Olympisches Dorf, Berlin, 1936

In the Sporthalle, Olympisches Dorf

A couple of weeks ago I went with some friends to the Olympic Village of Berlin, from the Nazi 1936 Olympic Games, the ones in which Hitler had to stand the "outrage" of seeing a black athlete, Jesse Owens, winning four gold medals in track and field.

Forgive me a bit of historical contextualization: Werner and Walter March (the former designing also the Olympiastadion, actually with some "suggestions" by Albert Speer, since Hitler did not like the original design of concrete and glass - a glass-cage) designed and built the Olympic Village between 1934 and 1936 for the Summer Games held in Berlin; the Nazis wanted to show the world their power and magnificience. The selected area layed around 10km from the city, in Dallgow-Döberitz, now Elstal: the project consisted of 140 one-storey, 5 two-storey buildings, the Hindemburg House, Kommandanten House, a sport-hall, a swimming-pool, sauna, hospital and restaurant - the House of Nations - plus kitchens. After the games in the buildings were installed a school and a militar hospital, while after the war the Soviet Army took control of the area; the Village in summer looks like a vacation-residence in Tuscany, with a number of little houses surronded by maritime pines. In fact the ground was heavily modified to create two different levels and an artificial lake was created, also bringing here some animals from the Berliner Zoo.

I found myself making comparisons with the recent Chinese Games, concerned as well on the symbiosis between power and the ways to express it through architecture: the Olympic Village of Berlin covers roughly an area of 54 hectares, while the Beijing one 66 only, if we think that the former was supposed to host 4.000 athletes, while the latter 16.000, consisting of 22 six-floor buildings and 20 nine-floor buildings, as well as a clinic, restaurants, a library, a recreation centre, gyms, swimming pools, tennis courts, basketball courts and jogging tracks.

Beijing Olympic Village, model. Photo by Remko Tanis

Here some pictures of the abandoned Village.

On Hitler, Hadrian, bunkers and bananas

Brandenburger Tor and at the Reichstag:you will get the scale of the domed-hall behind

Just in front of the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" it is possible to visit the exhibition ]Mythos Germania[, whose main attraction is a big model of the North-South Axis designed by Albert Speer for Berlin, the supposed-to-be capital of Hitler’s Empire, Germania: I saw before a video-rendering and some images of the master plan, and honestly (considering the function of extreme monumentality) seemed to me not that bad, after all it was a boulevard connecting the stations Südkreuz and Nordbahnohf, culminating in a big domed hall; when I had a look at the model I understood I was completely wrong.
Robert Hughes titled his good documentary about Speer “Scale matters”, and this is exactly the point: apart from the “bombarding” quantity and display of architectural elements suggesting classical architecture, domination, power, from columns to eagles of stone on the rooftops, in a mixture no less than pornographic, if one looks at the Brandenburger Tor or the Reichstag, it is easy to understand why Speer’s father told him that the project completely insane. All this reminded me a passage of Richard Sennett’s marvelous book “Flesh and Stone” about the Roman Empire and Emperors’ power:

Nero bequeathed to Hadrian a cautionary tale about rulers who nakedly display their power, yet “the emperor was what the emperor did”, in the words of the historian Ferguson Millar. Making daunting, impressive buildings was among the most important of these acts, for the emperor’s own prestige and for the Empire; through their buildings, the emperors literally constructed their legitimacy in the eyes of their subjects.

Hadrian was able to built impressively but nicely, he built the Pantheon: if Hitler was able to realize Germania I suspect that he would have followed Nero’s fate, who, after building his Domus Aurea gained just the hatred and voluntary oblivion of the Romans.

