Loosely Rigorous
I was waiting for a friend of mine to meet me for a drink one evening last March at the bar Babette on Karl Marx Alle in Berlin. Its situated in this very kind piece of showpiece DDR modernism, a 60′s glass box of a pavilion built in front of some of Berlin’s slabbiest slabs. If we ever publish a tour guide to Berlin this will be the place we recommend for a relaxing, pricey drink after a day of trudging through the wind and rain looking at communist housing projects.
I don’t really know what this was built for; one would guess a showroom of some kind but a showroom is what you sell things in and that wasn’t a process of daily life that was celebrated behind the iron curtain in the way that this thing was celebrating whatever was supposed to be going on inside of it. Whatever it was, it was definitely an activity that was on show for all to see, the entire envelope of the thing being sheathed in plate glass. A true celebration of something. It is Modernist, idealized, Functionalist space, the kind we love around here, because in the end the function probably didn’t really matter that much to those DDR Baumeisters, anyway. Though some historians and theory wonks might disagree with this point, and we kindly invite them to school me if they do. Because this is (supposed to be) a blog.
Yeah, so I’m sitting there waiting for this dude to show, sipping a glass of overpriced red wine. Gazing at the cars slipping by in the rain, feeling decadent. I glance upward at the ceiling and this blatant flaw in the jewel box’s construction slapped my trained eyes of an architect in the face.
Seeing this really makes me realize what hell people like Mies van der Rohe and his disciples had to go through to really get that high Modernist architecture to be tight. I mean, what their construction contractors had to go through. Its the kind of nonsense that one never would find in a similar situation in West German constructions, never ever I don’t think. But in America, yeah, probably somewhere, but not like on the big boulevard in Washington DC where the soldiers would parade by in front of ICBMs towed along on tractor trailors.
That said, seeing something like this feels like a lilting sigh of relief, a gentle pause from the persistent rigor that glues 60′s Modernism together.
I luckily own almost all the copies of “Deutsche Architektur” issued in the 60s, so I might have a look there and inform you what the theory and practice behind these pavilions were.
Hi there И.Е. Станков,
that would be great to find out. As soon as I start thinking about what the backstory of the DDR architecture might be all kinds of questions arise. Its still a mysterious culture in many ways, at least to a west coast American who was 17 when the wall fell.
Did you collect all those editions of the magazine back in the day? They must be fascinating and totally cool to leaf through. If you come across anything about the pavilion and can scan it would be great to see how the mag represents the architecture, and to see how the building looked when it first went up. In any event, do let me know if you find out the building’s original function.
Grreetings,
Oliver
I’ll have a look these days. I hope I find an article about them.
The magazines themselves are extremely impressive. Very well made, fantastic pictures on which even the blandest commie block looks like the housing of the future, and, quite intelligent text. There are articles not only about architecture all over the eastern block, but also about modern developments in the west as well.
And, no, I did not collect them myself as I was much younger than you when the wall came down. The grandfather of a friend of mine gave them to me, because she knew I am crazy about the history of modern achitecture.
Hello OM,
these buildings are [url='http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/cgi-bin/hidaweb/getdoc.pl?LIST_TPL=lda_list.tpl;DOK_TPL=lda_doc.tpl;&KEY=obj%2009011370,T,002']listed under preservation[/url] and you are referring to KMA36 / ‘Kosmetiksalon Babett’ which is now home of Café Babette. It is mentioned that there where nine of those buildings planned on Karl-Marx-Allee, of which only five were realized eventually.
The original purpose for these cubes was “Verkaufspavillon”, so stores and shops were situated in there in the olden days of the before zero, i.e. 1990.
btw: its nice to know you’re back in town,
see you soon,
F.