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Germans have a reputation for being efficient and serious but the zig zag cycle path that appeared on a street in Berlin Zehlendorf suggests that the stereotype doesn’t apply to everyone. A photo of the cycle path captioned ‘Tetris Radweg’ was the first thing I saw when I opened Facebook on Wednesday last week and […]
The Open University’s short film Bauhaus: Design in a Nutshell sums up the Bauhaus movement in an easy to follow 2 minute video. The school, which was founded in Weimar in 1919 by Berlin-born architect Walter Gropius, revolutionised art and design in the twentieth century. As it says in the the video’s description on YouTube: […]
If you’ve spent time wandering around Berlin you may have occasionally noticed a small green metal hut that looks a little like a summer house but did you stop to wonder what it was? The structure you noticed, known locally as a Café Achteck (Octagonal Café), is actually a toilet. I saw my first Café […]
MODERN EAST. Build Your Own Modernist DDR is a set of 9 paper models of GDR Architecture to cut out and assemble by Zupagrafika. The kit includes includes three examples of GDR Architecture in Berlin: Haus des Berliner Verlages; Kino International; and the Ernst-Thälmann-Park Housing Complex. The additional six models are: Mokka-Milch-Eisbar ‘Kosmos’, Cottbus; Y-Hochhaus, […]
Perched among the trees at a busy intersection on one of Europe’s most famous shopping streets, the Verkehrskanzel, a 1950s Traffic Control Pulpit, is a relic of a bygone era. It is hard to imagine it now, watching the constant stream of traffic at the corner of the Kurfürstendamm and Joachimstaler Straße, but at one […]
The Hufeisensiedlung (Horseshoe Estate) is a modernist housing estate by architect Bruno Taut built on the site of the former Britz Manor in Berlin. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, architecture in Berlin reflected the political struggle between the Socialists and the Nazis. Bruno Taut’s plans for the Hufeisensiedlung, drawn up in cooperation with […]
Are you moving to Berlin or currently on the lookout for new housemates? If so, you may want to check out this tongue in cheek advert for a flat share that appeared on wg-gesucht last week. The advertisers want 627 extra people to share the bills at the new Berlin City Palace (Berliner Stadtschloss), in what […]
The LEGO Architecture Brandenburg Gate is a 363-piece miniature reproduction of one of Europe and indeed the world’s most iconic buildings. As the scene of so many historic moments and a symbol of the division and subsequent reunification of Germany the Brandenburg Gate is a worthy part of the Landmark series in the LEGO Architecture […]
LEGO released a new range of skyline models in its Architecture range in 2016 and one of the three new products is the LEGO Architecture Berlin Cityscape*. In addition to Berlin, the new Cityscapes collection features New York* and Venice*. An updated model of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai*, the world’s tallest building, is also due […]
The Bierpinsel, a 47-metre tall brutalist tower, dominates the skyline on the Schloßstraße in Berlin Steglitz, the city’s second busiest shopping street. The Bierpinsel was built between 1972 and 1976 to plans by the architects Ralf Schüler and Ursulina Schüler-Witte, who also designed the ICC Berlin. The building, whose distinctive form was inspired by the […]
