Looking at the facade so unwillingly, my eye is drawn to the strange house-like monument that stands before it. Its primitive form, coated with the dregs of neon-colored billpostings, exudes a raw, spontaneous energy that’s in stark contrast to the church’s insipid architectural contrivances.

With this image we hereby draw to a close the publication of Victor Brigola’s wonderful series of photographs of rowhouse churches. It is, I think, a fitting way to end. Ever since the project began, this image has been the can being kicked down the road, an ugly truth that I wanted to ignore. But in the end it has served as an inspiration, a testament to the fact that a beautiful picture can be taken of something that isn’t.

Aesthetically, the former church seems a likely candidate to have been abandoned by its congregation. To be honest, it’s really just a clumsy hodgepodge of disparate elements slapped together with little sensitivity or grace, the highlight of which is the little towerette on the right hand side, crammed cozily against the wall of the neighboring apartment house.

Many thanks again to Victor Brigola for this, the penultimate photograph to be featured in this series. All of the pictures are on view in the show “Feeling the Void” at the Vero Linzmeier Galerie until November 17th.

This Catholic job on Dänenstrasse appears incredibly secure in its standing, having little need for the kind of overwrought historical pastiche of its protestant brethren featured elsewhere in this collection. Its appearance has something more to do with an ideal than the contingencies of history, I would argue, and references to previous styles have been sublimated by a vision so reduced that it seems to be simultaneously both primitive and futuristic. A little dab of razzle dazzle hasn’t been forgotten, though: the guilded cross provides a not-so-subtle reminder of who’s got the money and isn’t afraid to show it.

As you may have seen by clicking onto the photographer’s link above, Mr. Brigola will be showing works from this series from Thursday, Oct. 27 in the show entitled “Feeling the Void” at the Vero Linzmeier Galerie. The opening party will be from 6:00-9:00pm on Thursday, I hope to see you there!

In a sense, the presence of such a covering simply heightens the rather abstract structural qualities that these churches all seem to have. None of them are as elaborate in their detailing or as dense in their rendering as the models from which they were derived, in spite of the fact that their façades are generally coated in a rife-running admixture of decorative treatments. And in this case, as the church + cloister stood before the photographer on a chilly morning last spring, the most juicy parts of all have been both muffled and abstracted. Beneath the white sheathing can be found the rich combination of a loggia, crenellated turrets, a circular white clock face and a broad, gothic-arched drive that leads to an inner courtyard which is has been touted as a verdant Shangri-La, far removed from the city’s bustling streets -in essence, a real hodge podge of turn-of-the-19th-century eclecticism. The architect, whoever he was, truly red-lined his understanding of historical styles, having shifted his encyclopaedic knowledge of them into a proverbial overdrive, if you will, which was his reward, perhaps, for having finished top of the class at some stiflingly oppressive Wilhelminian Bauakademie.

Campanile, campanilo, campanilotto -as the Wikipedia entry on Italian diminutives states, “there are no limits to suffixation, which could continue”.

Thanks again to Victor Brigola for his photographic offerings to this humble channel of architectural conjecture.

One more for the collection of photographer Victor Brigola’s edition of images produced for Slab.

Perhaps the ‘jects surrounding this baby are more reminiscent of Beograd, or its suburbs, than the church itself -at least on the outside. It’s apparently a classic retrofit, indicating demographic shifts in the working class district of Berlin-Wedding. Or could the church have been purpose built? Indeed there is some arcane romance in both the design of the crenelations, as well as of the steppy triangle things over the tripartite entrance way. There’s no real info on the edifice itself on the parish homepage, though a nice synopsis of the order is presented. Lots of strife, of course. All the agonizing multiculturalism seems to have started with the physical location of the Serbian homeland being stuck between its two major Christian influences, Constantinople and Rome.

Still, I remain convinced that the surroundings look more yugo than the church itself.

Cold, hard eclecticism: Evangelische Advent-Zachäus-Kirchengemeinde, Danziger Strasse/Heinz Bartsch Strasse

But today we’re looking at a protestant heap of bricks on Danziger Straße. Though sober in its rendering of materials, there’s nonetheless a fairy tale/warped dream quality to it. Dramatically clashing chunks of geometry combine in the name of spiritual whimsy. The result is intriguing, though not exactly something that beckons me to join in on Sunday mornings and pray to Jesus.

None of its surrounding accoutrements regard it as so:

The stout little soldier trash bin, standing guard like a de-commissioned Stasi agent  serving as art museum security, darting behind columns in hopes of some action.

The steel fence that wags its Berliner finger at you, shallowly planted in a time when punishments were harsher, inviting only the very disobedient, or very tall, to stride up the fluted roof, climb onto an architectural monument, and strut around in Berlin’s famous silhouette.

The shy capitalist bike rental sign, inching away from this vortex-vertex, seeking its own meagre limelight.  The not-so-carefully raked triangle of sand below the roof rejecting its fate as planter for vegetation, in favour of planter for architectural vanishing point, at the same time providing a rather generous urban ash-tray.

In a landscape of whirling signs, ducks (if you’ve ever considered the Fernsehturm to connote the toothpick and olive of the terrible martinis served atop), and the golden hands of well-petted statues Marx and Engels, this architectural point has been undersold.

Perhaps what’s needed is a loud neon sign blinking “Stop! Momentous!” or “Damn Right it’s a Pin Joint!“

…for traffic swamped Winskiez. By the looks of it, a new stretch of Hadrian’s wall is under construction. Ah, no, just the next installment of public space improvements on Winsstraße these days, presumably to link up with the exclusive condominiums of current development Wohnquartier on the corner of Jablonskistraße, a kind of Kollebelle light in aircrete and pvc by the same architect. By the looks of it, someone imported Kollebelle’s curved facade into Vectorworks with the wrong arc segmentation settings, though the architect says it’s a reference to the Japanese art of origami. Aha.

kollebelle origami facade by the man himself, Marc Koch

This city really takes care of you. Phew, glad I am just inside this perimeter of respectibility and decorum, qualities directly proportional to the redundancy of bollards and pedestrian traffic lights in the ‘hood. Earlier that day the Ordnungsamt had saved me from unknowingly purchasing grilled salsiccie that a rogue organic butcher had tried to cook from a raw state at Kollwitzplatz market. He only had a license to grill cooked sausages. What people try to get away with! And I know how busy they have been in the trenches of the newly installed neigborhood parking in this area. So hats off to them. In fact, let’s dedicate these bollards as tiny monuments to the noble travails of our friends from the Ordnungsamt, scouring our sidewalks daily for first signs of decay and traffic indiscipline. Protect and serve. Things are looking up.

gentrification bridgehead into unchartered territory