Berlin
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Considering how large the Wall looms over the Berlin of the imagination, especially for visitors, it is surprising to remember that the city has been without it for longer than it had it. The Berlin Wall as it lives in the imagination, with its vast concrete acreage, triple fencing, fakir beds, anti-vehicle trenches, dogs and guard posts was not completed until 1975. East and West are also more... -
We never close
At HKW’s The Principle of the City tonight, Eve Blau was one of the speakers offering a reaction to Richard Sennet’s discussion . Sennett had referred to one of his central ideas, the Open City, and mentioned that he has become interested in open software, specifically Linux. Blau contrasted this form of open-ness with Umberto Eco’s idea of the open work. . Insofar as I’d ever thought about... -
Bikini
An aesthetic circle of one sort or another has been completed with the opening of Bikini Berlin. The exposed metalwork, the pop-up concessions that crowd the central space, the faded Persian carpets and distressed Chesterfields that furnish the cafe—nothing would look out of place in Kreuzberg or Neukölln. Nothing would look out of place in much more corporatised London either, in third-wave... -
Then We Take Berlin
Arriving at Berlin, my passport is subjected to more scrutiny than it receives anywhere else. The humble requests of laissez-passer by a European partner are subjected to close reading. The intricate cross-hatching of the paper is checked for tampering, the reflective devices made to reflect light first at this angle and then that. Although the passport is invisibly laden with all my...