Thesis Research Document: Ruinous Heterotopia - Berlin, Techno and Gentrification

RUINOUS HETEROTOPIA

BERLIN, TECHNO AND GENTRIFICATION THESIS RESEARCH DOCUMENT Stuart David Ian Bacon University of Nottingham, 4102036 January 2015

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RUINOUS HETEROTOPIA: BERLIN, TECHNO AND GENTRIFICATION A study into gentrification within Berlin and the spatial strategies of its subcultures.

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the regulations for the Degree of Master of Architecture (RIBA Part 2) at the University of Nottingham.

The candidate confirms that the work herein is his own and that appropriate credit has been given to the work of others when referenced.

Stuart David Ian Bacon, 4102036 January 2015

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Abstract Through a developed understanding of Gentrification as the vehicle through which a neoliberal urbanist policy is implemented within the city, this thesis seeks to examine contemporary issues surrounding Gentrification within Berlin. The paper examines the spatial and urban strategies of the musical subcultures which have in recent decades, transformed Berlin into an ‘Alpha World Media City’, accumulating in a project to centre and solidify this cultural industry on the banks of the Spree. Critically examining the Mediaspree project as a Berlin-centric gentrification process, an understanding of the architectural tectonic of musical subculture in Berlin allows for an examination of the appropriateness of the project for achieving its aim to ferment these cultures along 3.5km of riverbank.

I theorise that whilst Gentrification in Berlin is fundamentally the result of an international shift to neoliberal urban policies due to a restructured global economy, that an international model of gentrification can not be easily applied. Rather, gentrification along the banks of the Spree is the result of very local socio-cultural conditions. Berlin is a palimpsest city with a layered history which is clearly evident in the urban fabric. From the widespread destruction of the city in the twentieth century to the development of a dualist city, the turbulent history of Berlin is nowhere more evident today than the former border between Kreuzberg in the West and Friedrichshain in the East. The appetite for the regeneration of the urban environment in Berlin is the physical manifestation of the desire by bureaucrats to heal the wounds of this turbulent history and restructure the city around the new political order. This has manifested in the inclination by city authorities to reorder the city along European normative aesthetics, in short they seek to fill in the voids and create a more homogenous and ordered urban realm characteristic of other nineteenth century European metropoli. Projects such as the rebuilding of Potsdamer Platz in its nineteenth century layout and the eighteenth century Berliner Stadtschloss on the site of the former Palace of the Republic exemplifies this desire to restructure Berlin based upon European normative orderings as a form of urban historical amnesia.

The thesis considers the Mediaspree area as an exemplification of Berlin’s urban reality following reunification as an urban vague. I argue that the Mediaspree project epitomises the current policy of aesthetic homogenisation and the risk to urban identity that it forms. In light of the project’s aim to centralise Berlin’s world leading cultural activities in music and visual media on this 180hectare site, this critique examines the urban conditions of this area which have made it the centre of the city’s music sub-cultures and asks how appropriate the Mediaspree project plans are to allow for their continued cultural innovation.

I conclude that the industrial urban ruin is integrally embedded within the musical sub-culture movements which operate along the Spree. Ruins, through their juxtaposition of unrelated objects, their disorganised scenes and heterogeneous aesthetic composition stimulate imaginative and alternative practices which are integral to the continual cultural production by the subcultures which have established the rich cultural expressions of modern day Berlin. The Foucaultian notion of heterotopia is used to define the characteristics of the Ruin so formative upon the music produced by these subcultures, concluding that a temporal and spatial disruption liberates an individual from a state of self policing that allows for the nurturing of creative and imaginative thinking. As such, I argue that the architectural tectonic of the ruin which has made this area the centre of a creative cluster of subcultural endeavours is integral to the continuous cultural production which makes the area, and the city of Berlin as a whole, attractive to investment from large global players in the media industry. Thus, I hypothesise that the media spree project in its current form, as an embodiment of a desire for urban homogeny along European normative aesthetics is flawed in the sense that it undermines and threatens the very existence of the culture and industry which it hopes to secure and ferment.

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Contents 09 09

Part One: Introduction 1.1 Background

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Part Two: Style and Substance of Gentrification in Berlin 2.1 International Models 2.2 New Berlin 2.3 ‘Anchor for the Future’: Project Mediaspree

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Part Three: Subkultur Berlin 3.1 Alpha World Media City 3.2 Techno: The Sound of Reunification 3.3 Cities in Crisis 3.4 Ruinous Heterotopias 3.5 The Vault

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Part Four: Mediaspree Versenken 4.1 Techno and the Ruin: A Developed Understanding 4.2 The Site: Berliner Eisfabrik 4.3 Transitory City

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Part Five: Conclusions

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Part Six: Approach to development in Berlin’s terrain vagues 6.1 Using Precedents to discuss the development of the ruin 6.2 The Neues Museum: Re-constructing the whole 6.3 Berliner Eisfabrik: Threshold Exploration 6.4 Progressive Preservation: Towards a conservation strategy

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Part One: Introduction 1.1 Background Fig 1.1 Palimpsest City: Map of contemporary Berlin, illustrating the former wall and death strip which divided the city until 1989.

Fig 1.2-4 Divided City: The Berlin Wall, 1961 - 1989.

“Buildings are overlain with association so effectively that they are entirely transformed; they cease to be buildings at all, but rather three dimensional representations of an event or an idea.”1 Buildings of age often transcend from mere assemblages of construction materials to embody connotations and associations of earlier times and uses, as David Littlefield argues, they find a voice. In reunified Germany, old buildings come to physically manifest the struggle with a sense of national identity following the traumatic events of the twentieth century. For Berlin, ruins hold particularly powerful connotations and immortalise these events which many would rather forget. Old buildings find themselves queued up for destruction, their role as silent witnesses of the dark side of German history their crime. This misplaced sense of revenge, the idea that the erasing of a building may somehow erase the memory of what took place there, lies at the centre of urban regeneration policy debate within Berlin.

Unsurprisingly, Berlin’s unique and raw historical context plays a pivotal role within the debate about gentrification within the city. My interpretation of gentrification within Berlin centres around this unique history and recent struggle to overcome the events of the twentieth century and build a liberal, democratic and unified society. Whilst international models of gentrification, first defined in the 1960s as marginal oddities, are in some respects evident in modern day Berlin, they can not be holistically relied upon to explain the style and underlying purpose behind gentrification projects within the city since the unique socio-cultural conditions, shaped by the historical context, are not taken into consideration. In contrast, my interpretation gives precedent to this local context, allowing for a critique of the style, substance and ideology governing contemporary gentrification in Berlin in a manner that does not attempt to critique gentrification as a global phenomenon in itself. This allows for an understanding to be developed regarding the appropriateness of this particular model within the specific context of the Mediaspree, a project which aims to create a centre for Berlin’s media culture, for which the city has become infamous over the previous two decades.

Through their disorder and semeiotic excess, the ruin also contrasts to the increasingly smooth, and regulated spaces of the contemporary city2. A byproduct of modernism, the apollonian tendency to create order in the modern world prevails in contemporary urban planning, leaving no room for the unfamiliar aesthetics of the ruin3. For Berlin, a city yearning to rejoin a divided city and assert a unified, democratic national identity for the future finds solace in the removal of these ruinous memorials to the dark side of German history and the aesthetic reordering of the urban landscape along characteristics more recognisable along European norms. Yet an examination of the spatial strategies and values of subcultures within Berlin, with a focus upon the Techno movement reveals an inherent link between the ruin and the city’s culture, both having a formative effect upon the other.

Through their peculiar juxtaposition of contrasting associations, ruins offer a heterotopian space for creative underground movements which allows for a wide range of imaginative interpretations liberated from self-regulation imposed by ordered urban environments. A paradox thus emerges between a desire to reorder and homogenise the urban landscape in order to ferment musical culture on the Spree and heterogeneous spatial values of this culture embedded in ruinous heterotopias. The Mediaspree project, as an indicative example of Berlin-centric gentrification striving for a nostalgic aesthetic reordering simultaneously undermines the everyday conditions necessary to sustain the subcultures themselves.

1. Littlefield, D.. (2007). Introduction. In: Littlefield, D. and Lewis, S. Architectural Voices: Listening to Old Buildings.

Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. 12.

2. Edensor, T (2005). Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality. Oxford: Berg. 53.

3. Ibid. 54 Stuart Bacon

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Fig 1.5 Tear down this wall: Berliners stand atop of the wall on 10th November 1989 to celebrate the opening of the East German borders.

