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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 It’s said that the things we learn at university today will be outdated by the time we graduate.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
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.
— theartnewspaper.com
"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... View full entry
This post is brought to you by World Architecture Festival.To give you a bit more time to submit your award-winning entries, WAF has extended the entry deadline to Friday, June 2nd.In a truly unique format, all shortlisted architects present to, and receive live feedback from WAF's... View full entry
This post is brought to you by World Architecture Festival.The only global festival that combines awards, live judging, conferences and networking, the World Architecture Festival, has announced "Performance" as the theme for its tenth anniversary edition. The notion of "performance" in... View full entry
The Pierre Boulez Saal, a concert hall in Berlin designed by Frank Gehry, will open this weekend with an inaugural concert that will be live streamed. The concert hall, which is more quiet than most of Gehry’s other work, was designed in collaboration with the renowned acoustician Yasuhisa... View full entry
Patrik Schumacher, the current head of Zaha Hadid Architects, posted a few photos on his Facebook showing the firm's designs for the Neue Nationalgalerie extension competition. Over 40 firms participated in the competition before Herzog and de Meuron were announced as the winners. The Danish... View full entry
At nearly 350 square miles, [Berlin is] a difficult city to tour without some guidance. Its vastness is doubly inconvenient for architecture buffs...The [Modern Berlin Map] documents 50 buildings, selected by Berlin-based journalist Matthew Tempest. Unfolded, the front of the guide displays the landmarks on a map of Berlin, while the reverse catalogues the buildings in chronological order. This provides a unique lens through which to track the city’s political shifts. — Wired
Want more travel tips for Berlin? Check out Archinect's Berlin Travel Guide, which features recommendations from Jürgen Mayer H:Let Jürgen Mayer H. help plan your next trip to Berlin with his own travel tips View full entry