Boros bunker. Photo by World-3

Near Friedrichstrasse there is one of the most famous and visible bunkers of Berlin: built in 1943, used by the DDR as deposit for bananas, since the temperature and humidity were perfect for the fruit to become ripe (I can already imagine the advertisement of the “Bunker Banana”), turned in a Club known (not so originally but effective) as “The Bunker”, with even more darkrooms than the Berghain. Because it was built so late, on the facade there are many decorative elements, in case it would be kept for further use, as actually happened. In 2003 the building was bought by Christian Boros, who appointed "Realarchitektur" to renovate and transform the building, with the idea of hosting there his private collection of contemporary art. Booking some 3 months in advance it is possible with 10 euros to visit the collection and the building with a guide, in groups of 10 people: if the works of art are not masterpieces the bunker-experience is really worth. Originally there were five floors, each 2,30 m. high, so the architect had to cut the slabs to create double heights and spaces more apt to host works of art and to mitigate the suffocating and oppressing feeling of such low ceilings. The construction of the bunker in 1943 took one year, 7 months of which were spent only to build the roof, a 3 m. thick armed-concrete slab; the transformation of the building was obviously longer and more complicated lasting something like 4 years. Another curiosity: the stairs are doubled, following a principle developed by Leonardo and employed in the Chambord Castle, in order to provide access to the double of users.

Fumata nera, fumata bianca

During a weekend trip to Leipzig a couple of weeks ago I was baffled by the quantity of chimneys dispersed all around the dismissed and not so peripheral industrial areas of the city, which seems fortunately interested in reusing the majority of the buildings, factories etc. for different uses (the main industrial complex is now a collective “atelier” of artists and craftsmen). Most of all, these factories lie along a very nice water canal, that, if once upon a time was just a matter of usefulness, today constituted a pleasant pedestrian promenade.

Place de la concorde, Paris, images by Marco Capitanio

Relics of industrialization, victims of the “shrinkage”, I started to think how one could use effectively chimneys in an active way: what if they could be used as modern obelisks, with the function of urban “arrows” that Sixtus V gave them in the 16th century in Rome? What would think Domenico Fontana, who won the competition to place the obelisk in St. Peter’s square, employing for his effort 44 winches, 140 horses and 907 workmen?

 St. Peter's square, Rome. The chimney could even be used, with the white and black smoke, during the papal election..!

Praising heterogeneity of goals

I already introduced what I would call recreational urbanism, so now it’s time to go a bit deeper and try to explain what I really mean: a crucial question for the Situationists was whether the practice of urbanism is a collective matter or a discipline which needs to be regulated by a few specialists, professionals, who have the training (and the power) to decide for the community. Of course nearly everyone, trying to be a little politically-correct would answer that, yeah, this is a collective matter, at least should be; anyhow avoiding this naïveté is a big deal of honesty, since (from architects’ experience) an urban planner, an architect can quite easily justify his own work with the usual magic words like democratic, open, flexible etc. but we know that words have a very subtle power, and are often employed to justify one-self's work, to convince the client or to sell an idea to some politician in order to get him interested in the project. By the way words can somewhen be helpful to make people understand some needed and critical project for the place in which they live, to avoid easy nimbyism or to make them conscious of how to improve the conditions of their city or village. Like for politicians a few lines earlier, a way to get them involved in the process.

But still there is the question, why recreational? Recalling our latin classes at high-school, this word is composed of the adjective for creation and the prefix re-, which, just in case you forgot, means that an action is repeated several times; so a continuous creation, expression that with time assumed a character of ludicity (not lucidity!); for an interesting and professional analysis of the two terms have a look here. In fact, again for the Situationists, a key expression was “ludic city”, a fertile ground for situations to happen; I would say that a healthy urbanism is recreational in a way that permits spontaneous happenings, likely to change over time, actions which are not programmed and are outside range of strict control, sometimes on the border of legality, informal (another magic word, this time let me use it). And complex: I cannot imagine anything spontaneous between the blocks of the Ville Radieuse, where everything seems already programmed and decided once and for all; I rather can imagine plenty of actions in a middle-age city, in the squares but also in the narrow alleys and streets, with plenty of nooks and crannies. And if the Ville Radieuse seems clean, hygienic, safe, a medieval city carries a degree of riskand uncertainty: within limits of vivibility of course I would say that a recreational, complex urbanism cannot do without a percentage of risk: if you want to keep your door open you have to deal with the fact that also somebody whom you don’t want to meet could go through...

