Berlin and back

Berlin on Monday was quite interesting. Axel, an art historian working on the controversial project of how best to preserve reminants of the Berlin Wall showed us around and told us about the history of the city's urban design as influenced by wars and walls. The city was different from any other I've been to. I expected it to be more dense and have retained more of a typical European city feel, but instead works of modern architecture showed themselves off amidst all kinds of construction projects in the works, still working to rebuild from the destruction from WWII. The bits of wall were an erie scar in the landscape with haphazard slicing of buildings and streets - old architectural styles on one side in and new on the other. Most of us imagine the Berlin wall as a single wall, but there was actually a whole gruesome series of barriers on the east side of the largest wall starting with a line not to cross over, progressing to smaller walls, an electric fence, and guarded area with dogs or gaurds ordered to shoot anyone who entered into the area. Most of this is gone now minus a few chunks and small hints or a line paved in stone running through the street.

The Jewish memorial was another dramatic site. Gray blocks of concrete that start at only a couple feet tall and then rise up to about 15 feet tall are laid out in a grid of rectangles that you wonder through in straight paths like a maze. The center is strange with the up and down sloping narrow paths, running into other people at sharp corners on perpendicular paths . . . the space seemed less of a typical memorial to those who died but more an abstract reinactment of the confusion and fear of the time. That uncomfortable sensation still hadn't left me as we walked by what used to be Hitler's underground bunkers.

I'm planning to head back to Berlin for our 4 day break between projects to hopefully explore some of the lighter sides of the city I've heard good things about, well and the Jewish museum by the architect Libeskind. I'll also be going to the ZEGG ecovillage outside of Berlin as part of the start of some thesis research.

For now we're just getting into the real guts of our design project in Decin which we have another week and a half to work on before a presentation at the Chateau on the 14th.

I hope the summer is kicking off well over in that part of the world.

- Nicole