Sunday, April 27, 2008

need your help!

starting to get some berlin plans lined up. i wanted to ask all of you if you have ideas about buildings, sustainbility driven projects that might be good. also, do you have friends in berlin that might want to go to art events at night. it just so happens that the Berlin Biennial is happening while I am in town and I can make it to several cool art events in the evenings. I am tickled.
Also, I have just emailed Olafur Eliason to see if I may come on a studio visit since his workshop is right in town. Cross your fingers. I have an appointment at the City Planning Agency, but haven't been able to get any designers to meet. At present, that is the major hole in my visit.

So, here is a concise list of requests for you:
1. Does anyone know of landscape//architects in Berlin that would be good to meet/interview or have studios worth visiting?
2. Ideas about buildings, landscapes, parks, boulevards, tiny and big interventions in the city that I can learn from or enjoy
3. Friends of yours who might want to go to art events in the evenings

all your help is welcome. you can add comments directly to this posting without logging in or having a blogger account. just click on the "COMMENTS" link below the post.

4 comments:

kk said...

Susielou! the concrete dungeon isn't the same without your smiling face! as for berlin, i remember reading a few articles by kristina hill about places, precedents, etc. in berlin. of course, i have no clue what they were or where in my piles of school reading from the last 2 years i would find them, but perhaps a good ol google search would help. or an email to kristina herself...

eat more hotdogs. the faces you make with the condiments bring daily inspiration to my life.

hortiste said...

Hey Susie! A follow-up to Karen's comment... We just read a Kristina Hill article that mentions Berlin green roofs at the Universum Film company (UFA) building, the Potzdamer Platz, and the DaimlerChrysler headquarters (designer Herbert Dreiseitl). Happy planning! We miss you.

Anonymous said...

Hey,
Im friends with Todd and Chris in Portland and they gave me the heads up on your trips. My woman and I have lived in Berlin for the past 6 years and just recently have lived here in the states more than there, so sad. Anyhow, I am an author and photographer and am not "in" with the architecture scene but ill give you my two cents.
West Berlin used to be great, then the wall came down and now its more like a monument to old school capitolism. people go there to shop and though there are some interesting areas, its a wastland compared to East berlin, which is where people are talking about when they say berlin in one of the the new culture capitol of the world.
Mitte and Prenzlauerberg are the centers for food, parks and culture as far as i can tell. Lots of galleries, clubs, parks etc.
Something very interesting is the east side gallery which is the largest remaining section of the wall along the Spree River. There is no "gallery" so im not sure why they say that. along this section of the wall there are all kinds of funny little businesses trying to eek out a living, not to mention the wall is interesting and there is art all over it. Maybe thats why they call it a gallery...
email this guy, he may know more of what your looking for. In may he starts an internship with a knifemaker in Berlin. He will there early may and may even be up for something fun. He is a cool guy with loads of ideas and some intersting local friends.
dan.on.a.mountain@gmail.com
His name is Dan Essex.

The new Jewish Memorial is pretty intersting. a whole block of black cement blocks, like grave stones. there is some speculation too that the company they hired to coat the blocks to make graffiti easier to get off is the same company (or a related one) that made zyklon B (which was famously used to kill millions of Jews in gas chambers in WWII). another bit of speculation about this memorial is that when they dug down to create the foundation, they found a Nazi bunker, which is actually incredibly likely because the ground under berlin is littered with them.
Another thing to check is the Berlin unterwelten society, the Berlin Underground Society. they have cleaned some of the old Nazi bunkers underground and lead tours. they are serious about their mission to preserve this history and not in it for the buck. i went on the tour and it was great. on place to find them is Humboltain Park which has one of the last if not the last Flakturm, a bunker for shooting down allied planes. the cement was too thick to blow it up when the Nazis fled at the end of the war.
I wrote a story for Climbing Magazine as we used to rock climb there.
http://www.climbing.com/photo-video/gallery/berlinbunker/index7.html
but the essay link no longer works so see my site directly for the story if you want to read it.
http://travelerphotography.com/writing/short_stories/the_bunker.html

Im sure there are a million other spots im not thinking of now, but feel free to email me with questions. Berlin looks like the kind of place you might get knifed in an alley, but it is the safest city i have ever been in, and have never even heard of any crime. the culture is great, the food is great and things a resonbly cheap.
as far as accomodation, rent a flat. you can do it by the day often and usually for about 30 - 50 euro a day which is so much less than any hotel and only about 10 - 30 more than a hostel.
try
www.stedenten-wg.de

Traveler Terpening
907 299 1119
www.travelerphotography.com
info@travelerphotography.com

Anonymous said...

That weaving is amazing. You must be sewing in your genes. Mom