La Ville Radieuse

"A battle of giants? No! The miracle of trees and parks reaffirms the human scale." (from "Vers une Architecture" by Le Corbusier). Robert Hughes spoke of Le Corbusier's city planning in his series "The Shock of the New":

"...the car would abolish the human street, and possibly the human foot. Some people would have airplanes too. The one thing no one would have is a place to bump into each other, walk the dog, strut, one of the hundred random things that people do ... being random was loathed by Le Corbusier ... its inhabitants surrender their freedom of movement to the omnipresent architect."

Not many people around the Ville, isn't it? Density matters after all...

Here we go with some examples:

In Kreuzberg, images by Marco Capitanio

1st of May in Kreuzberg, now the most vivid of Berlin’s quarters, and its historical turkish community feel the Worker’s Day stronger than others: in a leftist stronghold a whole day and night of parades, speeches, music, typical food sold on the streets; a community makes itself visible to the other people, and was not uncommon to hear this year, during the rap improvisations, many singers referring proudly to their own quarter, which was able to develop maturely its identity. Identity and visibility applied to people rather than buildings (as we saw in the first part of the writing speaking about the Spreebogen), in a form of self-organization, already gaining the historical dimension, as many berliners wait every year to enjoy the 1st of May in Kreuzberg.

Thai Park: down the subway U7 we find a park (whose real name is actually Preussenpark but nobody knows that!) which has been “colonized” by the thai community, selling, when the good season comes, ready-made traditional food with ingredients prepared at home and brought to the park: if it is anyhow better to go there with some thai friend, everyone can buy his meal there, basically every day, in a kind of collective pic-nick. Thais can therefore gather and simultaneously show themselves off.

What is interesting is that this activity is (luckily) informally approved by the city, as far as selling food on public ground is theoretically illegal without a proper license; rather than the duality legal/illegal, we face allowed/not allowed, category much more sensible, able to decline the legal/illegal in response to different contexts and goals; a much more human(e) criterion. It is also interesting to note that the middle-English verb “to allow” comes probably from Latin allaudare (to praise), reinforced by the medieval Latin allocare (to place), as well a derivative (ad + locare) from the key-word locus (place): in a way, something which is allowed seems to be beneficial for a particular place, (I add) depending on the situation.

Just to finish with a détournement: if the Situationists saw this guy sleeping in Unter den Linden in front of the Russian Embassy, they would have loved him...

Related posts:

Praising heterogeneity of goals (PART 1)

Road through Agadez

Refugees in Malta. Photo by Olmovich

I just report a very interesting reportage which I found on the magazine Espresso Online about the new routes of illegal immigrants, coming from Niger and nearby states, traveling in rows of 30 to 50 caravans and trucks, until the coasts of Libya, trying to reach Europe. Unfortunately the reportage is in italian only but here there are some interactive maps that one can see. Even a nice video.

Travel conditions of the immigrants are worsening, since their road passes through the now militarized city of Agadez and continues in territories mainly controlled by the tuareg rebels, financed by the French Government in order to push on the so-called uranium war. The Italian Government, while hammering the public opinion with security-concerns, has signed bilateral treaties with Libyan leader Muammar Gheddafi and with Nicolas Sarkozy, officially in order to regulate the matter, but actually to give the nulla osta to France's strategy to destabilize the region and to make some propaganda with Gheddafi.

Now the immigrants travel together with the Libyan army to reach the seashores, before paying easily even 5.000 euros to start a trip to Italy, Greece or Spain that has the 10% chance to be mortal. Actually the amount of immigrants who reach Europe is not so huge: in Italy they are around 6.000 a year, barely enough to replace Italy's shrinking population; anyhow the result of strengthening control, security etc. has only produced a shift of the route, every time more dangerous (increasing the number of deaths) but maybe more lucrative. Obviously the mudin don't want to lose their profits, neither immigrants to remain home, so the main "european gate" from Tripoli-Lybia to Lampedusa-Italy just shifted to Annaba-Algeria to Cagliari-Italy.

No need to say that since one lets these people leave their places and travel 300 km in the desert paying an enormous amount of money, carries them with the army along the way and leaves them on the seashores waiting for a ship, it is absurd to stop them in the open sea and to bring them back: where to? Especially if everybody from the Libyan Government to the Italian one (and the whole EU) knows the way things work.