1960s. They were HUGE.

Fritz Kahn - Man Machine. Maschine Mensch

2010-03-01T15:11:00.004+01:00

Let us illustrate the male erection. I love the little ball dropping on the spring that releases the valve to you know what, girls.
The idea is Kahn's, the illustration somebody else's (I went in thinking that Kahn filled both jobs, but he was the doctor who outsourced his designs to various artists).
I regret to say it, but the exhibition of Dr Fritz Kahn's attempts at describing the body as a factory was a major let-down. All the fascinating pictures appear to have been shooed into the accompanying book , while the actual displays stuck the leftovers on ten cardboard panels in black and white images the size of an iPhone. To diminish their effect even further, they were wedged between the gruesome plastinates of lung cancer, deformed feet and hydrocephaly of the permanent exhibition. So I blinkered myself to the rest of the rooms and came out all disappointed, feeling like one monstrous goosebump. A goosebump very much in need of refreshments to stave off the nausea caused by just having beheld a real trichophagia (that's when people eat their own hair and it makes a nasty ball in their lower intestine). A surefire way of letting the stunning industrial imagery of Kahn's ideas pass everyone completely by, that was.
Still, whatever I was able to discern of the designs while valiantly avoiding the display cases left, right and centre, showed a great deal of what my History teacher used to call Fächerübergreifendes Vorstellungsvermögen (interdisciplinary imagination, sort of) and the Neue Sachlichkeit approach much in demand during the 1920s - which I can't get enough of. Hmpf. It also made me think of Georg Kaiser's expressionist stage play Gas in which everything is reduced to an ongoing production process. Kahn very clearly lived the zeitgeist- vide the mechanics of human sneeze below. (Wonder what my Biology teacher would have made of it if I had told him that an allergic reaction to to flowers involved three blokes in lab coats. Next time I sneeze I will try not to tilt my head, 'cause they don't seem to be fastened to anything, do they?)

Do fear that I will have to purchase the book now the more I stare at the pictures below.

Fritz Kahn - Maschine Mensch . Körperbilder der Moderne is on at the Medizinhistorische Museum of the Charité until April 11, open 10 pm until 7 pm, closed Mondays.

Kulturforum Berlin. Stairs as far as your retina can cope.

2010-02-23T16:18:00.004+01:00

The Berliner Kulturforum is in today's paper. It is supposed to be prettified or finally turned into a homogeneous space in keeping with architect Hans Sharoun's original idea. Which means they'll scatter potted shrubbery about before adding an information pavilion somewhere else.

The Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Arts and Crafts) is located opposite the Philharmonie and at the far right end of the granite skating rink that is the remaining Kulturforum.

Here is a look at it - the red bricks hulking in the background. How misleading an exterior.

Once inside you realise that here the fate of the staircase is indeed a splendid one. What the Niagara Falls did for water, this building does for stairs and staggered floors. Aforementioned article called it brutalist, to which I would reply that a little brutality has never yet hurt a vista. People could have a week of free-climbing holiday in there.

It was conceived by architect Rolf Gutbrod - who is also the father of a number of 60s gems in Berlin, among them a few on the Mecca for all highrise lovers, Ernst-Reuter-Platz in Charlottenburg - in 1967 but not executed until the 1980s. That would explain the clash of chunky concrete structures and polished wood railings.
It is the ideal venue for a mass sleepover. First the museum knocks you off your feet as a space, then while you're on your face the presentation of the artefacts make you faint with dullness. Maybe next year the Berlinale arts section might want to pick up the idea.

The collection houses remarkable stuff but does not know how to present it other than sorted chronologically, with standalone showpieces, well, standing alone, desperately crying out to the curator to give them some context next time around. And on occasion very oddly placed.

C'mon folks, make the more of your daylight display cases and hardcore stunning concrete Ha-Has. Some museums have to cope with poky broom-cupboards in damp Renaissance castles while you have light, air, fire-extinguishers and neon tubes in spades. You also have a red foot. The Egyptian museum makes a mint out of a woman half it's size and with only one eye.

After valiant climbing and descending, I stood eye to tiny spout with the best teapot in the world, the Cube. Stacking heaven.

Scharoun Bar in the Galerie Bremer - closed.

2010-02-23T15:17:00.001+01:00

Classic case of too late. Recently the Berlin Architecture Stammtisch mentioned that Hans Scharoun - see Philharmonie in previous post - had sometime in the 1950s designed a cosy bar in Charlottenburg, in the back room of a gallery. It is supposed to be the oldest cocktail bar in Berlin.
Today I read in the paper that celebrity hair curler Udo Walz had bought the place, reopened it as another gallery (for photography this time) - and cleared out the Scharoun interior because the owner 'asked 30,000 Euros' for the fittings.

