Hasta La Ideas

Berlin’s former power plant hosts the world’s brightest contemporary artists

by Shawn Thomson

Known for its unfiltered take on contemporary art in recent years, Germany’s capital city has increasingly become an international stomping ground for artists, dealers, collectors and enthusiasts alike, all there to relish in an atmosphere without the financial constraints of art hubs like New York and London. One show really capturing Berlin’s artistically autonomous spirit is Berliner Liste, a three-day fair located in a former power plant that showcases over 100 galleries from Germany and beyond.

The broad spectrum of both established and emerging artists sets the stage for an international exchange across disciplines, spanning sculpture, painting, photography and video and performance art. On par with most major art fairs, the impressive display is nearly overwhelming—but a few stand out from the pack.

Vincent Bousserez showed his satirical take on scale with beautiful executions of tilt-shift-style photographs at The Artistery. On view at Artcuraor.ru, Ilya Kukushkin describes his bold paintings as “Neo analytical constructivism.” Controversial contemporary vet Morten Viskum made a statement with the striking new work, “I’m crazy about Liza. We get on the phone and just gossip, gossip, gossip” and the life-sized self-portrait “The Perfect Sculpture,” at Son Espace Gallery. The result of a year spent traveling around the world with an imaginary superhero called SleepingBagMan, Marcus Veith’s documented his fiction with photography .

Berliner Liste closes 11 September 2011, at the extraordinary Trafo building, with the award ceremony for The Peter-Christian-Schluschen Foundation‘s young photography contest on 11 September 2011 at 7pm.

German studio Winkens Architekten have completed a kindergarten in Berlin that has sheltered terraces at each end.

The symmetrical building accommodates a kindergarten on one side and a crèche on the other, both of which are accessed from a central foyer.

The exterior walls of the single-storey building are brickwork, while walls and ceilings surrounding the decked terraces are clad in timber.

A square hole in the canopy of one terrace will allow a newly planted tree to grow through.

Door and window frames are painted in bright shades of red and orange.

Winken Architekten previously designed a copper-clad extension that loops around an existing house – see the story on Dezeen here.

Photography is by Marcel Klebs and Jirka Arndt.

Here are some more details from Winkens Architekten:

For a replacement building of a Kindergarden in the Waltersdorfer Street 94, 12526 Berlin.

The evangelistic Churchcomunity Berlin Bohnsdorf-Grünau provided a plot at the corner of Neptun Street to Schulzendorfer Street in Berlin, Germany.

The plots level is even and partly settled with big trees. The border to the Neptun Street is marked by a small hill which is surrounded by trees.

The architectonic concept relies on the base of the educational concept of the Kindergarden “Apfelbäumchen”.

By considering the Spacial conditions of the small hill and the trees the linear one floor building was set orthogonal to the Neptun Street along the east border of the plot.

The linear building is central opened over a row of secondary rooms. The Entry is followed by a Foyer and a multipurpose room which opens to the garden.

The Kindergarden and the creche work like apartments and each have a entry from the foyer. This strengthens the individuality of the two functions.

The arrangement of the homerooms and the multi purpose room underlines the linearity of the building.

The direct connection to the garden is one of the main focus. The multi purpose room in the center functions as a pedagogical connection of the Kindergarden.

The kindergarden and the creche have both a terrace at the end of the building which opens to the garden and helps to connect the rooms to the outside.

The facade is made in brick, and the terraces are made of wood. Natural materials are characterizing the appearance. The roof is extensively greened and partially used for solar energy gain. The building is heated with gas.

Project: New building Kindergarden
Name: Forscherkindergarten Apfelbäumchen
Location: Neptunstraße 10, 12526 Berlin, Germany
Client: Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Bohnsdorf-Grünau
Architect: WINKENS Architekten, Berlin, Germany
Team: Karl-Heinz Winkens, Marcel Klebs

Places:
Under 3 years: 22 childrens
Over 3 years: 23 childrens

See also:

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Fagerborg Kindergarten by RRA	Kindergarten Terenten by Feld72	Leimondo Nursery by Archivision Hirotani

GFA: 550 sqm
Plot Area: 6500 sqm
Building time: October 2010 – July 2011

New guides from the anti-tourist travel site

Only a few short months after its debut earlier this year, online travel hub Fathom has expanded its scope of original travel-related tales to include essential tips for planning trips to unfamiliar cities. The visually-pleasing site is filled with memorable stories and practical advice as colorful and intoxicating as featured destinations. With vibrant photographs linked to every post a taste of international travel is only a click away.

