This IBA project interests me less because of the buildings and more because of its ‘biological waste water system’ where reed beds in the central gardens were used to process waste water from the surrounding buildings (we’re talking all waste water here, not just a bit of rainwater in a barrel). 

The system creates a uniquely strange setting, with the necessity for a series of bridges spanning the wet areas.  The timber clad building in some of the photos is a later, post IBA, addition.  And no, it doesn’t smell.

A rather downbeat entrance off Dessauer Strasse:

but inside…

An image of the exterior of one of the housing blocks, this by Rave and Partner, on the corner of Bernberger and Dessauer.

Apoloies if you’re on a feed to my blog, this is an existing page which I’m repeating as a post to see if it increases my Google rating!  If it does, I’ll be transferring loads of them…

Actually two separate, unrelated buildings, but both done for the Berlin IBA 1987.

Both are at tourist ground zero in Berlin, and have understandably suffered from the grime and commercial signage of the area, but Eisenmann’s building in particular hasn’t weathered well.

Disappointing though are the rear communal spaces. In OMA’s case there was clearly very little room available on the tight site, and the balcony arrangement makes the best of a bad situation.

The Eisenmann building does have some space, but seems to have forgotten about it - compare this with the communal spaces of some of the other IBA buildings and it seems like a lost opportunity. Admittedly it has to suffer the messy rear access areas of shops at ground level, but even so…

Worth wandering around the back though to see a sculpture made from a section of wall.

What is really interesting about the Eisenmann block is not what was built, but what wasn’t. The original competition was for the entire block, retaining only a handful of existing buildings. Eisenmann proposed a complex series of off-set grids, forming a public garden, to create “a monumental and symbolic area [...]” which would be “…sufficiently profound to excavate all its cultural meanings.” If this sounds a bit pompous, it should be borne in mind that at the time the site stood in the shadow of a still very real Berlin wall. I don’t know whether the fall of the wall killed the scheme, or some other factor(s). Interesting to compare this with Eisenmann’s now built Holocaust Memorial.

Funnily, the red and grey grid of this dead scheme (only visible from the air, presumably) was transferred into the facades of the building actually built (see below). The design though is more complex than may be apparent - the floor plan retains the idea of two slightly offset grids, which continues through to the planes of the eternal walls.

The OMA block, main street elevation

…and the rear

The Eisenmann block, across the road. Note different planes of most of the facade against the two upper corner stories.

And the rear

A nod towards the residents’ facilities (a sandpit, basically) although the grid motif is carried through to small scale.

A bit of the wall

Just a quick follow up to my ‘Spreeufer fur alle’ rant the other day, to mention that the result was a landslide against office development and in favour of retained and improved access to the river.

Lots about in the German language press, but a brief summary in english here.

Cynics will note that the vote has no legal standing, but hey, it’s a vote from the heart against the world of international business travellers checking into bland hotels, to a neverending soundtrack of Elton John/Celine Dion/Bon Jovi bellowing out across the river from the O2.

Off to the beach now to party like it’s 1989.

So here’s my plan. I’ve so far taken a slightly haphazard approach to logging IBA projects (see original IBA post here), but have now begun the legwork of getting as many books as I could carry from the Berlin TU library and collating a database. I’m starting two separate lists, Neubau and Altbau, and will gradually migrate the links and other info from my old post. The separate pages for individual projects will remain and be expanded.

‘Why bother at all?’ you might ask. Simply because

a) when I was looking for this information on the web, it wasn’t there, and

b) I’m a nerd, and we are only ever happy when we have a vast list-based project to be getting on with.

The list will have little on it to begin with, but do email me (jim_hudson33@yahoo.co.uk) if you’re looking for specific material - I’m probably planning to go there with a camera if I haven’t already…

By way of overview, the International Bauaustelling (IBA) 1987 was divided into Neubau (new building) under Josef Paul Kleihues and Altbau (yes, old building) under Hardt-Waltherr Hämer. The nomenclature is not strict however; ‘Altbau’ projects, mainly in the eastern Kreuzberg district known as SO36, have many elements of newbuild, but usually integrated into existing street blocks. ‘Neubau’ generally applies to the larger scale freestanding construction.

