The Bold & the Beautiful

Face Mask

I've got some serious catching up to do; let me begin from last Friday (June 11, 2010)...

We woke up bright and early to go visit the DG Bank building by Frank Gehry, an eccentric US architect known for his radical forms around the world, but here he definitely had to conserve himself , at least for the facade. The facade comes off as somewhat standard and quite reserved, but peering into the building reveals what Mr. Gehry really wanted to do all along...

DG Bank Facade (Gehry, 1995)

DG Bank [crazy] Interior (Gehry, 1995)

Immediately afterward, we left that building to head right next door to the Academy of Arts school. It too had somewhat of a plain facade, (due to the the rigorous code for the Berlin Brandenburg gate plaza area). None of the building facades were allowed to "outshine" the gate itself, therefore, most of them use neutral colors for their materials, and don't go off the deep end with form, (at least, not for the outside).

Academy of Arts interior (Behnisch, 2005)

What was interesting to me about this interior was the academy's front lobby space, which more or less was a great funnel as it slowly rose itself along an incline from the front threshold. The handicap access however, was placed around the main elevator shaft abutting up with the concrete exterior wall. The handrail just happened to be there denoting the use of the corridor-like gap. It was a nice transition of required function without overtly redirecting the form to show it. Now I suppose that's a pretty mundane fact to focus on in regards to the above picture, which I must say was just breath-taking. Looking into Behnisch's design, is like peering into some kind of concept art almost. I'm not a photographer, but I tried my best to frame the stairwells and get the point across. Moving on...


Solitude & Amplitude

Next up, nearly within a stone's throw from our apartments, we walked over to the 2005 Holocaust Memorial by Peter Eisenman. It is about 4.7 Acres of gigantic and small pillars of smooth, shiny concrete. Your first impression is the immensity of them all, and then you figure out, that the slope of their rising contour doesn't match the ground below, making them uneven and very tall in some places. Of course, once we were told this was a holocaust memorial, the pieces began to fall in place.

Holocaust Memorial (Eisenman, 2005)

The whole thing is very abstract; there are no names written anywhere, and the cold stare of the stones comes off as somewhat intimidating as you venture through. Like lines of fallen victims looking down upon you while you walk through their grave. At the end of it, you definitely feel almost a sense of guilt for the atrocities committed then. Of, course, there are no actual bodies buried here, only concrete pillars, nothing more. This is a monument you won't forget after visiting.

Holocaust Memorial (Eisenman, 2005)

Here comes the amplitudal part: We made our way for lunch to the Sony Center, which is a large intense entertainment space part of PotsdamerPlatz (Platz=Plaza). Sony bought up the land and hired architect Helmut Jahn to design their European headquarters; it was completed in 2000. The most prominent feature about the center is the awesomely engineered tent-like roof capping the open space overhead. It felt like some kind whirlwind of activity, the way the tent somehow funnels down a certain distance below the roof line makes you feel swept up in it all, and you didn't feel exposed to the elements, but yet gaining all the benefits.

Sony Center (Jahn, 2000)


Sony Center (Jahn, 2000)

We had the chance that day also to go visit and indeed receive an extensive tour of the Berlin Philharmonie by Hans Scharoun (completed in 1963). The building exterior certainly was a blast from the sixties, but once we walked in, the sentimet was quite different. Albeit, the lobby spaces were still a bit indicative of the time in which they were built, some of the forms were just too intriguing to ignore. The structural columns rising up to the angled ceiling and meeting in V-shapes on the floor remindng me of bridge building techniques however, as we learned in the tour, the theme was that taken from the ship building industry, with round windows, or "portholes" for viewing, and the layout of the concert halls themselves took several cues of parts of a ship.

Entering the main concert hall made this idea somewhat self-evident as you gazed upon the central stage in the round. The ceiling itself was noteworthy for it's seemingly chaotic flow of overlaps and folds to direct the sound in fantastical arrays, -or so we were told; we actually didn't get a chance to hear any music in this hall, just the non-echo of our voices and knick-knacks clanking and clicking. There are many more things that could be said about this, but for the sake of your time and mine, I'll move along. However, I will leave you with one image to let you mull over the design itself...

