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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".
— BBC
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... View full entry
The Berlin government said on Tuesday it would create a new hospital to cope with a likely huge increase in coronavirus cases.
The facility, which will house up to 1,000 patients, will be set up in the Berlin Messe trade fair exhibition grounds in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district of the German capital.
The hospital will be built with the help of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr.
— DW
As the coronavirus outbreak rapidly expands also in Germany, officials in Berlin hope to prevent potential bottlenecks in the capital's hospital system with a new medical facility specifically for COVID-19 patients. The country now has more than 10,000 confirmed cases — the third highest in... View full entry
Beginning in early 2020, Berlin’s left-leaning government will freeze rents for five years. Landlords will be required to show new tenants the most recent rental contracts to prove they aren’t jacking up prices. They’ll also have to follow new rent-cap rules, which for many landlords could mean lowering rents by as much as 40%. Those who don’t comply will be hit with fines as high as €500,000 ($553,000) for each violation. — Bloomberg Businessweek
Writing in Bloomberg Businessweek, Caroline Winter and Andrew Blackman cover the fascinating political battle taking place in Berlin, Germany, where tenants' groups and landlords are navigating the impacts of recent rent-freeze regulations by the local government that aim to reign in unaffordable... View full entry
The budget committee of Germany’s lower house of parliament yesterday approved additional funding for Berlin’s planned Museum of the 20th Century, designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, after estimates for the construction costs spiralled to €364m from €200m. — The Art Newspaper
According to The Art Newspaper, the new Herzog & de Meuron-designed museum in Berlin's central Kulturforum arts district is needed because "the Neue Nationalgalerie can only display about a quarter of Berlin’s vast stores of 20th-century art at any given time." Current situation at the planned... View full entry
A Berlin-based artist who put up billboards advertising fake real estate projects in protest against runaway property development received more than 200 calls from would-be investors who didn’t get the joke. [...]
At a distance, the adverts look plausible but closer inspection of the images visualising what the new properties would look like reveals odd details.
— The Guardian
Treptown Visions, billboard in public space, Treptow, Berlin, 2019 by Dorothea Nold. Image: Dorothea Nold/aussenwelt "Citizens are not being asked for their permission when investors make such drastic changes in their city, that’s why I thought it is okay to put them without permission up to... View full entry
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. — The Art Newspaper
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... View full entry
After nearly twenty years of planning, David Chipperfield Architects have completed James Simon Galerie, a major new addition to Berlin's Museum Island. Sharing a small plot of land with world-famous cultural institutions, including Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altes Museum and Friedrich August... View full entry
The Berlin activists who staged a protest at a vacant government building didn’t imagine they’d end up leading a €140 million redevelopment project. — Places Journal
During the 1960s, the Haus der Statistik was built for the national statistics office for East Germany. The massive complex spreads over eight blocks at half a million square feet, comprising three connected mid-rises and some smaller buildings. As years passed, the Haus der Statistik's history... View full entry
Berlin’s Palast der Republik, the asbestos-riddled home of the powerless East German parliament that was demolished more than a decade ago, is being commemorated in a new exhibition at the Rostock art museum, a building also constructed under the Communist regime that narrowly escaped the same end. — The Art Newspaper
"Built between 1973 and 1976 on the site of the former Berlin City Palace, the Palace of the Republic was the seat of the GDR’s government or Volkskammer (People’s Chamber), but also served as a public cultural center with a plethora of event spaces and culinary offerings," reads the... View full entry
Berlin has decided on a novel location to host some of the new apartments the city badly needs—on top of the old ones.
Yesterday, Berlin’s Senate announced a project to add more units on top of already existing buildings in the city’s east, with a possible capacity of up to 50,000 new homes. The plan to add floors isn’t novel in itself, of course, even in Berlin. What’s striking is the specific type of building chosen for the experiment: East Berlin’s Plattenbau.
— citylab.com
Created by architects Raumlabor, the Floating University in Berlin invites students and experts from all over the world to explore solutions for future urban challenges. It’s said that the things we learn at university today will be outdated by the time we graduate. So what does a learning environment look like where students research cities of the future? — popupcity.net
Berlin-based firm Raumlabor have created a floating university running through the summer months to explore new learning environment possibilities. Located in a rainwater basin in Berlin, the temporary structure is under constant development with students, professors, and experts implementing... View full entry
In 2016, the Berlin-based US artist Ryan Mendoza and Rhea McCauley, the niece of Rosa Parks, teamed up to save the civil rights activist’s Detroit home from demolition. Now, the structure is heading to another block: the New York auction house Guernsey’s, where it is due to be auctioned tomorrow (26 July) with an estimate of $1m-$3m. — theartnewspaper.com
Park's house is part of the 700-lot of African American Historic & Cultural Treasures up for sale at the New York auction house Guernsey’s. McCauley initially bought the house for just $500 back in 2016 reaching out to Mendoza to help preserve the house. In 2017 the structure was safely... View full entry
“We’re like surgeons around a body,” said David Chipperfield as he looked at Berlin’s New National Gallery. The building, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the 20th century’s greatest architects, was almost as bare as it had been at its topping-out ceremony, in April 1967. The British architect and his lieutenant, Martin Reichert [...] surveyed the dirty steel frame and exposed concrete walls atop weed-strewn sand. “We’ve opened him up and now we’re looking at him.’” — The New York Times
Roughly half-way through the enormous undertaking of renovating Mies van der Rohe's 1967 masterpiece, the New National Gallery in Berlin, David Chipperfield allows us a glimpse into the structure's completely gutted belly, chats about the challenges of touching an icon, and shares some of the... View full entry
Street art is the ultimate form of democracy according to the curators of the new Museum for Urban Contemporary Art that has just opened in Berlin. But does street art belong in exhibition halls? [...]
Construction for the Urban Nation Museum of Urban Contemporary Art began in May 2016. A late-19th century house in the Berlin district of Schöneberg was redesigned by German architecture studio Graft.
— Deutsche Welle
Image: Graft, via dw.com. In Deutsche Welle's interview with Yasha Young, the artistic director of the new Museum for Urban Contemporary Art, Young defends the need for a permanent home for street art: "Yes, street art belongs to the street and should stay there. The label "Museum for Street Art,"... View full entry
This post is brought to you by World Architecture Festival Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, the World Architecture Festival has revealed its speaker line up for the 2017 event taking place at the Arena Berlin for the second time from 15-17 November. A collection of world-class... View full entry
