Archinect - News

Berlin's Unity Monument 'seesaw' finally breaks ground

2020-05-29T18:21:00-04:00

A groundbreaking ceremony has just taken place for the Monument to Freedom and Unity, in central Berlin. The 50m-long (164ft) bowl will move gently up and down when enough people stand on it, and it should be completed by the end of next year. In a guide to the design, architects Milla & Partner, who won a competition called "Citizens in Motion", say "freedom and unity aren't static conditions, they require participation and interaction".

The monument, nicknamed "unity seesaw" by Berliners, is conceived as an enormous bowl-shaped kinetic platform that invites people to interact with each other.

Image courtesy of Milla & Partner

Stuttgart-based practice Milla & Partner in collaboration with choreographer Sasha Waltz created the "Citizens in Motion" monument proposal as part of a design competition.

View this post on Instagram A social sculpture in the heart of Berlin: the Unity Monument is designed as a kinetic object, a platform enabling people to interact with each other. Its appearance will be shaped by visitors through their #participation and interaction. Construction started this week. #einheitsdenkmal #experiencedesign #millaundpartner
A post shared by Milla & Partner (@millaundpartner) on May 20, 2020 at 8:36am PDT

Originally intended to open on November 9, 2019, the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the project faced multiple setbacks, and construction was repeatedly reschedu...

The Berlin Wall made discoverable again via AR, 30 years after its fall

2019-08-27T17:36:00-04:00

The installation is part of a week-long festival running from 4-10 November for the 30th anniversary. It aims to “celebrate the successes of the revolution and to recall the joy at regained freedoms and the risks and pains of social upheaval,” according to a statement from the organisers, Kulturprojekte Berlin.

As the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches this November, various art projects prepare to commemorate the events of the peaceful 1989 revolution throughout the city.

Via large-scale interactive installations, 3D video projections, and an augmented reality app, artists seek to give back relevance and historic significance to places that can easily be overlooked and forgotten.

An AR version of the old Berlin Wall "death strip" fortification overlaid on a Berlin sidewalk via the MauAR app. Image via mauar.berlin.

Can border walls negatively affect our mental health?

2019-04-02T19:36:00-04:00

All told, there are at least seventy border walls in the world today. Their construction has inspired an entire field of research dedicated to studying their effects. Psychologists, economists, geographers, and other specialists regularly publish reports in outlets such as the Journal of Borderland Studies, and much of their research suggests that border walls may be affecting the people who live near them in unforeseen ways.

As the discussions about producing and enforcing geopolitical borders become more commonplace in global news, the studies of the psychological effects of those of previous eras have become painfully relevant.

Berlin Wall, photographer unknown

Dietfried Müller, a German psychiatrist, had noticed increased cases of paranoia and delusion in those who lived near the Berlin Wall; so many cases, in fact, that he came up with a term for a syndrome in his 1973 book: Mauerkrankheit, or wall disease.

According to Jessica Wapner of the New Yorker, the construction of border walls "has inspired an entire field of research dedicated to studying their effects. Psychologists, economists, geographers, and other specialists regularly publish reports in outlets such as the Journal of Borderland Studies, and much of their research suggests that border walls may be affecting the people who live near them in unforeseen ways."

How much talks of a US/Mexico border wall, among the others discussed around t...

Revisiting the Berlin Wall era, Germany's 2018 Venice Biennale Pavilion “Unbuilding Walls” examines the lasting effects of division

2018-05-29T14:40:00-04:00

During a time of heated debates on national borders, “Unbuilding Walls” — the German Pavilion now open at the 2018 Venice Biennale — revisits the era of the Berlin Wall, 28 years after it was dismantled. “Since February 5, 2018, the Wall that divided Germany for 28 years has been gone for longer than it was there. This symmetrical moment in history presents an opportunity to reflect on developments in the former border space since the fall of the Wall,” pavilion curators GRAFT and Marianne Birthler write in their introduction of the exhibition.

German Pavilion, Biennale Architettura 2018. Photo © Jan Bitter.

Designed as if it were an impenetrable wall, the exhibition showcases a variety of architectural projects along the site of the former Berlin Wall, presenting a broad analysis of the lasting effects of division, protectionism, nationalism, and “the pro...

"Unbuilding Walls" German Pavilion in Architecture Biennale 2018 addresses division

2018-04-06T19:00:00-04:00

Last April GRAFT was announced as Curators of the German Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale 2018. The exhibition, "Unbuilding Walls", focuses on the parallel of the Berlin Wall's lifespan and Germany's unity both being 28 years.

The exhibition responds to current debates on nations, protectionism and division. In the German Pavilion, GRAFT and Marianne Birthler will take the parallel as an opportunity to explore the effects of division and the process of healing as a dynamic spatial phenomenon. With reference to “Freespace,” the central theme of the Architecture Biennale proposed by Grafton Architects, special focus will be given to outstanding examples of urban and architectural design that address aspects of division and integration.

Axel-Springer-High-rise. Image: Axel Springer SE.

