Friedenssäule on Mehringplatz with Angel missing

The vacant symbolism of a column bulging under the weight of nothing made me think of the Stadtschloss. There had been recent news of the snags the project had hit. With public enthusiasm waning into mild boredom, it is increasingly unlikely that the target of 80 mil. in private donations required for the construction of the cupola and the baroque facades will ever be met. Apparently, the budget in place only allows for the construction of the castle’s bare concrete core. It’s ironic that the representational center of Berlin would then be filled with a building not that different in aesthetic from the gutted Palast der Republik aesthetic it was meant to dispel.

Which brings back to mind the Stadtschloss competition entry by Kuehn Malvezzi, vindicated by these developments. I found an English translation of Philip Oswalt’s very insightful discussion of the conundrums of this whole undertaking and of Kuehn Malvezzi’s entry here. Their entry plays on the dire financial reality of the Stadtschloss project and turns them into a concept. Their phased proposal was to first construct a stripped down castle out of brick that could persist on its own, to which the baroque facade could be added later, once funding allows. With almost clairvoyant foresight, it omits the cupola altogether.

The botched undertaking of plonking a castle cum cupola on the Palast site in order to erase any memories of a building with associations that, in the eye of some, continue to taint our history like an oil slick, is fast turning the Stadtschloss into an architectural Deepwater Horizon that is now, debt crisis and all, increasingly revealed as the castle in the sky pipe dream that it always was, to many of us. The Prussian turd might just be sinking.

Deepwater Horizon

Was it thermal expansion by sunlight?  On the east, a clustering of events along the left edge seemed to confirm this. Thermal differentials of materials – cooled by night, then heated by the morning sun – were perhaps here the highest. The southern surface showed a much more uniform distribution of incidents, with a more gradual increase in surface temperatures before exposure to the sun. Inward surfaces without direct solar exposure displayed no incidents.

The observed increase in events at human height between the aluminum profiles is attributed to the frequent posting and removal of bills.

I initially felt some reassurance by the recent BLDGBLG entry on a record breaking artificial tornado created in the Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart.  Only to then find out that the motivation behind this vortex was not semiotic or representative at all, but the result of a pretty amazing fire strategy that allowed for an open floor design completely free of fire doors.

From Autoblog, via BLDGBLG:

“The twister takes around seven minutes to materialize and is generated by 144 jets and 28 tons of air. The low pressure area at the center of the tornado works to create a jet stream that draws smoke out of the building’s corridors and funnels it upwards and out an exhaust vent on the roof.”

The tornado fire strategy seems intrinsically linked to the morphological concept of the museum: an ascending double helix (The Mercedes DNA) spins and ramps the museum program continuously around the central atrium space, which is now revealed to us as the focus not only of of the building’s representative program and circulation, but also of it’s more utilitarian fire strategy. As so often the case,  this unintentional utilitarian detail, afterthought or interpretation provides an aspect of a building (the helix as a system of ordering) that is at least as interesting as the original and intentional design.

7 October 1969. High above the representational void at the heart of the bombed city, the Telecafe at the top of the TV tower is set in rotational motion. This celebratory carousel of solo entertainer with organ and some selected guests draws out first circles around the representational center of a fledgling republic in honor of its 20th anniversary.

It is the architectural equivalent of the refrain as a strategy of place making: “A refrain…is like a song that creates the beginning of order in chaos – as in a child singing in the dark…the beginning of the refrain is fragile. Next, a refrain creates a territory, an organization of a limited space with a circle drawn around it.” 1

Centripetal forces of the first refrain soon draw others – circular follies as markers of places and commerce: the C&A sign, the Weltzeituhr, the Berliner Verlag, a spinning display of rare Döner meat, the rings of Saturn, the spiraling logo of Media Markt.

If the surveying tool of Cartesian town planning is the groma, the strategy of place making by refrain is best represented by the dreidel:

More dreidel with Ira from Jesse Morros on Vimeo.

