SLAB Magazine

Fully compliant with Mitte zoning laws: a fashion boutique
Back in November 2006, we laconically hypothesised that the ground floor retail space of the Gormannstraße building we later slated for being «disappointing», would contain either a) a high-price fashion boutique where no one shops, or b) a WLAN-equipped café selling latte macchitatos under an obscure new [...]

Last November SLAB Magazine covered the tantalising developments on Gormannstraße 8/9. We had a good look at the hole, scrutinized the rendering, and postulated about possible ground-floor retail. «Escheresque», we called it.

And lo; what doth December 2007 reveal? A different story. Where the rendering had filigree window frames, the reality has chunky pre-fab aluminium standards; [...]

A Saturday morning spent in Ikea is a collective experience akin to a Sunday morning spent in church. Globally speaking though, it’s probably more common, and whereas church usualy unites people of similar faiths, a Saturday trip to Ikea unites people of all faiths: from Turkey to Japan, from Island to Singapur and from Canada [...]

‘Alexa’, the new necrophile zombie shopping crypt on Alexanderplatz, opened to shocking scenes of chaos on the 12th September. Europe’s largest branch of MediaMarkt opened at midnight, and thousands of Berliners decended upon the store in a fest of consumer greed. The “stack ‘em high, sell them low” policy of the electronic goods giant [...]

Dismantled: PVC fakery
Witness the dismantling of Berlin’s non-plus ultra fakeytectural adventure, Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Bauakademie. Originally built between 1832 and 1836, the Building Academy was heavily damaged during WWII and pulled down in 1962 to make way for East Germany’s foreign office building, which was then demolished in 1995.
In 2001 the project Pro BauAkademie was [...]

The German Bundestag’s own kindergarten, designed by Austrian architect Gustav Peichl, is a well known feature on the south bank of Berlin’s Spree river. It’s a boat-like, light blue wedge of a building, topped off by two charming silver boobs. These architectural glandula mammaria are synonymous with the quietening effects of breast-feeding, and are, consequently, [...]

That’s German for “idea” – looks like someone had one
Shop-front on Passauer Straße, Charlottenburg, Berlin. Pity the coloured rods don’t move up and down and rearange themselves into new words. That would be an idea.