It's currently in storage in Schöneberg, reportedly to be installed in another bar further down the Ku'damm.

Der Berliner Fernsehturm. Jetzt heißt er ja TV-Turm. Oder TV Tower.

2010-02-15T19:45:00.003+01:00

If Monday morning doesn't hold any excitement for you, the TV tower (schöner und besser, der Fernsehturm) will happily welcome you with its wood panelled arms because it feels quite lonely at the start of the week. You can ride in a bit of a lift that has never had a chance to grow up and become a proper big elevator.

You will then be seated by the magnanimously grumpy waiters that must have started their job the day the tower opened. While the restaurant slowly make its round you can pass a glass mural just that side of Bulgarian impressionism and a vase resolutely this side of folklore. They do breakfast with two spoonfuls of jam. This is also home to the comfiest chairs I've ever sat on while having two spoonfuls of jam. They don't serve fried dishes due to fire security reasons, however. One couldn't help extinguish a fire anyway, as one has to leave your water bottle with the downstairs security guard where our two languished all by themselves on a side table.

This bulb has got the day off and went to visit its aunt in Crimmitschau.

You can then break out the camera that you have most certainly brought with you and start photographing the ant trails people have left on Alexanderplatz.

And the mother lamp which sold all its offspring to IKEA.

I found it all quite smashing and convincingly tacky. Like all stylistic endeavours of the former eastern Germany I know. Someone always had the idea that if they put a dried flower arrangement in a corner of an otherwise perfectly austere space age design, a lot of other members of the public might walk in, say 'Look Günther, here's a nice bit of decoration', and immediately no longer feel so unconnected to life at large.

St Blasien

2010-02-15T19:05:00.000+01:00

Darf ich das eigentlich lustig finden, dass die Missbräuche von Schülern durch katholische Pater an einem Kolleg namen St Blasien stattgefunden haben? Hat der liebe Herr Humor?

Berliner Philharmonie - Hans Scharoun (Now with more text)

2010-02-12T11:04:00.001+01:00

Made my way to the Berlin Philharmonic the other day for a guided tour through the building as for some weird fault in my wiring, I dread the thought of sitting down and listening to classical music while Simon Rattle waves his curls about.

Inside it's far more interesting than the egg-yolk outside would suggest. See the snazzy jigsaw tables.

I had absolutely now idea what to expect, as the exterior - also in connection with the adjacent fest of garish lighting that is the Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz - didn't appear promising to me. (As it turns out, the cladding was part of the original design but was only added to a hitherto ochre and white concrete façade about 25 years later.)

Coming in, I was not hit by the spaceship that is Scharoun's concept. That only happened on the way out.

In between, I spend most of my time staring at the varying floor finish: stone in the entrance hall, carpeting on the first floor, parqueting in the concert hall.

The chairs are colour coordinated with the light screens; this does not only look like somebody really thought this through but reminds me overwhelmingly of a good dish of aubergines with potato and a bit of cream in there. Whenever I love something a lot, it makes me want to eat it. (Sadly, no picture of the aubergine chairs, but take it from me, they were very eggplant-y.)

Anyway, the bow of the ship - growing up in the port of Bremerhaven, ships, air (the light fixtures on the ceiling), greenery (not pictured but MASSIVE pot plants that instantly caused me to look the other way and hum a little calming tune) and jutting angles were Sharoun's inspiration. At least that's what the guide said. The shark fins overhead are for absorbing low frequencies.

I do enjoy a good staircase. With a bit of vista.

The Officially Good Camera That Is Being Used On the Wrong Settings By the Woman Operating It had it's work cut out for it that day, so here are a lot more fine pictures resting on my Flickr.

Next up, general concrete tastiness with the Kunstgewerbemuseum opposite, and Berlin in snow from the TV tower.

Alexander McQueen - They'll now have something interesting to wear in heaven

2010-02-11T18:31:00.004+01:00

This should have been Cavalli. Or Armani. Or that haberdasher Calvin Klein. Not McQueen.
But then again he probably knew why he was doing what he did. But Alexander, who is going to make the cool rags from here on?
I'm certain that fashion for the undead will henceforth never be the same, as it has never been the same for the living since McQueen barged his way into St. Martin's College for Art and Design to put the fear of God into them who make clothes.
I owe him one of those eternal regrets that fuck up one's day whenever they pop into one's head, unasked. A few years ago I stood in front of a black coat of his design, price severely slashed. It was beautiful, very alien, one-of-its-kind. I didn't buy it.
I'm such an idiot.
I would have liked any of his coats anyway, that one however will stay with me until I wear my last piece of clothing. He seemed to be genetically incapable of having an uninspired idea.