Of some ambiguity in my argument is that gentrification, in its simplest definition of urban renewal and upgrade, ultimately leads to the loss of subcultures and inhibits creative innovation. It is dangerous to assume a sentimental position that the ruin should be maintained as a ruin to preserve subculture. This in itself breaks the temporal evolution of the city and de-authenticates the ruin as a heterotopia. Rather, my argument takes not a position against all forms of investment and urban renewal, but takes issue with the Berlin model of widespread, rapid urban homogenisation upon nostalgic principles. I acknowledge the inevitability of urban gentrification as a process within the evolution of the city yet argue for a considered and gradual development which gives equal precedent to the needs of subcultural groups. Rather than take a sentimental position, through my understanding of the value of the ruin and the historic conditions governing Berlin-centric gentrification, I aim to contribute to the developing literature of the phenomenon within this unique city.

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Part Two: Style and Substance of Gentrification in Berlin 2.1 International Models Fig 2.1 Crane Ballet: The reconstruction of Potsdamer Platz, 1998 - Europe’s largest construction site.

Gentrification has been a significant topic of urban research since the 1950s, however the debate has become more pronounced within wider media in the last decade, nowhere more so than in Berlin where more or less all inner-city neighbourhoods are involved both politically and in everyday conversation, within the gentrification debate1. Fuelled by a historical anarchist squatter culture formed in 1970s and 80s West Berlin, urban revanchist movements are highly active within the city, and more pronounced in recent years following a globally evident trend of a move toward neoliberal urban policies since the late 1990s.

Neil Smith argues that the style of gentrification in the West since the beginning of the century is marked by an unmistakable global shift toward neoliberalism. A political ideology that seeks to reduce the influence of the state, it is defined by a belief that responsibility for success lies with the individual2. In terms of urban policy, this manifests itself through a belief that only private investors, with the free market as their vehicle, can achieve a high quality urban realm for the wider good. Smith argues that deindustrialisation has reduced the power of the national economy, pitting cities against each other as they compete for jobs and investment from global corporations, concluding that “gentrification as a global urban strategy is a consummate expression of neoliberal urbanism. It mobilises individual property claims via a market lubricated by state donations.”3 This shift can clearly be seen in Berlin, with projects such as the Mediaspree driven by a public-private partnership. Whilst a shift toward neoliberal urban policy is evident in the contemporary Western city, including Berlin, it is not just a ‘global urban strategy’ as argued by Smith, which leads to the same patterns and outcomes around the world. Its dynamics are dictated by contextualised socio-economic and political conditions of a particular nation and city, and Berlin is no different. Neoliberal policy has undoubtably influenced gentrification phenomenon in different locations, however Smith’s definition is simply one describing the vehicle by which it is implemented - that is, through a partnership with private capital and reliance on free markets. It does not fundamentally explain the process of gentrification, nor the driving force behind the desire to gentrify in Berlin.

In wider international writing, gentrification is generally based upon a definition first introduced by Timothy Pattison in 1977. Pattison identified four key stages of Gentrification which are generally used as an international model to examine the phenomenon within Western cities. In short, Pattison’s international model can be defined as a process of urban renewal due to an increased investment in dilapidated housing stock, at first by risk-oblivious pioneers4 and later by developers, resulting in the migration of higher-status households to the area. The result of this, it is widely agreed within gentrification literature, is the enhancement of social structure within the neighbourhood and the displacement of the former, often working class, population due to increased rents and the new unaffordable infrastructure of the new population’s lifestyles. Whilst this international model can be used to some extents to explain gentrification trends in Berlin, a much more contextualised definition can be formed.

1. Holm, A. (2013). Berlin’s Gentrification Mainstream. In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 171.

2. Verhaeghe, P. (29/09/2014). Neoliberalism has brought out the worst in us. The Guardian (Online).

3. Smith, N. (2002). New Globablism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy. In: Lees, L. Slater, T. and Wyly, E. The Gentrification Reader . Oxon: Routledge. 495-506.

4. Clay, P. (2010). The Mature Revitalised Neighbourhood: Emerging Issues in Gentrification. In: Lees, L. Slater, T. and Wyly, E. The Gentrification Reader . Oxon: Routledge. 37-40.

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In examining the style of gentrification within the district of Berlin Prenzlauer-Berg, Andrej Holm identifies the influence of Berlin’s social and political phenomenon, which defy a wholly international definition. Whist identifying trends consistent with what is generally considered gentrification, such as the restructuring of inhabitants toward those with higher qualifications and social status resulting in a displacement of a proportion of the existing population, Holm identifies German rent control legislation which prolongs the early stages of gentrification, meaning that reinvestment was scattered across the district with dilapidated properties of the working class population sit next to gentrified properties of the new wealthier residents5. Further, in contrast to the international model which bases the reason for reinvestment in housing stock upon the potential for rental increases, in Prenzlauer-Berg, the incentive was state led. The district was declared a Sanierungsgebiet (redevelopment zone) post-unification, and thus fell under the peculiarities of German tax legislation which, until 1996, meant that 50% of investment could be offset against tax, in order to incentivise the refurbishment of East German housing stock. As such, “investment largely took place irrespective of the rents realistically expected.”6 A similar phenomenon can be found in an examination of gentrification within Kreuzberg.

Following the militant protests of anarchist groups within the district in the 1980s which squatted over a hundred nineteenth century buildings to prevent their destruction, a policy of ‘careful urban renewal’ was in place throughout the 1990s. The policy, of which a key aim was the preservation of the social composition of the population and their involvement in planning, a paradox emerged in which large areas of the district were refurbished along the lines of the international model but without the displacement of the existing population.

In short, political legislation resulted in what can be defined by the international model as a gentrified urban fabric, yet it was the original poor households which occupied the modernised apartments7. With the expiration of this policy and associated rent caps in recent years, a new phase of gentrification is occurring which also can not be defined within the international model since it is not the investment in the urban fabric which is driving the increase in rent, rather displacement pressures in Kreuzberg today are caused solely through the rental gap between new and old rental agreements.

In both cases, the international model of gentrification first defined by Pattison can not holistically explain gentrification trends within Berlin, yet both can be defined as a process of gentrification due to the underlying desire to modernise the urban environment based upon a migration of professional classes into inner city neighbourhoods following deindustrialisation.

It can also be concluded that whilst these cases differ from international definitions, that the common theme of gentrification which underscores the wider debate and revanchist movements, namely the displacement of an existing population (in whole or in part) is evident in both circumstances. Yet, whilst this can be established, neither the international model nor these two cases can define the underlying driving force behind gentrification within Berlin. The desire to ‘gentrify’ in Berlin, often a politically initiated phenomenon, can only be understood through a developed understanding of the unique circumstances underlying Berlin’s urban history.

5. Bernt, M. and Holm, A (2013). Exploring the Substance and Style of Gentrification: Berlin’s Prenzlberg. In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 107-121 6. Ibid. 114.

7. Holm, A. (2013). Berlin’s Gentrification Mainstream. In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 179.

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2.2 New Berlin Fig 2.3 The Boom Years: Map of Berlin in 1912, illustrating the dense nineteenth century urban fabric.

Fig 2.4 City of Voids: Illustrative map of Berlin in 1953 after the destruction of the second world war and the demolition teams that followed.

Gentrification within Berlin since 1990 has been predominantly a political initiative rather than solely the forces of the independent real estate market. Therefore, no definition of Berlincentric gentrification can be sought without a developed reading of the contextual historical issues which define the planning process within the capital. Berlin is the most fascinating of Western European cities because it is a city “whose buildings, ruins and voids groan under the burden of painful memories”8. By the end of the twentieth century, in the space of ninety years Berlin had witnessed the abdication of an authoritarian monarch, a failed democratic republic, been the capital of a fascist regime which had plunged the world into a second war and the epicentre of a country divided by two ideologically opposed political regimes.

Berlin is arguably a palimpsest city like no other, and this history lies at the heart of the contemporary gentrification debate.

