The EXPERIMENTDAYS is kind of a conference about urban developments, which is running in Berlin the next days. So, if you are in town between the 15th - 23rd September you should check it out!
“The EXPERIMENTDAYS are a platform for cooperative housing projects, ideas and actors of creative sustainability in order to understand the city as a designed living space.”
The program sounds quite promising - look up your favorite workshops, discussions or presentations here. In conjunction with the conference the topic-related book “CoHousing Cultures: Handbook for self-organized, community-oriented and sustainable housing” is going to be released, which might be interesting for urban developers:
“This book illustrates a colorful diversity of European examples including a cooperative’s barrier-free renovation of an old school in Berlin, collective housing for the 40+ generation in Stockholm and passive architecture planned by and for immigrants in Brussels.”
Sounds like some interesting days in Berlin. Credits for promoting this event goes out to Tim Nebert (Urban Designer).
I am going to start a new category, which will feature self-experienced tours to places of interesting architecture or construction-related environments. The first issue is about visiting an abandoned theme park, which was like visiting a whole new planet. It felt like being the only human being on that planet discovering traces of a former civilization from a long time ago. This is no place situated somewhere outside of nowhere - it is a place right in Berlin, namely Spreepark and it shows what happens to lost places and buildings, which were given back to nature.
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I never consciously noticed the brutalist architecture in Berlin, but when seeing these great photos by Finding Berlin it’s like: “Oh wow, true - we have these buildings here, I can remember.” Brutalist architecture is a style of architecture which flourished from the 1950s to the mid 1970s, spawned from the modernist architectural movement. Examples are typically very linear, fortresslike and blockish, often with a predominance of concrete construction. In other words:
“These buildings looked like spaceships. Not the stylish ones from several sci-fi movies, more like the rough version as in Battleship Galactica. Concrete spaceships, built for yearning society that watched the first man walking on the moon and felt the future would be near.”
Hop over and see more nice photos:
Finding Berlin - Berlin’s brutalist Architecture
“Google Campus is a seven storey co-working and event space in the centre of London’s Tech City, otherwise known as Silicon Roundabout. The project, run by Google UK aims to fuel the success of London’s tech start up community.”
Am I the only one who things that the new Google Campus is looking like a bunker spreading no coziness? The lack of natural lights and the (way too ambitious) industrial design just looks like a colorful jail. I mean, I like rough industrial design, but with a combination of cozy materials plus lots of daylight - I found very less of these attributs in there. Maybe the photographs are not able to collect the real atmosphere, but it seems like a place I would not work in. By the way there are several other tech-hubs popping up around the globe. Start-Up investor JMES and Berlin’s beloved child SoundCloud teamed up for realizing “The Factory” in the heart of Berlin. Interesting to me is the architecture, as it looks similar to the all-so-hip industrial design approaches everywhere. As I understood it correctly these hubs should engage the interaction between start-ups in the first place, which means in the end a better infrastructure and faster growth of ideas. Well, that is a good move, but the best programmers, engineers, designers, etc. will move where they feel comfortable. Architecture of workspaces could be the icing on the cake in a hard-fought battle for talents. Hey Google London: You need more daylight!
Interesting reads:
TechCrunch - Berlin’s Startup Innovators Create A Factory To Call Their Own
ArchDaily - The Next Silicon Valley(s)
It’s nice and strange at the same time to see that such an old and historical bunker is owned by a private person in Berlin. The apartment on the roof must be spectacular and the huge art-collection by Christian Boros situated in the bottom floors is worth to see. It’s possible to visit the bunker within small groups via application. More on their website.
freundevonfreunden:
The Bunker
Cursing through the web, we have come across this insightful article on the Bunker, or Reichsbahnbunker the 5-storey converted bomb shelter from advertising entrepreneur, Christian Boros who we had the pleasure of filming inside his lofty home above the Bunker.
“ Origninally designed by Karl Bonatz, under the direction of Albert Speer (Hitler’s chief architect), it was built in the early 1940′s. The Bunker’s purpose was to shelter some 3,000 Reichbahn passengers (German National Railway). Since then the building has been used as a prisioner-of-war camp, a warehouse for textiles, dry and tropical fruit and a notorious hardcore techno and fetish club; today it is home to the Boro’s and their art collection.”
Have a glance at the interview we did of Karen and Christian Boros in their lovely home above the Bunker.
(via alessandrapeach )