The Neubau projects were in four geographical areas; Southern Tiergarten (the vast majority), Prager Platz, and Tegel Harbour. I’ve listed the projects firstly by their ‘Block number’, which I assume was an allocation system of the IBA’s.

Southern Friedrichstadt

Block 1, between Kothener strasse, Bernberger Strasse and Dessauer Strasse.  Perhaps its most notable building is O M Ungers contribution, which I’ve written a bit about here.

Block 2, on Dessauer Srasse 34-40, Stresemannstrasse 105-109, Bernberger Strasse 6-9.  Most notable for Zaha Hadid’s residential building on Dessauer Strasse, page here.

Block 3, on Wilhelmstrasse. This is actually the Topography of Terror site, and must have become part of the IBA simply because its design competition was concurrent. The competition scheme in question was not the current one, or its aborted-during-construction Peter Zumthor predecessor, but a ‘grid of trees’ design by Wenzel, Lang and Wettbewerbsentwurf.

Block 4, bounded by Kochstrasse, Wilhelmstrasse, Zimmerstrasse and Friedrichstrasse. It includes Rem Koolhaas/OMA’s block on Friedrichstrasse (see page here) and, in my opinion, the most impressive enclosed courtyard of the Neubau (see page here).

Block 6, bounded by Dessauer Strasse and Bernberger Strasse.  Notable because of its unusual biological water waste disposal system - some images and comments here.

Southern Tiergarten

Block 189 - Known as ‘Rauchstrasse’, bounded by Thomas-Dehler-Strasse, Drakestrasse, Stulerstrsse and Rauchstrasse. Masterplan of whole block by Rob Krier. Separate page here for this, although I feel I missed some of this, so a return visit due…

• Thomas Dehler Str. 47, Aldo Rossi
• Thomas Dehler Str. 46, Henry Nielebock & Partner
• Thomas Dehler Str. 44, Giorgio Grassi
• Thomas Dehler Str. 39 / Rauchstrasse 14, Rob Krier (this is the ‘master block’, facing onto Stulerstr)
• Rauchstrasse 6, Hubert Herrmann
• Rauchstrasse 8, Hans Hollein
• Rauchstrasse 10, Rob Krier
• Rauchstraase 11 - Refurbishmnent of the old Norweigen Embassy, architects: Freie Planungsgruppe Berlin GmbH / R.Weichmayr
• Landscape architecture, Cornelia Muller, Jan Wehberg, Elmar Knippschild

Block 192 - Rauchstrasse 21 and Corneliusstrasse 11/12

A less written-about IBA project comprising three ‘eco-houses’, by teams led by Frei Otto. Essentially open concrete frames where elements could be added, including gardens, at different floor levels.

Kreuzberg is changing again.

Thirty years ago, the area was a dead-end zone along the western side the Berlin wall, slated for large-scale demolition to make way for an inexplicable new motorway plan. Its blocks were in a semi-ruinous state, occupied only by squatters and those too poor to move elsewhere.

In the 1980s the IBA intervention halted this decline and rejuvenated communities, rebuilding blocks and interweaving new schools and amenities into their cores. Of course, the ironic but inevitable long term result was that people like me (middle class people) decided it was the place to move to (”it’s so vibrant darling, so fashionably down at heel…”).

So as a person undermining the established local community, it would be totally hypocritical of me to criticise the next wave of invaders. But here goes…

Around the corner from me is a building still under construction called ‘Carloft’, the idea being that you can keep your car in your apartment with you. This involves giving a lot of floorspace over to carlift machinery, but the flats look pretty big to begin with.

Most existing Kreuzberg residents don’t have cars, and when they do, I’m not sure they’d feel the need to spend a fortune on keeping them in their apartments. But maybe ‘apartment-car’ people are the future.

Website here, if you fancy one (an apartment, not a car).

Anyway, onwards to the point.

This weekend (13th July), a local referendum will ask residents of east Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain whether they support or oppose the MediaSpree; the expansion of the media/office zone along the banks of the river Spree to the east of the centre. There was a protest march today (one thing you can rely on in Berlin is that protests will have really good sound systems) which appropriately passed by Alvaro Siza’s Bonjour Tristesse block. (The banner hanging from the window reads as my header.)