Berlin was chosen as the capital of the new German Republic in 1990 precisely because, as the epicentre of divided Germany during the cold war, it was the best place to heal the wounds of this division. In doing so, the rebuilding of Berlin consistently refers back to the nineteenth century and the boom years of the Weimar Republic as a model for the rebuilding of the capital, a nostalgia for a diverse and prosperous city based on commerce without the inconvenient memories of fascism or communism.The rapid rebuilding of Pariser Platz in the 1990s around the Brandenburg Gate, which had become a symbol of divided Berlin through its isolated position within the wall’s ‘death strip’, exemplifies this underlying desire. Fred Scott argues that in doing so, based upon the nineteenth century urban model of the area, the planners aimed “to shape the image of a new born-again Pariser Platz through an act of incarnation recalling better times somewhere between 1871 and 1933, as if the destruction and eradication had never occurred.”9 This is evidence of a wider yearning for a new national identity not burdened with controversial history. As such, it can be argued that the politically initiated gentrification of Berlin is a form of constructed amnesia,10 an attempt almost to physically demonstrate the continuation of the unified German democratic state, after a diversion of sixty years.

This attempt to assert, through the urban environment, the new reality of a unified democratic state through the regeneration (or gentrification) of the city based upon principles of a remote history is exemplified in the planning guidelines of Hans Stimmann who, as building director between 1991 and 1996, has had the largest impact on the direction of neoliberal urban planning in Berlin to date. Stimmann’s vision of Berlin was that of ‘critical reconstruction’, whereby the streets, squares and urban footprint of the nineteenth century city are restored to fill in the voids left by decades of division: “Berlin’s contemporary city planners and marketers [...] selectively borrowed urban forms and lifestyles of imagined past Berlins to ‘remember’ a new global city for the future.”11 In doing so, Stimmann is attempting to deny the past by restoring Berlin to an earlier age, one not troubled by the historic responsibilities of the later half of the twentieth century; a reunification of Berlin through Prussian classicism. As Daniel Liebeskind complained: “Stimmann’s approach simply erases the last fifty years of Berlin’s history. He seeks a more carefree age,” adding that his planning rules were “transforming the fascinating diversity of the city into banal uniformity.”12 Potsdamer Platz illustrates this partnership between a politically initiated attempt to regenerate the city based upon a nostalgic past free from connotation and a neoliberal 8. Ladd, B (1998). The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

9. Scott, F (2008). On Altering Architecture . Oxon: Routledge. 196.

10. Ibid. 198.

11. Till, K (2005). New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press. 37.

12. Ladd, B (1998). The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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urban policy driven by private finance, as does the rebuilding of the Berliner Stadtschloss.

However, whilst the former rebuilt a historic urban centre left desolate since the war by the construction of the Berlin wall, the later represents a more concerning form of constructed amnesia, which in this case denies the very existence of the DDR and the years of division13 by replacing the communist Palace of the Republic with a nostalgic vision of the Prussian city.

Accompanying this nostalgia, is a fear of the Ruin. Formerly the picturesque vision of an inevitable return to nature, illustrated in the European grand tour of the eighteenth century, in the twentieth century the ruin has become associated with the horror of war and a reminder of the dark side of German history. Ruins are “phycological entities” which express the ideas and notions of self, society and values of former times14. In Berlin, a city which has become defined by these voids, ruins represent division, ambiguity and vagueness. Regeneration based upon the nineteenth century city model is an attempt to fill these voids and reorder the city to reflect the new political regime and assert a new national identity, but also to realign Berlin as a ‘normal’ city and Germany as a ‘normal nation’ - a desire by planners “to return to a dignified place and time, where Germany was no longer a special case for modern European-nation states.”15 The re-dedication if the Berlin Neue Wache in 1993 as a national memorial to the victims of war and tyranny is explained by Ladd as just one example of this desire for normality for the reunified nation following decades of division and ambiguity: “Other nations have national memorials that serve to affirm their national identity and continued resilience. With the Neue Wache, [Chancellor] Helmut Kohl wanted Germany to have the same thing.”16 Ruins then, whilst physically revealing the layered history of the palimpsest city which many Berliners would like to forget, also “confound the normative spacings of things, practices and people.”17 This is problematic for the new Berlin which as the capital of a reunified Germany wishes to take its place amongst other European capitals and compete in the new globalised economy. As such, the regeneration of Berlin along nineteenth century principles is intrinsically linked with a desire for an aesthetic reordering of the city resembling normative characteristics evident in other European cities. This reordering is a quest for seamlessness based upon an apollonion tendency which gives the illusion of, and signifies prosperity18. In doing so, Berlin’s authorities, in the context of reunification, have aimed to banish ambiguity and create order in the urban environment so to ‘paper over’ and reintegrate scars left by the chaotic and traumatising events of the 20th century into a urban model more recognisable to European norms, allowing it to join other European capitals as the capital of new Germany.

It is possible then, to broadly define gentrification in Berlin as a politically-initiated process of aesthetically reordering the city upon nineteenth century principles more characteristic of European norms, a process of homogenisation as referred to by Liebeskind, achieved through a neoliberal partnership between public bodies and private finance. As is the case in other international models, often the end result of this process is a displacement of existing populations and programmes which leads to tensions and revanchist movements who fear the loss of Berlin’s unique identity and character. To apply this developed understanding 13. Ladd, B (1998). The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

14. Littlefield, D.. (2007). Introduction. In: Littlefield, D. and Lewis, S. Architectural Voices: Listening to Old Buildings.

Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. 9.

15. Till, K (2005). New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press. 36.

16. Ladd, B (1998). The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

17. Edensor, T (2005). Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality. Oxford: Berg. p18.

18. Ibid. 59 Thesis Research Document

Fig 2.5 (Previous) Symbol of Divided Berlin: Potsdamer Platz in 1963, the border between East and West.

Fig 2.6 (Previous) Plans for the reconstruction of Potsdamer Platz in 1991, based upon the 19th century urban footprint.

Fig 2.7 (Previous) Symbol of Reunified neoliberal Berlin: Potsdamer Platz following reconstruction in 2005.

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Fig 2.8 (Previous) Prussian Palace: The 18th Century Berliner Stadtschloss as viewed from the pleasure gardens in 1895.

Fig 2.9 (Previous) Palast Der Republik: The seat of the parliament of the German Democratic Republic which occupied the site of the original Prussian Palace.

of the Berlin gentrification phenomenon, the Mediaspree regeneration project can be considered as an exemplification of the urban condition of Berlin following unification, and the desire by planners to restructure it to resemble to thriving river bank developments of other metropoli, such as London and Paris.

Fig 2.10 (Previous) Construction of New Berlin? Following the demolition of the Palace of the Republic, the 18th Century Palace is reconstructed with a contemporary concrete frame in 2014.

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2.3 ‘Anchor for the Future’: Project Mediaspree Fig 2.11 Rejoining the communities of Freidrichshain and Kreuzberg: Illustrative map illustrating the position of the Mediaspree area in Berlin and former location of the Berlin Wall.

Fig 2.12-14 Mediaspree Versenken!

Billboards and demonstrations in support of the anti-Mediaspree campaign ‘Spree Banks for All’.

Located close to the very centre of Berlin and as the former border between East and West Berlin, the 3.5km stretch of the Spree which divides Kreuzberg from Friedrichshain lies at the centre of the contemporary Berlin gentrification debate. The area falls under a politically initiated development project dubbed ‘Mediaspree’ which envisions a dense commercial urban fabric featuring office space, retail and luxury apartments. The Berlin senate hopes that the project will connect the two distinct communities of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain19, rejoining the two districts after decades of division, whilst permanently establishing a centre for Berlin’s music and visual media industries. Whilst other forms of gentrification, more representative of international phenomenon, are evident on the fringes of the area such as ‘tourist-initiated gentrification’20, owing to the lack of a population in the predominantly industrial area, the gentrification of this area defies definition by international models. Rather, it is the characteristics of the river banks as terrain vagues littered with industrial ruins on the former border, and the desire to paper-over these historical divisions through a politically initiated building programme that allows the application of the developed Berlin-centric definition.