Please try to be reborn, Mr McQueen. It will be such a dull planet without you.
Sleep well.

Saturday shopping in Prenzlauer Berg

2010-02-06T13:24:00.001+01:00

It's Prenzlauer Berg, now gentrified, former left-wing artists' hunting ground, also an open-air museum for Bugaboos, in a nutshell.

Supermarket No. 1: The bloke in front of me at the checkout buys the following: 2 bottles of red wine, lettuce, serrano ham, a big pack of dog food, cheese, plastic bag. We wait in the queue for 7 minutes. The moment it's his turn, he whips out his Blackberry and makes a call to someone, while trying to put his groceries away. Takes ages.
Supermarket No. 2: Checkout. A father with his toddler in said trendy pushchair wants to return a pair of briefs, they're the wrong size. All the while the child is holding on to a bag of sweets in his carriage. When the checkout lady asks the father whether he still needs to pay for the sweet, he replies oh no, he doesn't want to buy them. He takes the bag out of his son's hands and puts on the nearest stack right next to the till. While he proceeds to sort out the receipts and boxes, the child looks at me beseechingly. I tell it that it obviously has got a naughty daddy. Cashier looks at father beseechingly, we're all clearly thinking the same. Father still potters about with his knickers. Child makes desperate motion for sweets. Cashier says something to the same effect as me. Father seems unperturbed and finally pulls out of the till. Cashier and I agree that he might be lacking as a father but at least he's now got underwear that fits snugly.

On the way home all other people are either falling or sliding or despairing of the ice floes that used to be a pavement.

The Round House by Martin Koerber (Rundhaus)

2010-02-06T09:29:00.001+01:00

(I am doing this post in English because all existing information - which is essentially this introduction in a leaflet by the Archive hosting a small exhibition on the architect Martin Koerber - is in German and can be read up accordingly.)

The only good thing to come out of this abysmal first week of February that I've some way or other been drowning in with the help of my little green friends Trolli Saure Apfelringe, is that the coolest chick in the world reminded me of the fact that Boretown, Mass. where I grew up is the not so proud home to one of the world's quaintest oddities: a house in the shape of a biscuit tin with a bit of teapot on top. The only house of its kind in Germany where people are actually still living.

(Picture Schulz/OTZ)

And guess what takes the cake? I once had several family dinners with the grandson or nephew of the current owners. (Debates in our family are currently heated about whether he was our plumber or stove fitter or came as the painter's apprentice.) Whatever his professional affiliation that brought him to my granny's kitchen table, he made the ultimate pronouncement about living conditions in a round house: not very handy because you've got nowhere to put the furniture. By furniture he meant the monstrosities that are German Schrankwände.*
This hobnobbing makes me feel very connected.

So whence the house in the provinces?
The idea dates from the 1920s. At the time, architecture magazine Bauwelt ran a competition on mass-produced fitted furniture, which included a contribution by Berlin architect Karl Stodieck on issues in floor planning for round dwellings. This is where Martin Koerber (or Körber), who was in fact an engineer with an academic background in Physics, chipped in. His aim was to provide inexpensive prefabricated housing that would be pre-produced, packaged and assembled on the site.
So he built the first (and only) house of his design for himself on a hillside, settling for an iron structure and metal sheets that where tacked onto it. He had clearly read his copy of Bauwelt, as he even considered the cupboard question from the get-go and fitted the inner walls accordingly. No need for Schrankwände, which hadn't even been invented by then. The mass-production and revolution of housing as Koerber had envisioned it, however, sadly never came to be. The main problem seems not have been the shape as much as the poor insulation capacities of the metal walls. Even though the press ran articles on his design and an American firm was interested in licensing it, he never built another one, later moving to Cologne where he was far more successful by going back from biscuit tin to shoe box with triangle.

(This, the Dankeskirch in Hürth, was demolished in the 1970s.)

Unfortunately, his work was forgotten next to the prominent example of influential architect Bruno Taut who attempted his own design of a round house for the Bauaustellung in Magdeburg in 1921, which was then altered by Edwin Koenemann and built in Worpswede 1926 - the same year as Koerber's - an artist's colony in Northern Germany. It has a diameter of 10 Meters and is made entirely out of wood. The supposed Modernism that was at the root of these designs strikes me to have gone a wee bit to the Alice in Wonderland side. Fittingly, it's moniker is the Cheese Cover, or Käseglocke.

