Berlin Day 10

August 14, 2012 11:52 PM

Today was looong day. Lots of walking (well, duh...but it feels like we did more today). I feel like we covered about 30 years of architecture in the span of a day.

We started extra early today because we had an appointment at the Berlin State Library for a tour before it opened to the public. It's a cool building...lots of daylighting, especially from a building built in the 60s. I like the movement around the space and the use of colored glass blocks as art. It's politically interesting because it was built at the edge of the West, almost next to the Berlin Wall.

Next we went to the Neue Nationalgalerie by Mies Van Der Rohe. I die. I die. I love Mies. I love the glass box (ok yes, it doesn't really work as a house, but damn it, it looks good and conveys the ideas of planes and volumes and transparency). And this gallery is pretty much Barcelona Pavillion but BIGGER and much more open. Yes, it's a giant glass box, but the opportunities for the space inside is limitless. You can do anything.

Next we went to the Reichstag. It's cool that the old building was restored and redesigned after the reunification. It's an awesome building...I like what Norman Foster did. He preserved the history (including the graffiti in the building after the it was taken over in WWII). I was most excited to go up the dome. It was a nice procession up On one ramp and down the other. It gave you a 360 view of Berlin. The dome also serves as a passive cooling device.

Saw a Frank Gehry building. He was hired by Hines, a Texas developer. I just laughed when we went inside. It was a little ridiculous. It's structure is compared to that of a whale. I just laughed even more.

Holocaust Memorial by Peter Eisenman was awesome. From the street, you don't get a sense of scale, everything looks the same. But as you walk into the space, the blocks change and you don't realize how big and tall the structures are. As you go deeper into the space, the blocks get bigger and get smaller as you go further out.