Opening in 1913, the Eastern Harbour (Osthafen) addressed the issue of increased shipping traffic along Berlin’s waterways due to a period of rapid industrial expansion. Providing storage warehouses, including some of Europe’s largest cold-storage facilities, the port remained in use until the second world war, during which time it was used by the Wehrmacht as a goods store, operated by prisoners of war. Although eighty percent of the harbour’s buildings were destroyed during allied bombing, during the cold war era, it remained East Berlin’s main port and was an important industrial centre. Many factories situated here from before the war were repurposed and continued to operate until the fall of the wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the communist state. With the fall of the DDR, these state owned industries and warehouses were abandoned, forming a vast stretch of ruins marking the former border and acting as a physical reminder of the events of the previous century. Whilst some small scale industry remains in the area, these ruins have remained as such, becoming a hotspot of alternative subculture movements and “one of the densest clusters of contemporary electronic music in the world.”21 Remaining a physical manifestation of the years of division, this urban scar was designated a development area by city planners in the early 1990s and the Mediaspree project initiated through the founding of a neoliberal partnership between public bodies, who incidentally were the largest landowners in the area, and private investors. Public property was sold at an alarming rate and a masterplan for a dense urban fabric revealed, resembling a second Potsdamer Platz22. Unlike Potsdamer Platz however, due to the site’s history as a working dock from the beginning of the twentieth century, no previous urban fabric could be drawn upon to rebuild a vision of this earlier time. Instead, some former warehouses were planned for renovation and a new urban plan, designed along nineteenth century principles featuring mainly courtyard blocks in a dense grid pattern, characteristic of European norms were drawn. In doing so, the plans involve the destruction of a number of ruins of cultural value, such as the Berliner Eisfabrik (Ice Factory), despite its listed status. The desire to remove ruins and impose a nineteenth century vision of dense city blocks in an attempt to 19. Dohnke, J. (2013). Spree Riverbanks for Everyone! What Remains of ‘Sink Mediaspree’? In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 263.

20. Holm, A. (2013). Berlin’s Gentrification Mainstream. In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 171.

21. Ahlfeldt, G. (2010). Blessing or curse? Appreciation, amenities and resistance around the Berlin ‘Mediaspree’.

Hamburg contemporary economic discussions. 32. 5.

22. Mediaspree Versenken. (2011). Projekt Mediaspree. Available: http://ms-versenken.org/media-spree-ev/81macht-mit-beim-buergerinnenbegehren. Last accessed 29th December 2014.

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Ruinous Structure Ruinous Land Area Former Berlin Wall Ruinous Structure

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Fig 2.13 (Previous) An indeterminate territory: The urban fabric of the Mediaspree area today, highlighting remaining ruinous areas and the former location of the Berlin Wall.

Fig 2.14-16 (Previous) Ruinous heterotopias: Examples of ruinous structures on the Spree banks today.

Fig 2.17 (Previous) Filling the voids: Ground plan of the planned developments as part of the Mediaspree masterplan, predominantly nineteenth century inspired courtyard blocks.

Fig 2.18-20 (Previous) Urban homogenisation: Various aerial views of the proposed Mediaspree developments.

Fig 2.21 Activity Voids and Clearings: Experiences encountered in a Spree-side walk, illustrating voids created through homogenising Mediaspree projects, removing the opportunity for informal use.

join the districts of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain is characteristic of Berlin gentrification since reunification, defined by the desire to banish ambiguity and create order in the urban environment so to ‘paper over’ and reintegrate historical scars into an urban model more recognisable to European norms.

The desire to achieve an urban aesthetic seamlessness to overcome historical trauma as the primary driving force in the gentrification of the Mediaspree area is illustrated by the fact that the commercial floor space being provided by the scheme is purely speculative, and - as argued by the scheme’s critics - not needed, owing to the “low demand for office and retail spaces in Berlin.”23 Estimates suggest that there is currently more than 1.2million square metres of unoccupied office space in the city today24 following the boom in gentrification projects post unification. Huge public sector subsidisation has been required to take the plans forward, an estimated ten million euros were paid by the senate to Universal Music as ‘start up costs’ to entice their move from Hamburg to Berlin in 200225. An unspecified amount was also allegedly paid to MTV for them to join Universal as anchors for the project.

This suggests that rather than being a project based upon the need for more space for Berlin’s thriving media business, it is in fact an project driven by a desire by the city authorities of ‘fixing’ the Spree so that this wild zone can be tamed and ordered to achieve an aesthetic norm and the illusion of seamlessness, thus making the city more attractive to the international capital not accustomed to the area’s disordered urban aesthetic. Modern perceptions about behaviour and what constitutes a normative corporate driven urban environment, dictates that such a valuable and expansive area so close to the centre of a city should not be pot marked by industrial ruins, wastelands and squats.

The Mediaspree plans were met with fierce opposition by a group of local stakeholders and residents named Mediaspree Versenken (Sink Mediaspree). In 2007, the group established a citizen’s initiative to act as a “counterweight to urban planning that neglected social and ecological dimensions, as well as to impede rapid development along the banks of the Spree created by and for large-scale investors.”26 In a 2008 referendum, 86.8% of KreuzbergFreidrichshain voters, some 30,000 citizens voted in favour of the initiative and against the Mediaspree plans27. Through an empirical analysis of the referendum, Gabriel Ahlfeldt concludes that it was the perceived value of existing cultural amenities and intangible neighbourhood characteristics that would be lost as a result of the plans, rather than perceived displacement pressures, which resulted in the local opposition to the scheme28.

In short, the predicted displacement of subcultural movements which had made the ruins of the Spree their home and the fear that Berlin would become, just another aesthetically ordered urban environment in the contemporary international notion of what is normal, were the driving force behind the opposition to Mediaspree. Paradoxically then, gentrification of the Mediaspree area driven by a fear of the ruin and a desire to remove the ambiguity that it embodies, undermines the programatic aim of the project to ferment the city’s music industry due to the displacement of the music subcultures which are fundamentally linked to the aforementioned ruins.

23. Dohnke, J. (2013). Spree Riverbanks for Everyone! What Remains of ‘Sink Mediaspree’? In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 264.

24. Kratke, S. (2013). City of Talents? In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 147.

25. Mediaspree Versenken. (2011). Projekt Mediaspree. Available: http://ms-versenken.org/media-spree-ev/81macht-mit-beim-buergerinnenbegehren. Last accessed 29th December 2014.

26. Dohnke, J. (2013). Spree Riverbanks for Everyone! What Remains of ‘Sink Mediaspree’? In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 265.

27. Jacobs, S. (14/07/2008). Sieg fur “Mediaspree versenken”. Der Tagesspiegel. (Online).

28. Ahlfeldt, G. (2010). Blessing or curse? Appreciation, amenities and resistance around the Berlin ‘Mediaspree’.

Hamburg contemporary economic discussions. 32. 31.

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Mediaspree Development Area Institutional Music Venue Other Music Venue 3.1

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Part Three: Subkultur Berlin 3.1 Alpha World Media City Fig 3.1 Densest cluster of electronic music in the world: Figure ground map illustrating the locations of selected music venues around the Mediaspree development area.

In the past two decades, Berlin has risen to the status of ‘Alpha World Media City’, a term coined by Stefan Kratke in response to the relocation of over half the thirty three major global media firms to the city in this time. As previously discussed, the programmatic aims of Mediaspree are to ferment this global status through the creation of a “centre for Berlin’s creative industries,”1 upon which Berlin’s marketed image as “poor but sexy”2 has been built.

Yet, Gabriel Ahlfeldt’s findings, that the driving force behind the rejection of Mediaspree at the ballot box was a fear of the loss of these cultural industries and ‘neighbourhood character’, signifies that perhaps the creative industries and cultural amenities already existing in the area, which had become the most important cluster of contemporary electronic music in the world, was fundamentally partnered with the neighbourhood character that opponents to the scheme believed would be lost.

As established, the homogenisation of the urban environment along modern notions of the normative, lies at the centre of the Berlin-centric definition of gentrification, of which the Mediaspree is an example. Paradoxically, it is this homogenisation, born out of a desire to rejoin the two halves of the city based on a nineteenth century nostalgia which ultimately replaces the authenticity of the area which has made it so fertile for cultural innovation, replacing it with a ‘ready made subculture’ more in keeping with urban norms. This homogenisation “simultaneously undermines the everyday conditions necessary to sustain the creative process itself.”3 This hollowing out of subcultures through homogenisation is described by Lutz Henke, one of the artists behind Kreuzberg’s famous street mural by Blu and JR, as ‘zombification’: “Gentrification in Berlin lately doesn’t content itself with destroying creative spaces.

Because it needs its artistic brand to remain attractive, it tends to artificially reanimate the creativity it has displaced, thus producing an ‘undead city’. This zombification is threatening to turn Berlin into a museal city of veneers, the ‘art scene’ preserved as an amusement park for those who can afford the rising rents.”4 It is no accident that some cities around the world have become associated with a particular music style, such as Detroit with Motown, Manchester with Brit-pop and Berlin with Techno.

Without “the specific urban conditions, their development would not have been feasible”5, argue Ingo Bader and Albert Scharenberg, alluding to the everyday urban environment along the spree which constitutes ‘neighbourhood charm’, as the most important factor in the continuation of a creative environment for Berlin’s music industry. Thus, it can be assumed that the success of the Mediaspree project programmatically depends upon its maintenance of the fundamental characteristics of the existing urban environment, one which is defined by the ruin. To test this theory, an investigation into the characteristics and values, both socially and spatially, of the musical subculture movement in Berlin is required.