(Picture courtesy of X. und T. Stüdemann)

Koerber's ideas were very much of their time. Round constructions were seen as Expressionist, while metal was considered a promising building material. In 1929, the copper works Hirsch in Eisenberg introduced their ready-made (rectangular) houses made of copper plates. Produced mainly for export to Isreal, a few of these Kupferhäuser have survived in Berlin until this day.

*If you take life in the middle class strata in German small towns seriously, no home is respectable unless it has an Eiche Rustikal in it. (Suppose I'll give Schrankwänden their very own post sometime. It'll come with a health warning as it is a remarkably cruel topic and very hard on the nerves.So please be careful when clicking on the link in Rustikal above. Nightmares ...)

Run. Keep running. It's coming.

2010-02-05T19:48:00.000+01:00

Occasionally I have a very good dream. I am an animal with four paws and sleek sleek fur. I can run almost faster than my own shadow. And something is coming after me. I never know whether it might catch my tail because I just run. Faster and faster and faster.

Die Grammys ... mit Elton John. Und Bon Jovi. Und Beyonce. Ohne die gehts ja nicht.

2010-02-01T13:01:00.003+01:00

Die Grammys waren gestern mal wieder dran. Grammys = der angeblich wichtigste Musikpreis der Welt. Betonung auf Musik. Hier soll was ausgezeichnet werden, was sich im vergangenen Jahr irgendwie durch beeindruckende Leistungen hervorgetan hat.
Nominiert waren 6 (!) (?) Mal die Black Eyed Peas. Jahahaa. Und ansonsten Schreidrossel Beyonce. Green Day hatten das beste Album. Bon Jovi gilt dort auch als Musik. Nur mal so zur Verdeutlichung des herrschenden Anspruches. Die live auftretenden Künstler lesen sich wie eine einzige schlechte Idee:

Jamie Foxx, T-Pain, Slash & Doug E. Fresh
Drake, Eminem, Lil Wayne & Travis Barker
Jeff Beck &; Imelda May
Green Day & the Broadway cast of American Idiot
Roberta Flack & Elton John
Sugarland
Beyoncé
The Black Eyed Peas
Bon Jovi
Dave Matthews Band
Lady Antebellum
Lady Gaga
Maxwell
Pink
Taylor Swift
Zac Brown Band
Celine Dion, Jennifer Hudson, Smokey Robinson, Carrie Underwood & Usher in a 3D tribute to Michael Jackson
Mary J. Blige & Andrea Bocelli covering "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

Hier mein Knaller des Abends: Mahrie Jott Bliehge mit dem Bauschaum auf dem Kopf und der Mann Der Nichts Sieht singen eines der schlimmsten Lieder des Jahrhunderts.

Gott, fast so schön wie die Szene mit dem Parkplatzmord in Zodiac.

Sherlock Holmes ... yeah, I know...

2010-01-31T17:54:00.002+01:00

Guy Ritchie must be good at gardening. Or hat making. I mean, he must have an overwhelming talent somewhere on the back burner, because he quite certainly is not Grade A good at making films. Definitely not more than one type of film. He has been colouring in the same patterns these past years, even though this one is a. historical, b. based on a non-Ritchie script and c. with an American lead, it still contains a. gypsies (or Irish travellers), b. men on the wrong side of the law but liking it, c. camera antics. The Ritchie watermarks.

It is also quite boring at that. Not funny, either. Also sadly lacking in horror, suspense, wit and general ideas.

Robert Downey Jr. looks, behaves and probably smells like a Labrador after he found out that cat had made a mess in the shed the other day, but no human had noticed so far. Dito the camera. The wardrobe department thought it a splendid idea to make Holmes' adversary appear as Count von Count.

Was very relieved when the end credits started rolling. Amazing ones they were. Somebody did have a spark of originality on that production. Thanks, Danny Yount.

Günther Oettigner is justifiable

2010-01-26T15:02:00.004+01:00

Günther Oettinger, the new EU commissioner, gives a master class on how to mangle English adverbs.
Compelling stuff.

Not as good as the crying/schreienden Jacksons watching humanitarian disasters on their telly from yesterday's post, but preeeeeetty close.

####

Art Deco Murder

2010-01-25T19:45:00.005+01:00

Right, you dipshits in what used to be Newcastle Upon Tyne, if you want to know why I'm not going to show my arse in your fucking city, here is the reason:

You are going to tear these down.

(Picture courtesy of this)

You have no soul. You have no eyes. You have no mind. There is no blood but the ink of a hundred development plans running through your veins.

