‘Urbanism’ Archives
Berlin’s Three Peaks Challenge
Kevin Braddock and Paul Sullivan take on the Berlin equivalent of the Three Peaks challenge... Successive waves of trauma, division and reconstruction have given Berlin’s outward character a dimension of the arbitrary that’s absent in cities with seemingly “finished” centers like Paris, London and New York. Such was the thrust of a topic embarked upon during a "Slow" walk with the artist Stephen Walter not so long ago to the Borsigwerke above Tegel Airport. Walter, who is in [...]
39 things you might learn if you visit the Stasi Museum with a 10½ week old baby…
Adam Butler pays a visit to the Stasi Museum with his new baby, and learns a few things along the way... 1. That the word barrierefrei when used in reference to e.g. U-Bahn stations, rather than meaning that there are no barriers and you therefore don’t have to buy a ticket, actually means that this is theoretically a place that you can traverse with a pram, wheelchair, broken-hipped aunt, etc. without having to worry about stairs; and that although the nearest station to the Stasi Museum [...]
Frank Schirrmeister: Photographer Q&A
Paul Sullivan chats to Berlin-based photographer Frank Schirrmeister... Was there a main 'trigger' or catalyst that got you interested in photography? Yes, there was. After many years of searching for what should become of me and a few attempts in photography it eventually clicked when I was in my early 30s. I remember spending the summer as a lifeguard on a small island on the North Sea coast when my girlfriend left me eight years ago. In order to cope with the situation (I was [...]
Night Of The Pawn
Joseph Pearson of Berlin Memory Blog explores Berlin's underground chess scene... It's an abandoned brewery. You enter a gate, a waif-like woman lit by candlelight admits you, but gives no directions. You find yourself in a yard with a hundred parked bikes but no people. Lamps do little to up-light the darkened buildings. There's hesitation, you try a few doors, they're all locked. But you hear music, perhaps the static of conversation, and you divine the right stairwell. It's broken [...]
Notes From The Underground
Paul Sullivan heads underground to explore an immaculately preserved WWII bunker... Most passengers passing through Gesundbrunnen S Bahn station don’t think twice about the door at the bottom of the stairs. Why should they? It's a plain old door, indistinguishable from a normal private entrance or storage area. But if you opened the door you'd be face-to-face with bonafide Nazi history, in the shape of one of Berlin’s best-preserved war bunkers. The door is locked of course, but not [...]
Volkspark Friedrichshain
Everyone loves a good park. Volkspark Friedrichshain is one of Berlin’s finest… Even by Berlin’s high standards, the Volkspark Friedrichshain stands out as one of the city’s special green spaces. Established a century and a half ago to commemorate the centennial of Frederick the Great's accession to the throne, it gives good history, swathes of Liegewiese (sunbathing areas), an abundance of leisure opportunities and more than its fair share of interesting landmarks. Casually [...]
The Badeschiff
Looking to beat the summer heat? Try Berlin's Badeschiff - a swimming pool in the Spree... Badeschiff - literally "bathing ship" - opened in 2004 as an art project organized by Berlin's Stadtkunstprojekte (City Art ProjectSociety), the AMP Architectos (Teneriffa), architect Gil Wilk and local artist Susanne Lorenz.The initial aim was to enliven city life along what was then a long-neglected stretch of the Spree, between the former Osthafen (East harbour) and Flutgraben, a small [...]
Teufelsberg: Berlin’s North Face
A personal walking excursion to one of Berlin's most mysterious landmarks... Considering it’s a city with lots of neighbourhoods named after hills (Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg, Schöneberg and so on), Berlin is a challengingly flat place. You can walk for miles and miles without rising so much as an inch above the median above-sea-level altitude. Nor would the more notable inclines in the city’s topography – the gradual north-easterly rise along Prenzlauer Allee, for instance - trouble an [...]
The Art Of Urban Sketching
Berlin Illustrator Rolf Schroeter talks about his passion for Urban Sketching and the relationship between art and place... I was born in a small town near Cologne in West Germany. After an apprenticeship as a stonemason I travelled to Italy, then took a degree in architecture from RWTH Aachen. During all that time, and especially during my architectural studies, I used sketchbooks. I worked as a tutor alongside Professor Heiner Hoffmann, who put a strong emphasis on filling sketchbooks with [...]
Walking The Landwehr Kanal
Kevin Braddock ponders the infographic and the psychogeographic during a stroll along the Landwehr Kanal at –15˚C... A Berlin mate of mine happens to be a very successful illustrator known for composing colourful infographics and tiny, pixelated portraits of popstars. We often spend evenings in the bars around Kottbusser Tor pontificating on life, on the whole agreeing with each other. One day though we happened upon a quite intractable difference in our views. It crystallised around [...]
