Tag des Denkmal

This is 2 days when protected building are open for visit, this happened on the weekend of the 10 and 11 of September

it comes with a booklet this big! only for Berlin

Saturday

• Altes wasserbetrieb Friedrichhagen

Here we were signed in for a tour, which is usually something one needs to do in advance anytime is an event by the Berlin Unterwelten (which i Highly recommend). So we missed a bit of the tour cause we thought we had to enter through the actual wasserbetrieb (in function) and not to the "old" one which is actually a museum. SO the museum from outside could be mixed with a church, it is built in that cute brick style

Das Wasserwerk Friedrichshagen ging 1893 als drittes städtisches Wasserwerk in Betrieb. Es war damals das größte und modernste Werk Europas

more info
• Schoneweide AEG

Schöneweide ist die „Wiege der Elektropolis Berlin“. Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts entstand hier einer der größten Industriestandorte Europas.

We check this out cause we were on the neighborhood, but basically none of the buildings we were interested were open today, at the entrance there was the building which used to be the main offices, and there now there are ateliers, those were open and you could check them out.

• Unterwelten museum

I guess i would have enjoyed this museum more in an earlier phase of my life, now its just to presumptuous. in few words its cool but in a way its abstractness and huge spectrum are trying to encompass too much, and thats not posible, if the focus would be more clear.. or maybe i didnt get it.. dunno =(

• Die Brauerei Königstadt

So this was an original plan B which ended up being an awesome idea. We got a tour by the architect of the renovating project of the brewery. we visited the old undergrounds, which were specialy built to make the famous beer " »Bayerischer« Brauart, (which i dont know which is, or why it is so special) which needed extra cold temperatures, so in this undergrounds they would collect snow from winter. the undergrounds are now parking spaces, and the brewery itself is space for offices and others. (Win Wenders has his headquarters here)

webpage of the project

Sunday

• AEG-Versuchstunnel


there are 3 areas with huge AEG buildings built by Peter Behrens, this is one of them, close to Humboldtheim. Well at the end of the 19 century there was a fight between Siemens and AEG on who is gonna built the Berlin metro, for this purpose, AEG did this try-out tunnel, with the measures of a real metro wagon but only one rail obviously. this site has been taken over by the Berlin Unterwelten, they havent open it yet for booking but i can only imagine its gonna be awesome.

more info
• Schwerbelastungskörper


This site also belongs to the Berlin Unterwelten, it is a key part of the Germania project, which was hitler plan to turn downtonw Berlin into a monstrous roman villa. So the plan consists of 2 axes, and before starting building, because of the sandy soil of Berlin, they decided to built this huge 12 tons of cement building and see if it sinks. They calculated it can sink maximum 2 cm, well its 19 cm so far. They built a plataform were one can see on top of the cement building, once there they tell you that the idea was to later cover this mass, yes in order for the main central building ti be seen from everywhere they wanted to increase all the areas around it. ach its difficult to explain but lets say this cement building is 16 metres, well is was gonna be all covered in soil, and that covering was supposed to be all around. crazy shit!

more info
• The new Synagogue

All my Berlin life i have been waiting for an opportunity to enter the old synagogue of Oranienburger strasse. now i did and it was pretty awesome, starting by the fact that we entered through the main gates, which are never open. the synagogue as the space to carry the praying ceremony is not there anymore, but since the funny shape of the surface where the synagogue is located (not so much front to the street) the architects at that time decided to put the crowning couple on the entrance, so it could be seen from everywhere, so on top of the surviving entrance, there is the couple. then you have a second room where was where you could wash yourself before the synagogue. In those 2 rooms there is ton to read about the Jewish life of Berlin, really interesting!

wiki

conlusion, follow whatever the Berlin Unterwelten offer, they are awesome, but careful, not all the unterwelten are the unterwelten you thought ;-)