This unusually pleasant approach to vacation planning is no happy accident. Motivated by past experiences of wading through extensive recommendation lists, founder and CEO Pavia Rosati worked with editorial director Jeralyn Gerba to “create a beautiful place for the travel-proud to get inspired, then come back and share their adventures.”

So far, Fathom’s Postcards make up the bulk of the site. From product guides and photo galleries to videos and questionnaires, the Postcards contain first-person content written for travelers by travelers. Within the heading “I Travel for the…,” each post reveals whether such categories as food, romance or culture motivate the traveling contributor. The Tools section, an especially “useful amenity,” offers general resources for money tips, links to sites with the best airfare and travel-friendly applications for smartphones.

Fathom’s latest section to debut, Guides compiles incredibly helpful information for cities all over the globe. This includes cleverly-orchestrated itineraries like London’s “I’m Here on Business” and New York’s “Two Old Broads in NYC.” Other categories list top restaurants, hotels, shops, sites, and nightlife spots—all at varying price points—with an insightful blurb to help you pick the right ones for you. Written by locals who know the area best with content updated as needed, you can’t go wrong with Fathom’s city guides. Recognizing that savvy travelers refer to various sources, each venue listed also includes links to relevant news and travel sites that have something to say about that spot. For a short-form list of local essentials, every featured city also includes a Cheat Sheet with info like tipping customs and convenient forms of travel.

Fathom Guides are currently available for New York City, London, Berlin and The Hamptons. Sign up for Fathom’s newsletter to get your wanderlust going. Also, feel free to contribute to the site by sending in a postcard with your most exciting travel adventures.

Spécialisé dans le portrait, voici le photographe Hannes Caspar vivant et travaillant à Berlin. Avec ses clichés, ce dernier recherche à souligner l’humanité présente dans la majorité de ses modèles. Plus d’images issues de différentes séries dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

• Manhattan in Motion
• Louis Vuitton City Guide 2011
• Markus Mueller

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These photographs by Roland Halbe show a mixed-use building by German architects NPS Tchoban Voss, which cantilevers over a neighbouring rooftop in Berlin.

The five-storey building is clad in metal panels and contains a ground-floor gallery, two floors of offices and a split-level apartment.

The new block completes the Hamburger Hof complex, for which the architects also renovated and extended surrounding buildings.

Extensions to existing buildings are also finished in metal panels.

The group of buildings surround a courtyard that previously housed a carpenter’s workshop.

More stories about cantilevering buildings on Dezeen »

Here is some more information from the architects:

Große Hamburger Street
addition for a court as listed monument

The Hamburger Hof complex presents itself today as a terrain genuinely grown and constantly re-combined by means of residential and commercial buildings over the last 200 year.

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First documented in 1828, the front building was complemented over and over by additions on the courtyard side, establishing both small trade businesses as well as places of entertainment such as a bowling house.

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A bronze casting house, a coffee roastery, a brewery, locksmith and carpentry workshops, and various restaurants and bars were located here during the last two centuries, an addition to residential and small office units.

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The client was fond of the idea to continue this mix of crafts, culture and housing when he acquired the property with the heterogeneous existing development in 2006. In close collaboration with the alert preservation authorities a renovation and expansion concept was developed solely removing two small sheds from the 1960′s.

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Generously glazed attics were sensibly added, partly resuming again the droop volume of the roofs that had been destroyed during World War II.

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The only completely new building within the ensemble is a five-story construction abutting an existing fire wall.  On the top floor it protrudes widely into the retral adjacent park, while at the corner of the neighboring brick house shifting onto the old coffee roastery in respectful distance.

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New fenestrations on the upper floors of the complex offer spectacular views onto this “pocket park” and the surrounding houses, while the historic courtyard is recast by the new layout explicitly implementing modern materials and shapes and yet retaining its vintage character as a semi-private space.

Location: Berlin
Builder: Schauder & Shani GmbH
Completion year: 2010

See also:

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Casa Paz by Arturo Franco Office	Torreagüera Vivienda Atresada by Xpiral	Balancing Barn by MVRDV and Mole