These are thirties Art Deco brilliance. They spoke their own language. They used to be my favourite part of town.

I can't forgive you.

Remind me again. What fucking language does this speak?! Because I don't hear a bloody thing. Does the breadbox-cum-birdcage even have words?

(Picture courtesy of this.)
+++

The gaps between the things you said

2010-01-25T16:32:00.001+01:00

This is the stuff of my darkest, sickest, most embarrassing nightmares. Interpreting with my brain shut off.
(It happened to me once almost as bad. Made me want to eat a tunnel into my tummy.)

The guy's accent is quite uplifting, though.

NewcastleGateshead - We've got a bit too much leisure going on, haven't we?

2010-01-22T19:23:00.007+01:00

I was just sent a questionnaire by Newcastle and Gateshead (recently joined at the hip, therefore NewcastleGateshead) tourism office, politely but firmly enquiring when I had last visited, and why hadn't I returned in the meantime?! Was there not enough leisure activity such as bingo and darts going on? Did I find the parking difficult? Had I seen all I wanted and other places were more convenient? This is where I made my litte tick.

I have reasons. I went to university there. I lived in Fenham which is a bit like Beeston (the one in Leeds - there is also a namesake in Nottingham; I have coincidentally lived in both) and Sheffield all squeezed into one Victorian neighbourhood. (And I would marry any old shopping arcade in Leeds at a moment's notice. Have avoided Sheffield so far, but would probably get engaged to their arcades as well.) The best thing of it all was the 1 hour walk down to the campus. Because it went over the town moor and the most magnificent alley of trees at the bottom end of Fenham Hall Drive. I still dream of it.

The most exciting thing about Newcastle at the time, however, was a club boat called the Princess with a revolving dance floor moored on the Tyne. At least that's what the population of Newcastle thought.

I on the other hand was a complete sucker for this:

The Tyne bridge. Its pylons, more precisely. Much better views than the party committees venturing out for pub-testing on a Saturday night.

Anyway, after a long absence from the English north, I decided I was missing it and therefore ordered a tourist brochure from NewHead's tourist office a few months ago. Only to find out that the city was now all about Culture, New Buildings (shiny plus structures) and Living the 21st Century. And tons of stuff to do that was exiting and easy and totally educational in the hands-on way but still absolutely worthwhile. Well if you must ...

The tourist board seemed to think indeed that I this would put a spell on me to go visit immediately. This not having materialised within the stipulated time, they felt the need to quiz me. Did they really offer enough for me in the entertainment section? Would their Siamese town bore me and was that the totally unthinkable reason why I had still not booked a flight? Was I afraid I might starve for lack of suitable catering?

I just loved the final set of questions that were trying to find out about my attitudes in life. They gradually go from Individualistic Hedonistic Prick (No Children) to Middle Class Family Who Think that Mixer Taps Would Not Have Happened Under Winston Churchill (Kids at Public School).

It's fantastic.

I like to try things which are unusual
I am happy to do my own thing regardless of what others might think
I find it easy to justify buying expensive alternatives
I like strong intellectual challenges
I am prepared to take risks in order to get the most out of life
Arts and culture are an important part of who I am
I like to try things that are new to me
Function is more important than style
I have a fond liking for things that others might describe as old fashioned
I prefer to live a relaxed and moderate pace of life

The last but one is my favourite. "Fond liking".

(All the pictures in this post come from this spiffing website, Photographs of Newcastle. Not that I'm feeling England-sick or anything.)

####

Lectures In Custard - Industriegelände Schöneweide

2010-01-21T13:22:00.003+01:00

There is a group of people who have made it their aim to breathe new life into the old industrial buildings along Wilhelminenstraße in Schöneweide, the Industriesalon Schöneweide. I meant to go there over the Tag des Offenen Denkmals but somehow got sidetracked. A friend of mine studies at the HTW (Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft), so she took me along to her campus yesterday. And lo and behold: It's now in one of the old factories.Though her professor complained that it's way to spacious and he never meets any of his colleagues in the halls, I loved it quite a bit. Makes me jealous I went to a trite old eighteenth century uni where the lectures were held in the Kurfürstenpalais overlooking the Schlossgarten. Library was a funky 70s thing, though, but not nearly as nice as this custard with blue lining. *No plants anywhere in sight too.*

Buildings get full marks for custardyness. Also for windowyness. Plus 9 out of 10 for the chimneys. Extra special mention goes to the graphics team for the symbols. Empty your bladder, replenish it next door.

No self-respecting university is complete without a new library building.