“For your own safety, no wading or swimming”.

That’s what the warning sign says. Proof that fiction can kill you. If trans fat doesn’t get to you first. Or your satanic neighbor. In hindsight, I wish I had taken many more pictures during my three week sojourn in the burbs of California. It’s hard to pick out whats significant if you are totally immersed in a seamless landscape of illusion stitched together by things like this.  By “Things like this” I mean higher degree simulations, copies of copies that have no traceable origin in something that is not an image. Only, but welcome, reminders of an alternate reality were a few black hawks and a flock of turkey vulchers that had convened on a housing association’s club house. For me, there is a fundamental difference between something like this and, for example, immigrated Welsh farmers of Bruce Chatwin’s Patagonia making themselves at home by the continued use of the Welsh vernacular, or their neighboring German immigrants doing the same by planting cherry trees.

Oh yeah, and those stairs really don’t lead anywhere …

I shudder to think my existence could end then and there in the foot deep rippling reflection of Hadrian’s petrified mirage of the Spanish Steps …

… Alpine cascades …

Any ideas for alternate inscriptions?

I always look forward a little to this strange surrealist juxtapostion, by mytonomie, of plane through pub. Both, passengers and pub, seem to have lost their hull (Hull?). It reminds me of the jet engine crushing through a suburban home in Donnie Darko. There’s got to be a space-time portal in here somewhere leading to the beginning of a mind blowing narrative.

Check out the Tudor detailing and the micron-thin carpet, crisply bisected by the terminal flooring. Is it to assure that the cleaning contractor can clean right through, for insurance purposes, or because they haven’t come up with a carpet that can withstand the steps of 6.6 mio annual passengers that pass through this pub a year? That’s got to be a record, and talk about Laufkundschaft.

I first saw this paint effect creeping up on interiors of PB restaurants. Terracotta hues blotted around whimsically with a sponge to create an Italianate back drop for the pan-Mediterranean micro experience of eating a pizza. Italy equals terracotta sponge effect, simple. One sponge and so much atmosphere. It’s that suffix that’s problematic to me, italianate, meaning it’s vaguely something, like the Mexicali Auflauf that was served to friends of mine in Marburg on their German course, Mexicalianate Auflauf.

There is little we can do about the terracotta sponge effect, it seems, as it continues its ascent onto exteriors, too. Fitting, I guess, since this place is so often described as the most Mediterranean of the Northern cities. An example was unveiled recently on the Knopffabrik (yawn) on Prenzlauer Allee. Maybe that’s how they got away with it – ” it looks like a mineral facade” i.e. terracotta, which probably satisfies some vestigial Stimmann code. I say that without knowing if they even apply beyond the marbled carrees of Friedrichstraße.

“Look what I’ve done, everyone!”, the facade seems to say. Pupils contract to shield the iris from this radiating gaudiness to the silky and sonorous sound of an inner Bob Ross: “just like so”.  No, not like so! Maybe the artist attended a Bob Ross® Malkurs offered around Berlin. But you didn’t finish the job. What we’ve got is a Ross primed canvas for a landscape of the American Southwest. Still missing are the glorious palette knifed sunset and a few petrified trees sprinkled around.

But do you have to apply what you’ve learned to facades? Unless you are sponging Bob Ross’s giant ’fro on a glitzy carree. That would be kind of cool. Can I ever have something in common with the person that finds this acceptable, agree on a stance on torture, or the financial crisis? Then of course, Bob Ross always struck me as warm and interesting person.

I remember this conversation I overheard once in an architecture office in London.  This was when I learned of the profession of party wall surveyor for the first time. It made me think of a gaunt private detective type with trench coat and hat. I couldn’t think of a more kafkaesque, sad facet of the building industry. Did he put it there? Anyway, it’s really mind boggling when representation occurs so close to what’s represented, when the signifier actually contains the signified. A bit like imagining a monk clapping with one hand, I think, before these thoughts fade in hectic traffic on Leipziger.