UNESCO loves Berlin Bauhaus, Day 2

Success! I got the rest of the Siedlungen (housing settlements) in today. I don’t have much time to give a blow-by-blow of the events, but let me tell you that it was consistently gray outside and drizzling non-stop. It was the dampest, shittiest, depressingest July weather you can imagine, and my roommate tells me that this is normal for July. Well great.

Anyway, as a result of the consistent dark grey of the sky, a lot of my photos were underexposed. While correcting the levels to reveal the buildings in better detail and color saturation, I pretty much had to white-out the sky, so all the pictures look as if there were no sky. Ah well.

Hufeisensiedlung Britz : pass

See yesterday’s entry for photos

Großsiedlung Siemensstadt: Win!

After finally getting the right directions, I wandered out of the U-Bahn station and came upon the first in a series of tourist-info boards providing something of a walking tour of the Siemensstadt. As it turns out, Siemensstadt isn’t just one building or set of buildings, but an entire neighborhood of contrasting complexes made by almost every important designer of the Bauhaus school. Here they are, roughly in the order that I visited them.

Note the three following pictures, which show the difference beetween the side of a building that faces the street, and the side that faces inwards, towards some sort of courtyard or garden.

Also, here's another great contrast between the super-long building facing the street and the densely green garden area hidden from the street.

I've got more pictures of Siemensstadt buildings, but I don't want to make this posting a browser-killer, so I'll stop here. Nonetheless, check out these two matching metal sculptures, which seem to be markers of the housing complexes.

Weiße Stadt: pass

See yesterday’s entry for photos

Siedlung Schillerpark: Win!

As you might recall from yesterday’s entry, I later discovered that I had walked withing about 50 metres of the place, and then lost hope and turned around. This time I walked all the way to the other side of the park and beheld the complex, which was quite charming, although not as interesting as some of the buildings in Siemensstadt.

Wohnstadt Carl Legien: Win!

When I saw a picture of this complex online, I expected to not like the building very much. However, much like many of the buildings in Siemensstadt, the buildings tend to be flat and reserved on the side that faces the street, and then brimming with balconies and gardens on the “courtyard” side.

Gartenstadt Falkenberg: Win!

But what a long trip this was! This complex was out near the Grünau stop in the south-east end of Berlin, near where the Berlin Schoenfeld Airport. Since it takes about 40 mins to get into town from that airport by S-Bahn, you can imagine that it took me about an hour to get from the Prenzlauer Allee S-Bahn stop to the Grünau stop. Gah.

However, the trip yielded some lovely photos of the buildings, which are build in the same arrangement as North American town-houses / row-houses, except each one is painted a different, vibrant color. Apparently, these buildings are also known as the “paint-box” buildings, because each row looks like set of artist’s paints.

Also, on the way back, I caught this amusing bit of graffiti. Puns? Was that intentional or unintentional?