architectureinberlin

I never made time to go back to perhaps Taut and Wagner’s best known modernist estate since I wrote a rather superficial post about it many moons ago.

But now a chance… Jeremy from our group has been kind enough to set up a tour on 9th June, all the details as follows:

Ben Buschfeld and his wife Katrin Lesser (www.katrin-lesser.de) conduct private tours of the estate; Katrin is a landscape architect; her great-grandfather was Ludwig Lesser, a luminary in the field.

The date is 9 June at 2pm, length 1-1/2 to 2 hours, cost €7 per head, departing on foot from U-Bahn station Parchimer Allee at street level, on the corner of Parchimer Allee and Fritz-Reuter-Allee.

The tour will hopefully conclude with a visit to Taut’s Home (www.tautes-heim.de), designed by Bruno Taut and faithfully restored with furnishings of the era. This is a holiday flat, so if that property happens to be occupied, Ben will show us around his private home — also designed by Taut — and show photos and documentation of the Taut’s Home renovation.

Max 20 participants. In the event of poor weather we’ll reschedule.

If interested, let me know via Facebook, or jimhudson40 (at) googlemail.com

As part of Slow Travel’s event at the Markthalle IX, I’ll be running an afternoon tour of local urban history, featuring a wide range of subjects, several digressions and almost certainly a few IBA projects of the 1980s (but not too many, I promise).

The Markthalle event runs from midday, I’ll be doing the tour at 4pm.

A busy day, as we’ll also be there as Hudson’s, serving tea and cake to the masses at the Literature Lounge in the Markthalle.

So the next architecture meetup will be on Wednesday 4^th April from 7.30pm

At my place again: Hudson’s Cafe, Boppstrasse 1, 10967 (corner of Schönleinstraße, nearest U-Bahn Schönleinstraße)

And there’s a theme: ‘the Media Spree, Ostbahnhof, Stralau and Rummelsberg’.

My idea is that we put our heads together and organise ourselves a bike tour of the area, getting access to buildings. Where to have lunch obviously a critical element. Perhaps a constructive half hour or so, then more booze and the usual socializing.

A few possible ideas:

• Tour of the ongoing reconstruction of Ostbahnhof
• A look at the stupidly glossy Nhow hotel (I may have a new contact there shortly who can show us around)
• Someone from the ‘Spreeufer für alle’ anti-Media Spree to talk en route?
• Tour of RadialsystemV
• A group lament on the loss of Bar 25, Kiki Blofeld etc and how horrible the O2 is.
• Maybe go up to Kraftwerk Klinkenberg?

Look forward to seeing you.

After a short break (well alright, nearly a year) I feel it’s time to restart those architecture evenings we used to have.

So, do join me on 7th March from 7.30, at
Hudson’s Cafe*
Boppstrasse 1
10967
(nearest U-bahn: Schoenleinstrasse, on the U8)

It will be a pleasantly unstructured social evening to chat on the subjects of architecture and urbanism in Berlin or further afield. Plus of course a bit of gossip.

A rather nice review by urbanist and cake lover over at the Needle.

Look forward to seeing you,

Jim

*This, as some will know, is my own cafe, but it would seem odd to own a venue and not hold the meeup there, oder? Also, I’ll be guaranteed good cake. Plus, having learned from last year, I will ensure a staff member is there, to avoid me having to break off every two minutes t make someone coffee.

Architektur Galerie are still producing those handy selected listings, so in a lazy kind of a mood, thought I’d reproduce it here, in case you’re looking for some architecture-related things to do.

Happy New Year, by the way.

SOLD OUT, sorry!

Will run another one early in 2012 – email me if interested and will put you on the mailing list.

On Sunday, 11th December I’ll be running another tour of some of Berlin’s IBA buildings from the 1980s, beginning with a sample of ‘Neubau’ structures, then heading to the other end of Kreuzberg (SO36) to see some ‘Altbau’ with (fingers crossed) access into some of the blocks near the canal, to give a real feel for how radical some of these designs really were.

We’ll meet at 11am in front of John Hedjuk’s tower, on Besselstrasse.  Cost 8€, let me know in advance, jimhudson40(at)googlemail.com

It should last around three hours and will be mainly outside – wrap up warm and wear sensible shoes!  The first part will be around the area where we begin, then we’ll take a bus east to the other end of Kreuzberg to look at some of the ‘Altbau’ buildings, including access to see inside one of the semi-communal housing blocks and up to the roof.

It’s therefore best if you can buy travel tickets beforehand, at least for a single journey within zone A.  Quite a big response to the tour so I want to avoid a long queue onto the bus!

Not planning to stop in cafes or bars en route, but we will end at a bar which does food, and plenty of other eating options around as we finish up in the ‘buzziest’ part of Kreuzberg.

Looking forward to meeting you all, fingers crossed for good weather!

Also, Büro Schwimmer is running another of his tours the following day, ‘Megastructures 2‘ at the ICC – a classic piece of 1970s megastructuriness.

