Berlin: The Latest Architecture and News

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Videos

2019 marks a century of Bauhaus, the school-turned-movement whose influence withstood forced relocations, political meddling, and eventual closure. Despite dramatic shifts in technology, taste, and style in architecture in the years since, Bauhaus remains one of the most significant subjects of architectural/design education and has even captured the interest of the wider public.

As part of our celebrations of the Bauhaus movement - and to satiate your thirst to learn more - we have selected some of the best Bauhaus documentaries available online now. Featuring largely-unseen footage, exclusive interviews, and/or unique perspectives on the Bauhaus, these films provide an excellent way to get up to speed.

In the heart of Berlin resides an architectural metaphor of invisibility, emptiness, and anarchy forged by the Second World War upon the Jewish citizens. The expansion of the original Jewish museum, which was first organized as an anonymous competition by the Berlin government, was proposed as a means of bringing back Jewish presence, retracing their culture and religion into the German city. Renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, who was chosen to develop the project, used architecture as a form of expression, and created a museum that narrates the Jewish civilization before, during, and after the Holocaust.

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With this first comprehensive European exhibition the Aedes Architecture Forum presents the work of Kashef Chowdhury/URBANA from Bangladesh, who received the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016 for the Friendship Centre on the flood plains of Gaibandha in northern Bangladesh. With further projects such as the Gulshan Society Mosque in Dhaka and the Cyclone Shelter in Kuakata, he gained widespread international acclaim. Careful arrangement of structures in areas marked by extreme climatic conditions, combined with local building techniques and materials, Kashef Chowdhury’s buildings are exemplary of an architecture that serves society with radical simplicity and poetry. With an atmospheric installation, the exhibition curated by Niklaus Graber and Andreas Ruby, invites visitors on a journey to Bangladesh and the architectural worlds of URBANA.

MiniLook Berlin from Okapi on Vimeo.

When we get wrapped up in everyday life, it can be easy to take the place we live for granted. In the MiniLook Berlin video, Okapi Creative Studio takes a step back to show the beauty of daily life in the city of Berlin via a stop-motion, tilt-shift technique that makes the city appear as if in miniature. The video highlights everyday street scenes and picturesque shots of nature, while some famous buildings make appearances as well.

Architecture as a Social Tool: Lecture by Jette Hopp of SNØHETTA coupled with the Finissage exhibition "Architecture and Landscape in Norway- Photographs by Ken Schluchtmann"

The role of architecture is to create strong and sustainable identities for cities and their communities. With well-conceived design, we can help things run more fluidly, improve people’s well-being, and make life more enjoyable. Every project is a unique expression of the ethos of its users, climate, and context. A built environment can be seen as a point of departure: it is where the architecture starts to communicate, the point from where it starts to interact with the public and its users.
Followed by a talk with Jette Hopp of SNØHETTA.

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On a small strip of land between the Emscher River and the Rhine Herne Canal in Germany sits a rest stop whose colorful appearance belies its radical purpose. The structure’s artful design consists of pipes leading from two toilets and the Emscher (the most polluted river in Germany) that converge at a small community garden and drinking fountain. The garden is, in fact, a manmade wetland that collects, treats, and cleans the effluence from the toilets and river—making it drinkable.

Danish architecture firm ADEPT has been announced the winner of a competition to redevelop Berlin's Marinehaus as part of the city's Stadtmuseum group. This iteration of the competition was launched in 2018 (following a similar competition ten years ago) and will rehabilitate the Marinehaus for public use after nearly 20 years of closure.

This article was originally published on November 2, 2015. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

As Norman Foster describes in his firm’s monograph, Foster 40, “Our transformation of the Reichstag is rooted in four related issues: the Bundestag’s significance as a democratic forum, an understanding of history, a commitment to public accessibility and a vigorous environmental agenda.”[1] Foster’s description sounds straightforward enough, but the process of creating the New German Parliament at the Reichstag was only the latest entry in the long, complex, and contentious history of the building.

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Swiss practice Herzog & de Meuron have released revised plans for the Museum of the 20th Century project in Berlin's Cultural Forum. Designed to house the extensive National Gallery on 20th century art collection, the project was made in partnership with the Berlin State Museums and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Herzog & de Meuron originally won the competition to design the museum building in 2016, and the revised design features new plans and a facade that opens the building to the outside.

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This article was originally published on Metropolis Magazine as "How a DIY Floating Universiity in Berlin Could Be An Unorthodox Prototype for Design Education."

On the north side of Tempelhofer Feld, an airport-turned-park in southern Berlin, lays a large ditch. Surrounded by lots and bungalows and noticeable only to those in the know, this 19th century basin holds rainwater drained from the airport’s defunct runways before it is fed into Berlin’s canal network.

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In the next chapter of his ongoing Urban Geometry project, self-taught Spanish photographer Andres Gallardo captures the elements of color, form, and materiality of post-war architecture in Berlin. This photo series, with installments featuring the modern marvels of Beijing, Seoul, Copenhagen, and Tallinn, among other cities, has become representative of Gallardo's personal growth from his humble start in his career as a professional photographer.

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