Wednesday in Berlin

Today was a light day.  Walked to the Brandenberg Gate, then through the Tiergarten, the main central park of Berlin.  This was a hunting ground in royal times, but now used by all the people.  The students see it today as heavily wooded and tree-lined, but post war it was pretty barren, as the middle historic photo shows.

Then over to the Schloss Charlottenberg, for a wonderful audio-tour of the Baroque ode to the dead queen.  No internal pictures aloud, but here is an exterior shot.

That's all for now.  Tomorrow is a bit of a mish-mash, and then Friday we are off on a 6-day bus tour of the south of Germany.  Full and Fun!

Potsdam (Day Trip)

So Tuesday we got going early; 8:00AM.  Had to get the students together, get to the train station, get our tickets, and then 45 minutes to Potsdam.  There are several historic places and buildings to see there, and we walked (and walked... and walked...) them all.

The first sight greeting us when leaving Potsdam Hauptbahnhof is the dome of the Nikolaikirche in the distance.

We walked over the bridge to see it closer.

Like many historic places in Europe, there always seems to be some scaffolding somewhere, keeping up and repairing is a full time task.

The interior of the church is quite stunning.  My camera cannot capture what my eye sees at it moves about the space.

From here we walked through the city to their Brandenberg Gate.  While not as large and well-known as Berlin's it nonetheless anchors an axis through the city, along which the students ate and shopped a bit.

Now it was time for the main gardens and palaces.  The Sanssouci Gardens are enormous, with three different palaces, stables, a large windmill, and plenty of follies and ancillary buildings.  The first we experienced is the main and first built; the Sanssouci Palace, in full yellow Baroque.

Those are a lot of stairs.  The problem with palaces, I have found, is that the king naturally wants the best views, so they are always up on hills with lots of grand stairs and such.  I am not in shape for this, but the students seem fine.  And I will admit, the view is a good one.

Plenty of pilasters transforming into people.

and a view of the courtyard.

Also in the gardens, a little bit further, is a much later palace (1864) the "Orangerie."

Unlike its Baroque predecessor, this is in a stripped-down Neoclassical style that hints at the Modern Movement to come in a few decades.

We did not make it all the way down to the New Palace, clear on the other end of the gardens.  These gardens are massive!  It's good to be Emperor.

We did travel by bus to the other side of Potsdam, to a different palace and Garden.  The Babelsberg Palace is set high in a heavily wooded garden, which we had to walk through because I misread the bus map.  It did afford a wonderful chance to come upon the building from behind.

 This is the front.  The palace was actually built in two parts.  The front half is by Karl Schinkel, and is in a Neo-gothic style he was interested in at the time.  The palace was for a brother, and so was smaller.  But when later He became a prince next in line to the throne, his wife had the palace extended, in the Romantic style more to her taste (and causing Schinkel to disavow the whole project).  I hope the students begin to understand that, while it all looks "old" and "historical" to us now, these various styles had real political and cultural meaning and differences at the time, and that every style in new at some point.  Mental food for later thought when we go to more contemporary buildings again.

Monday around Berlin

Firstly, I am adding Mr. Karl Pujak and Dr. Brian Etheridge as blog authors, so there will me more diversity of style and content in upcoming posts.

So, I am going to share some of today's highlights, with others appearing from my coauthors and the students.

MARIENKIRCHE:  (seen below)
One of the oldest churches in the city, we started there first due to its proximity to the train station.  We had a discussion of styles represented, and proceeded to go around to the front and enter.  Unfortunately, the church is closed starting today for repairs.  We will have to come back in a week or so.

NIKOLAIKIRCHE:
So we next walked a bit over to the area where Berlin was founded, at the easiest crossing of the Spree, and the founding church of the city, the Nikolaikirche.  We sat at the river crossing, and Dr. Etheridge gave an open-air lecture on the general historical context and founding of Berlin.

Then over to the Kirche:

After lunch, we walked to our third church of the day, the Friedrichwerder Church by Karl Schinkel.  Schinkel is one of Germany's most noted architects, still revered and analyzed today.  We will see several of his buildings on this study trip, this being the first, circa 1824-1830.

Nex

Next down to St. Hedwig's, on Bebelsplatz:

And a historic photo of what it looked like in 1898.  It, like most things in Berlin, was damaged in WWII, and the dome has been replaced, no longer having the vertical "tower" on top.  The interior is quite silencing, with a dome breadth that I could not capture with my camera.  The eyes are still better than any camera when it comes to total experience.