Berlin Philharmonie (Scharoun, 1963)

On our way towards the end of our day, we happend across a poster promoting every childs favorite builder, erm... I mean, Baumeister!

Bob der Baumeister

And finally before our wonderful Freitag was over, we had a chance to pass through a random department store, where we happened across an awesome internal steel and glass shape. It was a cool way to split floors and create interest where before they not have been any. Somehow this void added more to the space than it took away, and the light effects across the surface shining rom automated concert lights made for some cool affects, and a way to catch your eye easily.

Cool department store funnel

What surprised me the most is after realizing the funnel was opened from the top to the public, the whole thing, which led down to a small pit, wasn't filled with trash. I figured it would have filled up from folks deciding to throw their waste down it, but because there didn't seem to be any visible way to reach down there for anything, lest you repel, I guess Europeans are very clean-thinking people.

Cool department store funnel

Last but not least for the day (not in the order of visiting though), was the Linkstrasse residential building complex. Somewhat well designed, and intriguingly complex with many material color tones, and shapes, it offered a bit of contrast to the standard square steel and glass construction surrounding it.

Linkstrasse Residential building

So Fake, It's Real!

I'll be brief with this section, but I thought it worthy to point out: We had the opportunity the following Monday to bgin our history lessons, while visiting several classical renovated structures of yore. But some of them did not come across as real. One most notably was the Gendarmenmarkt Concert Hall by Shinkel (we visited a lot of his buildings). The main whole of it was bombed during WWII, leaving only the foundation as a sustainable remainder of its existence. The German government thought it a wonderful idea to reconstruct it in all it's wonderful glory, but they decided they would spare the materials and go solely for form. -This was a lesson in what not to do, as you might guess, they actually pained score lines on the floor representing tiles, and even painted the marbling in what a marble stone should give off. The stone busts hanging on the walls were only tin-metal, and any of the other marbling was also painted on. Nevertheless, it did seem like they used real building materials for the exterior of the buiding, as seen below, and why I might have been excited going to see it at first, before realising the treachery within. Oh, well; lesson learned.

Gendarmenmarkt Concert Hall (Shinkel, 1821)

One other peculiar habit of the Germans, (and perhaps elsewhere) are the fact that they don't allow their scaffolding to be exposed when constructing or working on a building. The one you see below is covered in a giant canvas with a super-graphic of the building facade beneath it. This meathod leaves the building from remaining an eyesore why under construction. -Also note how the ad for te building even get's a canvas shadow to go along with it. It took me two glances to realize what I was looking at too.

Canvased Building

Grandiose
The surrounding platz of the Gendarmenmarkt area: Regardd as one of the more beautiful Plazas, and not but 3 blocks from our apartments!

Gendarmenmarkt Area (1705-1821)

Another highlight of last Monday was the Friedrichswerder Church, now a museum that was also bombed in WWII, but survived for the most part, but not after a bit of renovation. See below:

Friedrichswerder Church (Shinkel, 1831)


Friedrichswerder Church (Shinkel, 1831)


Friedrichswerder Church (Shinkel, 1831)

Gourmet

When I think Gourmet, I think delicious, don't you? Well, let me add a bit of spice in that imagery, by pointing to an architectural equivalent of what I consider gourmet.

Take this old fabricated steel I-beam Column for example. The attention to detail to make this column, and indeed the whole colonnade Ionic out of steel blows my mind, and really makes me stop to appreciate the kind of craftsmanship at the time, required to make such a feature. I'm guessing it was built sometime in the 20's or 30's.

A detailed old riveted column

Now If you didn't catch the fact, I missed my weekend, well let me just say it was quite the leisurely one. I had made plans, but those always seem to fall through when everyone else has plans too. So, I relaxed for the most part and ate at some fancy restaurants.

A French Kidney + Mushroom meal


A German broiled chicken

So, all-in-all the trip has been pretty exciting, and I have even more places to talk about that I just don't have the time for at the moment, so because I'm still behind, even after this post, expect another one very soon, whenever I can.

As always, thanks for reading!
-Riven