The referendum choices are complex, but seem to boil down to a vote against further large scale development on the banks of the Spree, or continued development with some cycle paths and walking routes.

Some links:
www.ms-versenken.org (the ‘no’ camp)
www.mediaspree.de (the development proposals)

I feel for Berlin’s government here; it has aspirations to be something other than ‘poor but sexy’ (in the words of our mayor) and I guess that the Mediaspree plans are one way this will happen. But whichever way the vote goes, I can’t see eastern Berlin’s world of party beaches and squats lasting indefinitely. It will be a great loss, even if they’re able to move on elsewhere. A still greater loss would be if the long standing communities north and south of the Spree were also forced to migrate.

A couple of quite poor images of a new building rising on a plot on Friedrichstrasse (taken with my phone, which I chose based on its music playing rather than its photographic capabilities - I now realise this was an error).

It’s not just any building plot though.  It’s the one where Mies famously failed to build his at-the-time quite unbuildable glass skyscraper competition entry.  The competition was something of a sham, and in the end no building at all resulted from it.

So a bit of pressure then on Mark Braun Architekten’s design for the site, which is, well, a glass skyscraper.  The immediate urge is to compare the two, but actually this is a little unfair.  First of all Braun’s building is not really a skyscraper, more of a tree-top scraper.  And it’s curvy, not pointy.  Stop me here if the complexity of architectural criticism is flying over your head.

In fact, it has more in common with one of Mies’ other unbuilt glass skyscrapers, of 1922

which… oh alright, clearly is a skyscraper.  This is a blog though, not an architectural treatise.  Maybe that Aalto vase is a better comparison, the one that doesn’t work for putting flowers in.  Herzog & de Meuron made a building from it - have a look here. 

Anyway, seems fair to give it a chance.  Just a shame that in reality, glass buildings end up being quite opaque, like Foster’s Willis Faber building, in the daytime.

Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 11 August 2005.

Image

Just a very short post, to celebrate the end of my annoyance at not being able to find this site. I came across it a while back, forgot to bookmark it, and haven’t been able to find it since.

Its theme is endangered post-war architecture in Berlin - some beauties and some real beasts are featured. But don’t waste time listening to me - hurry off to www.restmodern.de (there’s a version in English too).

Thought I’d mention this as increasingly I get my own site when Googling for IBA stuff, so seems I could become a collective point.

For those with good German, I came across a Pdf (in two bits) reviewing five ‘eco’ projects forming part of the IBA. What’s interesting about these is they’re mainly concerned with how to upgrade existing buildings - a less glamorous but more important issue, as most buildings were built quite a while ago.

They’re here and here. One of the buildings is by Germany’s best known architect/engineer Frei Otto. I’ll be off to do visits/photos shortly. Be rude not to, as they’re all pretty local (it’s a Kreuzberg thing…).

There’s also reference to ongoing projects ’spawned’ by the IBA - one of which, Bernburger Strasse, has an entire reed bed water recycling plant within its Hof, which I came across by accident a while ago (photos to follow as soon as I locate them).

God knows, Berlin has some ugly buildings. But occasionally something gets built whose sheer awfulness makes it worthy of note.

The new Alexa shopping centre at Alexanderplatz is just such an edifice. Perhaps it’s the way the strange mottled pink ceramic facade panels clash with its gold-tinted atrium canopy. Perhaps it’s the way the canopy extends into the building and frequently reappears as a kind of giant floating turd motif. Perhaps it’s the fact that all that cladding is bespoke; somebody expended serious money to make it look this awful.

What’s it meant to be? What does this ‘unique’ use of materials signify?

To be fair, the Alexa (as in Alexanderplatz’s little sister, I presume) does seem to be working, in terms of putting something next to the Platz which someone has a reason to go to. There are now people, lots of people in fact, swarming around the strip of retail buildings running parallel to the station.