1. Dohnke, J. (2013). Spree Riverbanks for Everyone! What Remains of ‘Sink Mediaspree’? In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 263.

2. Jakob, D. (2010). Constructing the creative neighborhood: Hopes and limitations of creative city policies in Berlin.

City Culture and Society. 1 (4), 195.

3. Bader, I and Scharenberg,A (2013). The Sound of Berlin: Subculture and Global Music Industry. In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 245.

4. Henke, L, 2014. Why we painted over Berlin’s most famous graffiti. The Guardian, 19 December.

5. Bader, I and Scharenberg,A (2013). The Sound of Berlin: Subculture and Global Music Industry. In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 240.

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3.2 Techno: The Sound of Reunification Fig 3.2 Reunification: West Berliners attempt to tear down a section of the Wall near Postdamer Platz on 11th November 1989.

The complex political, social and urban situation of Berlin prior to, and in the years following reunification, contributed to the evolution of the Berlin type of music represented by the clubs and labels located within the Mediaspree area. For both West and East Germany, Berlin in the period of division was a special case which allowed a politically motivated youth culture to develop. East Berlin was one of the only locations within the DDR which was exposed to Western culture and music. The youth of East Berlin, discontent with their political situation found an outlet in hip-hop, first introduced by the children of Western diplomats and on the airwaves drifting across the iron curtain. For the youth of East Berlin, music became the most important expression of political dissent, as Mark Reeder, of MFS Records recalls: “Music was the most important thing for them. In my opinion the revolution couldn’t have taken place without the music.”6 A subculture developed around breakdancing, through which this youth could express their discontent: “The police [..] they didn’t like it and they monitored it. But what could they do? We were only dancing. Even if they sensed that with our dancing, we were expressing a desire for something different than what was available in the DDR.”7 The unique political situation in West Berlin too incubated a youth movement which laid the foundation for contemporary Berlin subculture movements. West Berlin was strangled by the wall surrounding it, effectively making it dependent upon subsidised support from the West German government. The threat of Berlin becoming a ghost town due to a decreased population led to the introduction of a number of attractive incentives by the Government, including the exclusion from military service of all West Berlin resident males. This effectively turned Berlin into the centre of West German political activism as it became a magnet for discontented youth, society drop-outs and artists from all over the country8. This fostered an alternative, anarchist youth culture which resulted in the squatting of over a hundred properties in Kreuzberg alone. The freedom provided by these squats fostered the development of a highly creative environment, as Ms Allien recalls: “When I was living in the squats, I learned the most important things for my artistic life [..] To feel free and not to be afraid [..] just do it for the passion.”9 The combination of a discontentment with the present and the creative freedom that these squats provided is illustrated through the house music scene that developed in West Berlin at this time. The music, which focussed on the creation of new sounds through the simple mixing of existing records on easily available tape players democratised music making and reflected the political values of the anarchist movement: “The music embodied that everything could be totally different. It made perfect sense to me.

The means of production were inexpensive and available to everyone, but a wide range of individual creativity was nonetheless possible.”10 With the fall of the Wall in 1989, this desire for freedom and a different way of doing things met with a political and urban situation in which the opportunity to effect these ideas was actually possible, igniting the creative imaginations of young East and West Berliners. With the collapse of the East German state, industrial premises and factories became obsolete and swathes of East Berlin housing was simply abandoned as residents moved Westward.

The fall of the DDR provided the discontented youth of Berlin with the unoccupied space to initiate their ideas, aided by the confusion and chaos that surrounded it, as Danielle De Piccitotto reflects: “We were permanently busy climbing in somewhere to explore new things.

6. Sub Berlin: The Story of Tresor (2008). Video Recording. Tresor Label, Berlin. Directed by Tilmann Kunzel.

7. Denk, F. and Thulen, S (2014). Der Klang Der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall. 2nd ed. Norderstedt: Books on Demand.

8. Sheridan, D. (2007). The Space of Subculture in the City: Getting Specific about Berlin’s Indeterminate Territories.

Field Journal. 1. 101.

9. Pareles, J . (2014). In Berlin, Still Partying in the Ruins. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/travel/inberlin-still-partying-in-the-ruins.html?_r=1. Last accessed 30th December 2014.

10. Denk, F. and Thulen, S (2014). Der Klang Der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall. 2nd ed. Norderstedt: Books on Demand.

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Fig 3.3-4 Berliners forgetting to go home: the Tresor dancefloor in the 1990s, in a former bank vault on the old East-West border at Leipzig Strasse.

We immersed ourselves in a city that stood abandoned [..] you could open a door and enter a new world.”11 Through these chaotic times, a creative underground movement began to flourish within the ruins of communism and once again, music became the movement’s most important method of expression; “The anarchy days — years — gave the subculture time to root itself into the culture of the city.”12 Originally developed in the ruins of the rapidly de-industrialising city of Detroit, Techno was first introduced to Berlin shortly before the fall of the wall. The sound instantly resonated with the abandoned and fragmented cityscape of former East Berlin: “The music, abstract and mournfully propulsive, just sounded right in the semi-ruined spaces of the transformed city.”13 The sound which had no concrete message and in which the dancer was a constitute element of the production, perfectly reflected the context of this time as well as the political and social values of the youth exploring the new urban landscape, quickly becoming the soundtrack for celebrating newly found freedom: “A rough yet electrifying sense of optimism, that found its musical equivalent in the hard sounds of techno and the euphoric house sounds, prevailed.”14 As a sound which neither West or East Berliners had heard before, Techno provided an equal playing field for both cultures to experience at the same time and thus a common understanding was formed: “The music had this connective element. Once you established contact, you got along. When someone new joined in [..] he was welcomed with open arms.”15 The emerging Techno scene searched for venues which complimented the movement’s values and sound. Clubs opened every week, lasting only a few months and each time discovering breathtaking spaces: “[L]ocations were the stars, you could discover a spectacular new location every weekend, there were just so many of them.”16 Consequently, factories, power stations, former shops and even a Russian airforce bunker became the locations in which East and West Berliners celebrated their new freedom, and imagined with optimism the possibilities for the future. The temporary and illegal nature of this exercise made possible the experimental and innovative character of the evolving music and culture.

The ambiguity of the times and the optimism for a future full of possibility so intrinsically linked to this emerging culture was perfectly reflected through the repurposing of these ruins and the fragmented cityscape. The juxtaposition of a new sound and new found freedom in a space littered with cultural artefacts carrying the connotations of the world being left behind made these locations so appealing, and fostered the creativity and experimentation of the movement: “the occupants and building naturally influence each other to a degree not encountered in usual building occupancy.”17 As the scene developed, the abandoned spaces encountered continued to have a formative effect upon the music and the culture itself. Whilst it began as a process of accidentally stumbling upon spaces and repurposing them for short periods, the spaces appropriated began to become entwined with the identity of a particular sound and club itself, as demonstrated by the evolution of club names away from abstract imaginative phrases with sci-fi connotations such as ‘UFO’ and ‘Planet’ to names directly associated with the spaces with which the club inhabited, such as ‘Tresor’ meaning vault.

11. Denk, F. and Thulen, S (2014). Der Klang Der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall. Kindle ed.

Norderstedt: Books on Demand.

12. Pareles, J . (2014). In Berlin, Still Partying in the Ruins. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/travel/inberlin-still-partying-in-the-ruins.html?_r=1. Last accessed 30th December 2014.

13. Ibid.

14. Droner, A.. (2014). The Club Scene: From Hard Beats to Big Business. 38 Hours in Berlin Berlin Berlin. 1. 27.

15. Denk, F. and Thulen, S (2014). Der Klang Der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall. Kindle ed.

Norderstedt: Books on Demand.

16. Ibid.

17. Sheridan, D. (2007). The Space of Subculture in the City: Getting Specific about Berlin’s Indeterminate Territories.

Field Journal. 1. 101.

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3.3 Cities in Crisis Fig 3.5 City of Ruins: An abandoned tenant block in Mitte, 1990. The dissolution of the DDR left thousands of abandoned properties across East Berlin.

This idea of the music fitting the city and just ‘sounding right’ in the fragmented cityscape of reunified Berlin is an important idea which begins to allude to the importance of the specific urban condition in which Berlin found itself following reunification in the rooting of a musical subculture which today has made it the most important city in the world for electronic music.