We also visited the Concert House originally designed by Karl Schinkel.  This was impressive for its size, although it turns out that virtually the entire building was destroyed in the war, and this is a rebuild from the 1980's that tried to be faithful, but also took liberties with where certain spaces were, and the various ornamentation was changed around in some spaces.  As with many of the historic buildings we have and will see, the question of authenticity, historical accuracy, and how is best to preserve and honor the past has been coming up.  No answers, but a good question of ethics and sensibility for the architecture and history students.

Weekend part 2: Sunday

So Sunday we started after lunch, trying to stock up on some sleep since the weather has turned cooler and more livable.  Five of the architecture students decided to come along today for our travels.

Our first destination was the Berlin Aquadom, which, it turns out, costs 17EUR to see, despite not seeing that online anywhere.  So we decided to move on, to the DAZ (Deutsches Architektur Zentrum, or German Architecture Center).  http://www.daz.de/daz/home/de/  Not knowing what to expect we made our way there, deeper into the former East.  It turned out to be not much, just a few white spaces with some exhibitions happening.  We walked through them but did not stay long.  But the journey did yield this wonderment; a mascot at a stand advertising "real" American hot dogs.  I may never eat another one.

Finally, we went on to the Velodrom and Swimhalle complex, designed by Dominic Perrault, built in anticipation of Berlin getting the 2000 Olympic games (they didn't).  The complex is a large 2-story plinth with a rooftop park, into which are incised two primary forms: a cylindrical disk for the Velodrom and a square form for the pools.  This strategy transforms what is usually a large urban presence into an almost hidden condition from the street.

We went inside the Velodrom, to experience the dynamic radially-trussed roof for ourselves.

 

Then we returned to the apartments, and greeted Dr. Etheridge, who was not with us for the first few days.  Now the history component of the trip can kick in.  Tomorrow morning we start again with the full group of students.  Stay tuned.
--D. Caldwell

Weekend Part 1: Saturday

So Saturday, the students all did their own thing, and so only Mr. Puljak and myself went wandering to various places in the former west.

First, we went back to the Akademie der Kunst, to see a few exhibitions that we did not have time for the other day.  No pictures, but I can say it was a really good exhibition on a structural engineering firm.  We are recommending that all the architecture students go back sometime this month and experience it.

We then went to the "Zoo" area for lunch.  It was threatening rain (and occasionally dropping some), so we sat under a large awning and had some authentic German comfort food.  I has a large bowl of potato soup with 2 sausages and a chunk of bread:

And Karl had a fond memory of his Austrian heritage... an entire leg of pig with potatoes and sauerkraut!

Despite their relatively similar size in photos, they were decidedly not!  Karl could not finish his, even with a little help from me.  But they warmed the belly for the afternoon's adventures.

KaDeWe
One of the oldest and largest shopping places in Germany.  Saying this is a department store is like saying an ostrich is a bird.  It is true, but does nothing to communicate the radical difference in scale you are experiencing.  We will be taking the students here later in the trip, but for now a simple description; it takes up an entire city block and is eight stories tall.  Anything you might want in an average to exclusive price range.  The entire 6th floor is devoted to gourmet foods.  I think I counted 10 different  coolers devoted to smoked meats, coded by country of origin; and another 2or3 coolers just for sausages.  Here is one:

Now imagine that kind of inventory applied to cheeses, wines/spirits, candies, fish, olives, etc.  It was all a bit overwhelming; we will need many hours there again sometime(s) to take it all in.


AEG Turbine building
So we went in search of the AEG Turbine building by Peter Behrens.  Built in 1909, it is an enormous industrial building, now sitting a bit incongruously on the edge of a neighborhood in the northern part of Berlin.

The form is more subtle than most architecture history books generally convey.  The corners are fully rounded, and the heavy concrete walls slope slightly, creating an interesting shadow rhythm with the vertical walls of glass.  Hard to capture in photos.

And a detail of the steel frame connection at the base:

Hallen am Borsigturm
We then went to a new shopping center further north in the city;   With the quick increase in population and importance created by relocating the capital of Germany back to Berlin a decade ago, a large number of mega shopping centers were built around the city.  This one is in a converted industrial area, where they have gutted a series of long halls, built a new glass form where one was missing, and covered the entire thing with an undulating steel and glass roof.  Three levels inside, with your standard shopping variety, including a TK Maxx (not a misspelling), and McDonalds, as well as a full gym, a movie theater, and a bowling alley.

In an oddly surreal experience, the promenade contained this sight:

Yes, that is a large sculpture made from beach sand, dedicated to the memory of Michael Jackson.  As I type this I realize that I did not get the whole thing; I am missing Bubbles sitting over in the right corner mourning his fallen master.  And that is where I must end Saturday's story.