When I first visited Berlin in 2002, Alexanderplatz was a confusion of cones, barriers and temporary traffic systems, but with no actual building work going on. Today it’s worse, but at least there’s some real building work, namely a second new shopping arcade, which currently looks like this

but you can go here to see it in all its bland glory. It’s been given the ingenious name ‘Die Mitte’. Because it’s in the middle of Alexanderplatz.

In any case, Alexanderplatz has long been a work in progress. A competition was held in 1929 to expand Alexanderplatz into a ‘big city plaza’, based almost entirely on traffic flow - a virtual fetish of urban planners at the time. The actual buildings were of secondary importance, with a required lifespan of only 25 years.

The competition was won by the Lockhardt brothers, but for some reason Peter Behren’s runner-up design was chosen, of which the Alexander and Beroliner buildings are the only survivors. Interestingly, there was a competition entry by Mies Van Der Rohe, featuring seven huge unconnected rectilinear blocks, not entirely unlike the later GDR scheme in its thinking.

Most of the Behrens plan remained unbuilt, due, I guess, to the onset of the Great Depression. Then the war. Then the GDR, who built something else instead. So there’s still a sense of ‘unfinished business’, from a city planner’s point of view.

On the plus side, the new buildings will go some way to banish the ‘windswept wasteland’ feel given it by GDR postwar planning. It’s a shame though that the solution is so entirely based on shopping. The Alexa is huge, and entirely filled with global-brand shops, ensuring that this could be absolutely anywhere. It adds its considerable retail weight to Galeria Kaufhof, and the shops Alexander & Berolina, which will be further increased by Die Mitte.

Berlin (or at least its government) perceives that the only way forward for the city is to become a place like other western metropolises - an international flight hub, shopping ‘experiences’, vast entertainment venues. And they’re probably right; commerce hasn’t exactly been swift in coming to the capital. But something of Berlin’s rough spirit will undoubtedly be lost in the process.

The key buildings of Alexanderplatz, for the trainspotter in you…

Alexander and Berolina buildings. Virtually reconstructioned due to devastating war damage (the Soviets fought their way into Berlin via Alex), with the latest makeover (of Berolina) by nps tchoban voss, who also did the Cubix multiplex south of station.

Berolinahaus

and Alexanderhaus

The 123m Park Inn, originally the GDR’s Stadt Berlin, by Roland Korn, 1967-70.

The GDR’s answer to KaDeWe was the Zentrum department store, by Josef Kaiser, 1967-70. A couple of years ago the building was cocooned and reborn as Galeria Kaufhof, thanks to a rather bland makeover by Paul Josef Kleihues, his final work.

I notice that there’s a substantial monograph available on the project, bizarrely. Maybe I’m missing something? At best it seems nothing special (compare it with John McAslan’s fine reworking of the Peter Jones store in London). At worst, the exterior seems uncomfortably close to the stripped neo-classicism of the Third Reich. I know that Kleihues’ office had no house style, but this seems an unnecessary low point.

You could argue that Kleihues was West Germany’s chameleon architect, and that Hermann Henselmann was East Germany’s. So it’s ironic that across the Platz from Galeria are arguably Henselmann’s best works – the Haus Des Lehrers and the Kongresshalle. Both are largely uncompromised modernism (if you ignore the enormous Soviet Realist mural around the tower). Compare and contrast with his very compromised work along Karl-Marx-Allee.

Haus Des Lehrers

Kongresshalle (now BCC)

The 17 storey Reisehaus (House of Travel,I guess) 1967-70, is also by Roland Korn. Along with the unreadable ‘atomic’ clock across the square, this seems like a particularly cruel GDR joke; a travel agency for citizens not allowed to travel, and a world clock to show what time it was in all the places youcouldn’t go. By way of interest, I was going to tell of a visit to the Week12End club, which now occupies two floors and a roof terrace. But someone’s said it better here already.

The Electrical Industry Building (now re-wrapped) and in the background the Berliner Verlag building, by Heinz Mehlan 1967-69, and Karl-Ernst Swora 1970-1973, respectively.

To the south of the S-Bahn is the Cubix multiplex, 2001, by nps tchoban voss (their lower case, not my typo).

