If you walk a block along from the apartments on Fraenkelufer, crossing over Kottbusser to where it become Paul-Lincke-Ufer, is a triangular-plan block following the same idea as Fraenkelufer (a mixture of newbuild and retained blocks enclosing a landscaped courtyard) but perhaps without as much charm – you’ve crossed an invisible line around Kottbusser Tor where buildings seem to take on a grittier, dirtier feel and become ’social housing’. (This is not, by the way, some veiled racist comment about the Turkish population which predominates around the Tor, just an observation that sadly, social housing seems to often unintentially have the effect of ghetto-ising poorer neighbourhoods.)
Anyway, worth a stroll around, as an example of the sheer scale of what was achieved by the IBA, at least in terms of creating successful places to live in an area where things could have continued to slide downhill…
By Rave/Rave (later Rave & Partners?).
Some images, which I took on my camera phone (I’d only popped out to get milk and bread) so not great quality.
Elevation on Mariannenstrasse
Corner of Mariannenstrasse / Reichenberger Strasse
then inside…
Hi Jim,
very long time no see but i used to come by the stammtisch at Oberholz a few times some years ago, after you invited everyone who had left a comment.
Well, I’m sorry, but I have another correction… Block 88 was actually designed by Wilhelm Holzbauer from Austria, the Raves were the local architects for the project. If you google a bit (couldn’t find it quickly), there is another housing project very similar to the Berlin one, yet even more hardcore.
But the Raves are interesting in their own right, as publishers of the very good “Bauen seit 1900 in Berlin” and “Bauen der 70er Jahre in Berlin”.
Ah, I really have to drop by sometime soon, Stephan
Hey Stephan, yes I do remember. How’s things?
Thanks for the info – will update the site (don’t do much of this anymore, alas).
So maybe see you soon at an event at our cafe?
Best,
Jim