It is an idea echoed by Bader and Scharenberg who argue that “cultural innovation is a phenomenon of cities in crisis.”18, the specific urban environment of these cities making experimental and innovative testing of ideas possible. Kevin Ward confirms a link between the ruins of industrialisation and cultural experimentation through his description of Manchester in the 1980s which became “awash with music venues” and the centre of a creative, local and ground breaking popular culture following its rapid and widespread deindustrialisation: “Across the city, railway arches, mills and warehouses were being transformed. Slowly but surely large swathes of the physical reminders of Manchester’s industrial past were transformed into signs of Manchester’s future.”19 The parallels between Manchester, Detroit and Berlin suggest that there is an accuracy in Bader and Scharenberg’s assertion that cities in crisis nurture cultural innovation. Each city has undergone rapid deindustrialisation, providing a plethora of ruins and open space in which cultural experiments can take place.

Philipp Oswalt makes a connection between subcultural groups and their environments, arguing that temporary uses often are attracted to abandoned spaces which match their character and values, demonstrating a willingness to work within current conditions, adapting the space to their needs and vis-versa.20 He argues that it is the temporal insecurity of the endeavour, coupled with a temporary colonisation of an abandoned space that fuels creative innovation, a notion which Bader and Scharenberg confirm is instrumental within the Berlin music scene: “The experimental and innovative character of these underground locations is made possible by the temporary character of these illegal clubs and bars which are permanently threatened by closure.”21 Oswalt goes on to describe the phenomenon of clusters in the development of subcultures, stating that these cultural endeavours rarely grow in isolation but form a mutually supporting cluster each contributing to cultural innovation within the network. These clusters, he argues generate specific identities which are connected to the values of the individual participants and emerge over time22. The rise of subcultures in the Berlin Mediaspree area, as well as in other crisis cities such as Detroit and Manchester, which go on to dominate the city’s identity and image over time, even after their displacement can be contributed to the vast amounts of abandoned space and structures within a small area, providing the space for numerous uses to colonise in connection with each other. We can assume then, that the ‘neighbourhood character’, a perceived loss of which was the primary driver behind local opposition to the Mediaspree masterplan, is the identity which has emerged during the long term colonising of this expanse of indeterminate territories by a subculture cluster, and that this identity is fundamentally associated with the ruins which are re-appropriated by these movements.

Why the ruin has become so integral to the identity and character of the subcultures on the

18. Bader, I and Scharenberg,A (2013). The Sound of Berlin: Subculture and Global Music Industry. In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 255.

19. Ward, K. (2013). Urban Centre Reloaded: Subculture in Manchester’s City Centre. In: Oswalt, P. Klaus, O. Misselwitz, P. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use. Berlin: DOM Publishers. 74.

20. Oswalt, P. (2013). Patterns of the Unplanned. In: Oswalt, P. Klaus, O. Misselwitz, P. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use. Berlin: DOM Publishers. 53.

21. Bader, I and Scharenberg,A (2013). The Sound of Berlin: Subculture and Global Music Industry. In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 250.

22. Oswalt, P. (2013). Patterns of the Unplanned. In: Oswalt, P. Klaus, O. Misselwitz, P. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use. Berlin: DOM Publishers. 55.

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Fig 3.6 Squat City: Tacheles, an artist squat in a ruined department store photographed in 1990. Ruins across Berlin were re-purposed for creative subcultures following reunification.

Spree can be contributed in some part to the initial temporary nature of the endeavour and the fact that generally these innovative projects are initially self financed. Oswalt argues that to confront this, a principle of ‘maximum adaption’23 is employed by the subcultural group which leaves the ruined structure colonised largely intact and the use is highly improvised around it, a process which undoubtably has a formative effect on the colonising group. Whilst in the initial period following the fall of the wall, the process of maximum adaption of a space was out of necessity due to the informal nature and a lack of capital, in time these ruins and spaces became intrinsically linked to the music which was produced there, a sound which was increasingly influenced by the spaces inhabited. Alexandra Doner, reflecting on her own experiences of the early days of the Techno alludes to the formative nature of the spatial environment on the experience of, and creative development of the music by describing her personal connection between the unique sound of the Tresor club and its location: “It was obvious, that there was only one place where this special kind of Techno was allowed to be - Tresor. And I didn’t want to hear it anywhere else, because for me it was connected to this room.”24 In wider academic discourse, the role of spatial environments on cultural development is well versed. Kim Dovey points out Lefebvre’s notion that whilst space is a social construct, the social is spatially constructed, that is a “place is an inextricably intertwined knot of spatially and sociality.”25 Dovey goes on to describe place as an assemblage of spatial practices, experience and layered meanings which transcend a simple reduction to site, location and space26. Dougal Sheridan confirms the importance of the spatial environment in the formation of the subculture in his investigation of indeterminate territories in Berlin: “[T]he understanding of indeterminate territories as spaces outside hegemony, offering the experience of urban fragments removed from the spatial and temporal continuum of the city, suggests that these spaces may indeed have a formative effect.”27 His conclusion alludes to the value of ruins as spaces outside of the normative spatial and temporal practices of the contemporary city which make them so attractive to subcultural groups which themselves operate outside of and in contradiction to normative popular cultures. This suggests that beyond simply an available space, ruins and their characteristics may be more important as stimuli which aid in the creative processes, a notion supported by Oswalt, who argues that when these spaces are left in their original state, the aura and historical character are preserved which allows for “unusual aesthetic experiences” which provide important stimuli “that reach far beyond the actual temporary use.”28 The indeterminacy of ruins allows for a less mediated and more direct relationship with the specific qualities of place, and these qualities have a formative effect upon the culture and music created within. The Foucaultian notion of ‘Heterotopia’ encompasses this value of the ruin in terms of reflecting and forming the values and characteristics of the techno subculture as a contradiction to those of normative popular culture in order to foster an environment of creative innovation.

23. Oswalt, P. (2013). Patterns of the Unplanned. In: Oswalt, P. Klaus, O. Misselwitz, P. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use. Berlin: DOM Publishers. 56.

24. Sub Berlin: The Story of Tresor (2008). Video Recording. Tresor Label, Berlin. Directed by Tilmann Kunzel.

25. Dovey, K (2010). Becoming Places: Urbanism, Architecture, Identity, Power. Oxon: Routledge. 6.

26. Ibid. 24 27. Sheridan, D. (2007). The Space of Subculture in the City: Getting Specific about Berlin’s Indeterminate Territories.

Field Journal. 1. 112.

28. Oswalt, P. (2013). Patterns of the Unplanned. In: Oswalt, P. Klaus, O. Misselwitz, P. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use. Berlin: DOM Publishers. 56.

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3.4 Ruinous Heterotopias Fig 3.7 The Drawbridge, plate VII from the series Carceri d’Invenzione, 1745 by Giovanni Battista Piranesi: No firm point of view can be had in Piranesi’s works, where the eye wonders around the ruinous labyrinth. Refusing to represent the ruin classically where above, below, inside and outside could all be distinguished, he privileges passageways and stairs drawing the eye based upon what looks like it holds the possibility of surprise. He captures the ruin as a heterotopian space.

Modernism sought a utopian future based upon a set of aesthetic rules which would declutter the urban environment in a quest for seamless order. The international style formed the culmination of this quest, with the desire for right angles, neutral pallets, modulation and rationalised functional forms, the result of a longing to banish ambiguity29, especially in respects to the chaos and horrors of 20th century events. Whilst the international style itself, which in the case of Le Corbusier envisioned the complete reconstruction of existing cities in his modulated, spatially segregated ideal, never achieved its goal of globalised aesthetic style in its purified state, many idealisms have persisted within the modern city and have themselves resulted in the contemporary aesthetic sanitisation of the urban environment. As Tim Edensor argues, in the contemporary Western City the “production of space is coterminous with regulation, surveillance, aesthetic monitoring and the prevalence of regimes which determine where and how things, activities and people should be placed.”30 This alludes to an understanding that aesthetic purification of space in the contemporary city has the effect of producing a sense of what a space is for and thus a set of appropriate behaviours and gestures appropriate within urban space, creating a self-regulating urban public, conscious of maintaining a normative method of behaviour within urban space: “an assumed parallel between architonic reform and the contemporaneous attempt to reform the populace’s thought and behaviour.”31 The design, through architectural intervention, of a particular perceived normative urban behaviour therefore shapes popular mass culture. This makes more heterogeneous spaces, such as ruins appealing to subcultures and creative endeavours as they provide a freedom of expression through a contradictive aesthetic to that of the norm, that associated with mass culture.