An example project is the Axel-Springer-Campus. This former death strip between Kreuzburg and Mitte is the site of the new campus building for Axel Springer designed by OMA. The design by Rem Koolha...

Giant “unity seesaw” to commemorate 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

2017-06-06T15:20:00-04:00

The German parliament approved plans to build a Memorial to Freedom and Unity in central Berlin, with an ambitious timetable that envisages the monument’s inauguration on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 2019. Designed by the Stuttgart-based architect Johannes Milla and the Berlin choreographer Sasha Waltz, the monument will commemorate the protest movement that toppled the East German communist regime and led to the reunification of Germany in 1990.

"The monument is animate and is not to be approached merely as an object for contemplation," Milla & Partner state on their website. "The intention is that people shall actually enter it and walk on it and set it in motion, movement being achieved by visitors working together as a group."

"The design was created in a spirit where, by means of creative action, individuals are enabled to bring benefit to the community and as a consequence shape society. The visitors themselves - the citizens who set the whole in motion - become an active part of the monument. The vision is that it will be an aesthetically ambitious, continually changing choreographic expression of the Peaceful Revolution of 1989."

Images via milla.de.

Walls don't work: lessons from the Berlin Wall, 55 years after it was built

2016-08-15T13:14:00-04:00

Donald Trump has made a wall on the US-Mexico border a controversial centerpiece of his presidential campaign, and EU countries have erected fences to keep migrants and refugees out. But the Berlin Wall anniversary should be a stark reminder: Walls can only contain people for so long. [...] Almost 28 years after the wall came down, Germany’s capital remains economically disadvantaged from its divided years, while buildings in the former East still show the scars of neglect under Communism.

Related on Archinect:

Berlin After the Wall: A Microcosm of the World’s Chaotic Change

2014-11-18T14:18:00-05:00

Not far from the Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Platz was a no man’s land during the Cold War. Then the Berlin Wall fell, and the German authorities made it a petting zoo for celebrity architecture. The corporate headquarters of Germany’s new global swagger. But the ambitions for Potsdamer Platz, like the hopes and fears about a united Germany, turned out differently. The architecture was not so great. Many companies fled.

Look back, move forward: Weekly News Round-Up for November 3, 2014

2014-11-10T18:55:00-05:00

Friday, November 7:

8,000 Glowing Balloons Recreate the Berlin Wall: A 10 mile chain of balloons will line the path where the Wall previously stood, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its demolition.
First Ever Chicago Architecture Biennial Taking Shape for 2015: The Biennial's theme of "The State of the Art of Architecture" (named after Stanley Tigerman's 1977 conference), is starting to take shape, and will include a photo exhibition on Chicago from Iwan Baan.

Thursday, November 6:

Massive Hollywood project sits atop quake fault: The California Geological Survey confirmed that the Millenium Hollywood skyscraper sits on top of an active fault, despite the fact that the developer's consultants find no evidence of an active fault in their analysis of the data. LA's Department of Building and Safety will ultimately determine whether the Millenium can be built.
Centre Pompidou To Open Design and Architecture Gallery: Upon the opening of its new photography gallery, the renowned Parisian...

8,000 Glowing Balloons Recreate the Berlin Wall

2014-11-07T14:53:00-05:00

The first blows to bring down the Berlin Wall were struck nearly 25 years ago to the day. This was after almost three decades of the concrete barricade cutting through the heart of Berlin and splitting the city in two. Today, Berlin is once again divided, this time by an 11-foot-tall wall of illuminated balloons. The Lichtgrenze (translation: “border of light”) will stretch for 10 miles along the same path as the original 96-mile structure.

Editor's Picks #385

2014-09-18T17:50:00-04:00

The latest entry in the Showcase: series featured Barkow Leibinger 's Stadthaus M1, located in the "sustainable model district" of Vauban in the already so-called "green city" of Freiburg.

Plus, Nicholas Korody looked at Factory Berlin, a "start-up campus" hosted by Google, built on a site where "a section of the Berlin Wall...once housed a German Democratic Republic (GDR) watchpost". Chris Teeter recommended "if you want to keep the political going in your architecture crit, you could probably look at what I have considered the 3 downtowns of Berlin; look at them historically maybe - Kuferstendamm (west), Alexander Platz (east), and Potsdamer Plat (unified)".

News
Mildred Friedman, a curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the 1970s and ’80s who helped both the museum and the contemporary design and architecture it celebrated become objects of international acclaim, died on Sept. 3 in Manhattan. She was 85.

Until October 31, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation is...

Luxury Project Suspended: Protests in Berlin Save the Wall for Now

2013-03-05T14:24:00-05:00

The investor behind a controversial luxury housing complex in the German capital has suspended construction after thousands protested plans to remove a section of the Berlin Wall to accomodate the building. He will try to find a compromise at a meeting with officials later this month.

Click here to see the full photo gallery. The online petition "Save Berlin's East Side Gallery from being torn down for luxury condos" can be found on change.org.