You’ve doubtless noticed that my blogging days are largely gone, at least for the foreseeable future, due mainly to a rather intensive (and I guess self-imposed) day job.  But I reserve the right to occasionally post something catching my eye.

I’m a local sort of person these days, but luckily the location of this locality is, in my opinion, by far the most exciting bit of Berlin that there is. Markthalle IX, one of the city’s many fine late 19th century market buildings, is being resurrected as of the 1 October; the market group has taken on urbanist-happening architect folk Raumlabor, who have much good stuff about it on their site.

Anyhoo, before that, there’s an exhibition at the Markthalle building all this week, running up to a discussion forum and public vote on Saturday, run by Spreeufer für Alle, and showing a range of alternative proposals to the mainly crushingly dull office developments that are likely to actually be built as Mediaspree.

What was the other thing… oh yeah – also a part of Experimentdays11 this week is the Wohnprojektborse at the DAZ, showcasing* 20 cooperative projects along the Spreeufer. You could join one if you have the cash.

*I hate this word, but it’s late, I’m tired and it sounds better than just ’showing’.

In recent days, I’ve done little but run the cafe*, make and deliver cake, which means that I don’t get out and about to see  architecture in far flung parts of Berlin much.

*although hardly single-handed, as my wife would be quick to point out.

Moritzplatz, however, is where I deliver cake twice a week; one drop-off at the co-working space Betahaus, the second at the cafe deep inside the former industrial block / now shared art workshop-space / home of the fabulous Ritte Butzke club, that is Aqua Carre.

Anyway, most Berlin architects will be familiar with Modulor, the suppliers of everything an architect needs to to sketch and model their creations. As well as providing useful boards and clips for making our cafe menus. Modulor is about to move into its new and highly ambitious premises on one corner of Moritzplatz (well ‘edge’ really – it’s a roundabout).  It’s to be called Planet Modulor, and as well as hosting Modulor’s own expanded premises, will also have many other occupants including a publisher, a bookshop, bakery, gallery and cafes. I notice that Dan Borden has just written about it in his regular archi column in ExBerliner, so I won’t repeat his fine words, but instead post some pictures of when the building was under construction.  Grand opening on 13 – 16th June, apparently.

The building retains the concrete frame of the former Bechsteinhaus with additional insitu cast concrete.  What made me smile was that the cast concrete is then being clad in a special cladding which makes the building appear to be made of… precast concrete.  Telling fibs to tell the truth, or whatever it was Mies claimed when the ‘Elf and Safety made him put fire protection over a steel frame, which he then covered in fake steel beam casings. Or something. (I’ve never really been much interested much in the ‘Greats’ of modernism and their attendant mythologies.)

I like the panelling though, so that’s alright.

Directly across the road from this piece of cool neo-brutalism is the fabulous Prinzessinengarten, a temporary garden-come-city farm growing all sorts of interesting things, on the landlord’s proviso that everything can be moved on within a few weeks, hence everything, including many of the trees, are in large planters.  Before the war, a Wertheim department store stood on the site, a signifier that this was once the major retail hub of this quarter of Berlin, never rebuilt, since (as anyone who’s sad enough to have read major portions of this blog will know) this end of Kreuzberg became something of a backwater when the Berlin effectively made it into a peninsula, on the edge of nowhere much. Immediately north of Moritzplatz was a major crossing checkpoint, now occupied by a used car lot and, naturally, a branch of Lidl.  The U-Bahn continued to run through Moritzplatz, but ran non-stop through East Berlin, with stations in the east closed off and guarded.  Strange times.

(Image is of the department store. Not of Lidl.)

Apropos of nothing much, I’ve just come across the image below, while I was looking for the ones above, which I took last summer.  Because Berlin is built on a swamp, every new building with a basement needs to pump water out of the construction site around the clock, hence the enormous pink and blue pipe systems that you still see running down the streets.  In the case of Modulor, they needed to run them round Prinzessinen’s perimeter for some reason, whilst still maintaining access, which led to some fabulous moments like this (now long gone, sadly)

So it’s all going on at Moritzplatz, basically – I recommend going to check it all out.  And remember that you heard it here, er, second.

Sorry for the unparagraphed text – Wordpress seems a bit moody tonight, with all sorts of annoying faults. Like most technology, it’s highly erratic.

Running a cafe continues to take almost every minute that exists, but am working on clawing back a little time for architecture things.

But there is a new hope…  am v pleased that my similarly architecture-obsessed mate Sven is organising a two part tour of a couple of buildings Ludwig Leo, an architect of whom I know very little but am interested… so best to go to his own site for details – http://www.buero-schwimmer.de/leo.  The buildings look bizarre (in a good way) and not to be missed:

http://www.buero-schwimmer.de/leotourthurs.html 

http://www.buero-schwimmer.de/leotoursat.html

If you’re interested in coming along on one or both days, drop him an email sveneggers (at) buero-schwimmer.de. I;m planning to come along, and I’m sure we’ll be able to conclude both visits at some suitably alcohol-based establishment nearby, where we can relax and set the world of architecture to rights as only we know how.