As established in earlier chapters, this reordering of space which has its roots in Modernism, is a fundamental characteristic of gentrification in Berlin and within the Mediaspree plans as part of a wider yearning for an urban environment more characteristic of European norms. Yet as discussed, the music subcultures of Berlin grew out of a euphoric imagining of future potentials, contradicting the temporal and cultural continuation of the city that aesthetic purification fosters. The ruin therefore, which defies contemporary attempts to achieve a holistic ordering of the city strived for, became the appropriate backdrop for these subcultures not only for the possibilities of the present offered by their available space, but by their “power to imagine other futures”32 by breaking the spatial and temporal continuum of the city. Andreas Huyssen describes this power through an analysis of the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi whom he argues captured an ‘architettura morta’ in ruins which “not only reminds the present of its own transitoriness but seems to include a warning about a culturally destructive forgetting of the past.”33 In his writing on Industrial ruins, Tim Edensor agrees, arguing that whilst ruins “perform a physical remembering of that which has vanished, they also gesture towards the present and the future as temporal frames [..] and they help to conjure up critiques of present arrangements and potential futures.”34 For the techno movement, built upon a remembrance of past events and a freedom to forge a new future, this perceived transitoriness is particularly appealing.

29. Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality by Tim Edensor. 53.

30. Ibid. 54.

31. Scott, F (2008). On Altering Architecture . Oxon: Routledge. 5.

32. Huyssen, A. (2006). Nostalgia for Ruins. Grey Room. 23, 7.

33. Ibid. 17.

34. Edensor, T (2005). Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality. Oxford: Berg. p15.

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Fig 3.8 Modern Gothic: Berliner Eisfabrik. A disintegration of the ordered, industrial ruins produce unfamiliar textures through their decay and disordered scenes which liberate the viewer from self regulation, allowing imaginative freedom.

The spatio-temporal break achieved by the ruin has parallels to Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘Heterotopias’. These can be explained as ‘placeless places’ within the city which represent and reflect other places in the urban fabric and yet at the same time reverses, suspends and neutralises them35. In other words, heterotopias can be defined as places which carry connotations and meanings associated with wider urban, cultural and social norms whilst disrupting and contradicting them, just as a garden represents and reflects the natural world and yet is contradictory in its unnatural totality. Edensor himself alludes to the nature of the ruin as heterotopia arguing “the affective, peculiar sensations experienced in the ruin slip away from those normative procedures through which space is represented and characterised.”36 Whilst Foucault’s work on heterotopias is incomplete, and many scholars have since tried to interpret it, the key theme that emerges is that these different spaces are sites for resistance to dominant urban aesthetic ordering and thus sites of resistance to dominant culture.37 Johnson goes on to argue that the temporal and spatial disruption makes heterotopias particularly rich imaginary spaces, forming what he describes as a “reservoir of imagination.”38 Sennett argues that “[t]he acceptance of impurity, difficulty and obstruction is the very experience of liberty”39, and it is this mental freedom, and the liberation from the behavioural self-policing encouraged by sanitised urban aesthetics that makes ruinous heterotopias such fertile creative environments. Ruins are particularly powerful spaces of imagination due to the abnormal juxtaposition of different objects with different meanings, becoming an ad-hoc ‘fun house’ which encourages creative freedoms. This description of the ruin goes someway to explaining the formative effect on the techno culture and sound within the Mediaspree area and how the spaces inhabited have become so intrinsically linked to the culture and sound itself. A further understanding can be gained through the understanding of the ruin and heterotopia as incomplete. This incompleteness suspends the building between its past and its future,40 establishing a creative environment of the present within that feeds the imagination. The incompleteness of techno venues, created through the retention of the ruin largely intact with only recognisable insertions made adds to the temporal disruption which makes the imagination of future potentials possible.

35. Johnson, P. (2006). Unravelling Foucault’s ‘different spaces’. History of the Human Sciences. 19 (1). 76.

36. Edensor, T (2005). Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality. Oxford: Berg. 63.

37. Ibid. 82.

38. Ibid. 81.

39. Ibid. 95.

40. Scott, F (2008). On Altering Architecture . Oxon: Routledge. 212.

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3.5 The Vault Fig 3.9 Techno Temple: The entrance to Tresor in 1996 in its original Leipziger Strasse location.

Fig 3.10 The Vault: View looking toward the main Tresor dance floor through the maintained iron bars in its original Leipziger Strasse location, 1991-2005.

Fig 3.11 (Next) Zero-hour Atmosphere: View of Postdammer Platz, Leipziger Platz and Leipziger Strasse in 1983, looking toward the Tiergarten, Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag.

In January 1991, Dimitri Hegemann and Johnnie Stieler stumbled across the remains of an old department store on Leipzig Strasse in the middle of the by then defunct ‘death strip’ between East and West Berlin in the district of Mitte: “It was a dump. Leipzig Platz was one big wasteland. There was nothing there. Absolutely nothing. [..] Like a ghost town. Like after World War II. A real zero-hour atmosphere.”41 The underground vault discovery was the result of months of searching for a venue which would succeed Hegemann’s previous Kreuzberg club U.F.O, which was forced to close because of illegal function. The subterranean location became the home of what is widely considered the home of Berlin Techno, The Tresor.

“When we came through the open steel door into the vault with those rusty safe deposit boxes, it was immediately clear to all of us: the search is over!”42 recalls Hegemann, who refers to the find as similar to the opening of an ancient Pyramid for the first time.43 Stieler too alludes to the aura and atmospheric qualities of that space in his description of the first encounter with the vault: “That must be what it feels like to find an Aztec treasure. None of us said a word. We just walked around in silence with our lighters [..] It wasn’t until we were back in the car that we started talking again.”44 The vault had once belonged to Globus Bank which had been located within the Wertheim Department Store, one of three in Berlin before the war.

Originally a Jewish owned business, it was confiscated by the authorities in the 1930s as part of the Nazi process of Aryanisation following the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws. Having been badly damaged by bombing and the battle of Berlin at the end of the war, the ruins were eventually removed by the East Berlin authorities in the 1950s to clear the death strip between the two walls that would divide Berlin until 1989. Only a small shop front structure was retained above the entrance to the bank’s vault which quickly fell under the jurisdiction of the East German secret police, the Stasi. As such, this small structure in the wasteland of Leipziger Platz had by 1990, witnessed the most traumatic events of German history and then stood at the very epicentre of the reunification movement, with Leipziger Strasse connecting East Berlin to one of the first hastily established border crossings in the early days of the dissolution of the DDR at Potsdamer Platz. The location was thus perfect for the establishment of a club for East and West Berliners to celebrate their newly found freedom: “Old categories – east and west – are without meaning in this new space which reverberates fully with the new sounds of rough, pounding Techno.”45 The vault easily fits the Foucaultian characterisation as Heterotopia, as a placeless place which carried the connotations of Berlin’s past and present whilst neutralising them and suspending them in a carnivalesque atmosphere that fed a feeling of rebellion. The subterranean location in itself literally represented an underground movement, severing the external from the internal world created. Descending into the vault, the visitor was completely immersed into this placeless-place in which the spatio-temporal continuum of the city had been disrupted, as DJ Tanith recalls: “The world could have ended, an atomic bomb could have been dropped, and you’d still be partying down there.”46 The original safety deposit boxes from the bank were left in place, surrounding the dance floor and in places, utilised as racks to store bottles behind the bar. The bars and gates were retained, behind which the DJ booth was located, and the concrete walls, ceiling and floors which until this point had not been seen for over forty-five years were left untouched. All interventions, from the bar to the 41. Denk, F. and Thulen, S (2014). Der Klang Der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall. Kindle ed.

Norderstedt: Books on Demand.

42. Ibid.

43. Nicholson, E. (2014). In Berlin, a Beat that Bloomed from Rubble. Available: http://www.npr. org/2014/11/09/362060168/in-berlin-a-beat-that-bloomed-from-rubble. Last accessed 03rd January 2015.

44. Denk, F. and Thulen, S (2014). Der Klang Der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall. Kindle ed.

Norderstedt: Books on Demand.

45. Anon. (Date Unknown). Club History. Available: http://tresorberlin.com/history/. Last accessed 03rd January 2015.

46. Nicholson, E. (2014). In Berlin, a Beat that Bloomed from Rubble. Available: http://www.npr. org/2014/11/09/362060168/in-berlin-a-beat-that-bloomed-from-rubble. Last accessed 03rd January 2015.