Next to this is a vast plattenbau facade, which apparently disguises a building by Phillip Schaefer dating from 1930/31, formerly Karstadt’s HQ, then a police headquarters after the war. I read all this in some guidebook, but I’m not 100% sure this is the right building. Not sure where else it would be though. (See comment below)

And, of course, the TV Tower - first draft apparently by Henselmann, design by Gunther Kollmann and others, with origami-like base buildings by Walter Herzog (and others… these were collective times, no starchitects in the GDR, with the exception of Henselmann himself, perhaps). I’m not going to post a picture of the tower itself - just look upwards when in Berlin - so here’s another bit.

]]> http://architectureinberlin.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/berlin-alexanderplatz-the-plot-thickens/feed/ http://architectureinberlin.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/erich-mendelsohn-the-mossehaus-the-metalworkers-union-building/ http://architectureinberlin.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/erich-mendelsohn-the-mossehaus-the-metalworkers-union-building/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 13:47:30 +0000 jimnkatie http://architectureinberlin.wordpress.com/?p=136

Also see other post for Mendelsohn’s Einsteinturm in Potsdam, just outside Berlin.

Today we’re pretty used to the idea of putting modernist (usually high-tech) elements into buildings from previous eras; Foster at the Reichstag, I M Pei at the Deutsche Historical Museum, to name a couple of Berlin examples.

But in the early twentieth century the idea would have been almost unheard of. So how groundbreaking must Mendelsohn’s Mossehaus have been?

The original building of 1900-1903, by Cremer & Wolffenstein, was a neoclassical sandstone affair, the corner of which was badly damaged by post first world war rioting (it must have been pretty extreme rioting, but such were the conditions in Germany at the time, I guess).

Mendelsohn retained most of the building’s main facades, but completely rebuilt the corner, and added two/three additional stories, in a totally original, streamlined expressionist style.

What was also radical for its time was the focus on the corner of the building, seen by Mendelsohn as the focus of movement; at the junction of streets, as opposed to a ’static’ entrance in the middle of a facade.

Oddly, section of ‘original’ facade on the southern elevation which should date from 1903 has been replaced by a recent, bland, office curtain wall. Perhaps this part was lost in WWII and the whole elevation rebuilt, including the Mendelsohn additional stories?

Elevation on Jerusalemer Strasse

Elevation on Schützenstrasse - more recent, but why?

Following the Einsteinturm, (see other post on this) Mendelsohn became hugely successful, running Germany’s largest architectural practice between the wars, with commissions including department stores in Stuttgart, Chemnitz and Berlin (Potsdamer Platz, demolished after the war).

It’s interesting that the Mossehaus was Mendelsohn’s first major commission following the Einsteinturm, and the expressionist ideas are evident. But by the time he was forced to flee Germany in the 1930s (he was a Jewish, successful, modernist architect, so not exactly popular with the Third Reich) he was producing buildings that we would recognise as entirely modernist. The Metal Workers Union building (Industriegewerkschaft Metall), at the southern end of Alte Jakobstrasse, is one of these.

Unlike the Mossehaus, which is currently occupied by Total, who don’t like you even peering into the entrance area, reception staff at the Union building allow access to the entrance area and main staircase (if you ask nicely).

Annoyingly, the staircase was completely scaffolded when I went; I’ll drop in again soon and replace the images with better ones.

The original commission was for a substantially larger building over two blocks, linked by a bridge; someone at Manchester Uni has done a quite cool video for the building.

The building has just been completely refurbished, and is classic ‘streamline moderne’ – long, long brass handrails, strip windows and expanses of white render. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lobby bears a striking resemblance to the interiors of his pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea – Mendelsohn’s only major building in England. The spiral staircase, with its sweeping handrails and vertical lighting system suspended throughout its height, seems near identical.

Bexhill

And then Berlin…

Rear elevation, which fittingly enough looks out over Libeskind’s Jewish museum directly to the north.

Alte Jakobstrasse elevation. An unsettling image on show in the atrium shows the Union symbol replaced with a swastika in the same circle design during the 1930s.

Oddly, the atrium information boards also describe Mendelsohn’s Bexhill pavilion erroneously as being in Bexley (a part of south east London, in which it definitely isn’t).