SLAB Magazine

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.

MTF was kind enough to comment on this article, written with more enthusiasm for a pessimistic gag at the expense of Berliner cooky-cutter sandstone boxes, than for solid research.
He posted a link to some renderings of the building destined to rise up out of the Spreedreieck hole: and it’s really rather good.

Slippery when wet
The pert [...]

The cat
Oliver has left a long comment on the easy-to-draw building I wrote about some weeks back. It’d be a pity if what he wrote just gathered dust in the archives, so I thought I’d post it out here in the fresh air.
“Did you know that amateur architect was a guy named John Hejduk, who [...]

Friday’s edition of the Berliner Morgenpost carried a fairly dull and entirely uncritical article about the leisure necropolis called Alexa currently being built in downtown Mitte.
Instead of mentioning that the actual construction doesn’t resemble the model they printed in any way shape or form (see below), the article bangs on instead about the fact [...]

A new hole in Berlin
With the sale of the so-called Spreedreieck plot of land in front of Berlin’s Friedrichstaße station, another piece of Berlin history has been wiped clean off the face of the earth. The Tränenpalast (Palace of Tears) which stood here until a month or so ago, was an important inner-city border checkpoint [...]

Behind the parking lot of Park Center in Treptow lies Theo’s Partyhaus (Theo’s Party House). Notice the trashed furniture in the veranda (maybe leftovers from the last Heavy-Metal-Night) in contrast to the the nicely arranged BAUHAUS catalogue footpath with shrubs.

This is Sergio in his wheeled crêpe hut. Sergio because “it’s easier for people to remember than Selçik,” which is his real name. That’s how he introduces himself to me today when I express an interest in his micro-construction, and surprise him with an order for a crêpe topped only with icing sugar. “Most people [...]