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Fig 3.12 Artefacts and Nostalgic Traces: The urban condition of the original Leipziger Strasse location of Tresor, in 1991, illustrating the artefacts remaining from before the war and the former location of the Berlin Wall.

Fig 3.13 Urban Ruins: Ruinous structures and land area in the urban context of the original Leipziger Strasse location of Tresor in 1991.

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Fig 3.14 The Vault: The vault of Globus Bank in the Wertheim Department store, 1908. The safety deposit boxes are visible lining the walls.

Fig 3.15 The bar in Tresor, from 19912005. The safety deposit boxes and iron bars are retained, maintaining the venue’s historical aura.

toilets were roughly and amateurly done with cheap materials, giving the overall atmosphere a raw feeling that resonated with the music as Kati Schwind recalls: “I went right downstairs, through the puddles, past the wooden wall, and arrived at this room that glittered with rust. My jaw just hung open [..] You could feel the history of the building.”47 These surrounds, with the relics of the former bank forming the backdrop retained the historical aura of the basement and provided a disorganised scene of unexpected juxtapositions forming a space which interrupts normative meanings, encouraging the visitor the freedom to explore alternative associations. As summated by Edensor, this is akin to the Deleuzian notion of ‘body-without organs’ that escapes the grids of control and disrupts and liberates the viewer from selfregulatory control: “This entity is an assemblage of affects within a field of immanence and desire, unhindered by disciplinary structures and orderly sense making.”48 The original location of Tresor then, which was made appropriate as a venue through the principle of ‘maximum adaption’ as defined by Philipp Ostwalt, can be defined as a heterotopia which liberated the visitor from self-regulatory control and nurtured an environment of freedom, both creatively and socially to experiment with new sounds and new structures for society. As established, this heterotopian creative atmosphere is fundamentally intwined with the nature of the venue as retained ruin. Maximum adaption of the space retained the ruin and the historical aura of the space which suspended the temporal continuum of the city, allowing a reflection upon historical events and the peculiar juxtaposition of meanings to form a foundation for imaginative thought. The techno sound produced in this space reflected the stimuli provided by the space itself and increasingly became intwined with the room in which it was produced, leading to the establishment of a record label for this very particular and unique type of electronic music, as suggested by Alexandra Doner when she reflects: “[T]here was only one place where this special kind of Techno was allowed to be - Tresor. And I didn’t want to hear it anywhere else, because for me it was connected to this room.”49 As such, the vault remained more or less in its original state for the fourteen years that the club operated in that location, the semiotic link between the space and values of the club deemed of importance to its continued authenticity. In 2005, due to plans to reconstruct Leipzig Platz upon its original nineteenth century footprint in the Berlin-centric style of gentrification that we established in earlier chapters, Tresor was forced to close its doors following a fortnight long party marathon. After two years of searching for a new location which fit the identity, sound and values of the original Tresor, a new venue was found by Hegemann in 2007, further suggesting that the ruinous heterotopia of the original vault had an important formative effect upon the function inhabiting it. Hegemann, speaking in an interview in the run up to the reopening of the club at its new location expressed his desire to recreate the original atmosphere of the Leipzig Strasse location and compliment it with the peculiarities of the new ruin he had discovered: “It will be familiar to people as Tresor – the old club, with the same kind of feeling – but in this amazing new location. I will work on the acoustics and make sure it is clean and safe, but I don’t plan to decorate. I’m not interested in this glamour-disco style. It’s not my thing.

I want to keep the space it as it is, keep it industrial. So many places, particularly since the wall came down, have been cleaned up and painted with white walls and so on – but somehow I feel the soul of spaces is lost. I love this feeling of character, when something looks real. When you experience a ruin – it can be magical.”50

47. Denk, F. and Thulen, S (2014). Der Klang Der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall. Kindle ed.

Norderstedt: Books on Demand.

48. Edensor, T (2005). Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality. Oxford: Berg. 95.

49. Sub Berlin: The Story of Tresor (2008). Video Recording. Tresor Label, Berlin. Directed by Tilmann Kunzel.

50. Houston, M. (2007). Interview: Dimitri Hegemann – Call it Techno. Available: http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/ features/interviews/dimitri-hegemann-call-it-techno-interview/. Last accessed 03rd January 2015.

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Fig 3.16 Artefacts and Nostalgic Traces: The urban condition of the present Tresor location, illustrating the artefacts remaining from before the war and the former location of the Berlin Wall.

Fig 3.17 Urban Ruins: Ruinous structures and land area in the urban context of the current location of Tresor in 2014.

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Fig 3.18 Severing of Exterior from Interior: As opposed to the honest facade called for in modernism, in creating a heterotopia, the Tresor facade is simply a shell containing a internal wall, effectively severing the interior realm from external realities. Only two small entrances are punctured into the facade, giving no clues from the exterior of the internal workings of the space. These small entrances open up into a vast internal world and thus act as a threshold between outside and the internal heterotopia.

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Fig 3.19 Disrupting Temporal Continuum: A conscious retention of artefacts from the building’s previous function and thus its historical aura, illustrates a break in time and a juxtaposition between contrasting meanings. These tangible remnants of a previous time are juxtaposed with present realities and thus the temporal continuum is broken. This act encourages future meanings and possibilities to be imagined by the viewer, maintaining the venue as a beacon of experimentation.

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Fig 3.20 Territorialisation and Obscurity: The Tresor venue is constructed as a labyrinth type structure, an obscure internal world without a clear circulation route. Long passages and a series of subservient rooms stand between the three main areas. These spaces, for which there are two for every one main area, encourage territorialisation and force the visitor to explore the warren of rooms, discovering areas and peculiarities as they continue.

They create a space of possibilities which embody the principles of reunifaction governing the movement - on one hand the sequence encourages voyeurism and communal engagement whilst the spaces of territorialisation speaks of intimacy and privacy for self discovery.

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Fig 3.21 Homogeneous Facade: External view of the present Tresor/Kraftwerk location, severing the external from the heterotopia within.

Fig 3.22 Retained Ruin: The old turbine hall of the former power station, is re-appropriated as a cultural space for various exhibitions and events.

The new venue, located within the Mediaspree area on the fringe of the former border between East and West retains similar heteropian characteristics to those of the original Leipzig Strasse location. Despite the availability of capital which no longer makes the principle of ‘maximum adaption’ necessary, the new venue largely retains the ruinous state of the abandoned power station due to the temporal disruptive characteristics of retained artefacts from this structure’s former past. The homogenous facade is retained intact, severing the interior from exterior realities, allowing club goers to immerse themselves in the heterotopian world within. The interventions made by Hegemann are largely to separate the club function from the larger turbine hall which is now used for art galleries and other large scale cultural events. The maintenance of the ruin largely as found, combined with this severing of external and internal and the use of fog and lighting which gives the space a formless quality, an internal labyrinth is created which encourages the club-goer to explore and territorialise the various servant spaces (those spaces servant to the main dance floors, including bars, antechambers and ‘chill-out spaces’) which are of various sizes and outnumber the main dance floor spaces (served spaces) by a ratio of roughly 3:1: “[T]he spectator’s gaze is imprisoned [..] lured in and captured because no firm point of view can be had as the eye wanders around in this labyrinth.”51 This exploration involves path making which becomes entirely based on what catches the eye or holds the promise of surprises, something not possible without the disorganised scenes created through the retention of the ruinous labyrinth: “rather than functional rooms, such spaces seem akin to caves, passages and other archetypal dream spaces.”52 The vital link between the space and the sound and identity of Tresor, it can therefore be suggested, is of fundamental importance to the continued production of the Tresor sound and style. The importance of the ruinous heterotopia for the continued cultural innovation of Tresor is therefore established. Yet this examination also reveals a paradox between the authenticity of the ruin and authenticity of Tresor’s unique identity. In recreating the original Tresor atmosphere in its new location, primarily through the introduction of artefacts from the original vault location into the new basement space, which Hegemann hoped would become a piece of artwork for people to touch, a type of memorial to the original Tresor,53 the authenticity of both the ruin and the identity is lost. It can be argued that this type of nostalgic recreation carries parallels to the principle of ‘critical reconstruction’ which we established as a central characteristic of the Berlin-centric definition of gentrification. This move by Hegemann contradicts the experimental values he aims to instil in the new location, for the space is altered and false historicism added to the palimpsest layers of the ruined structure which distort its story and destroys its historicism. Yet, on the upper floors of the new club where the recreation of the original atmosphere was less important and thus new spaces which respond to the ruin created, the reuse strategy is more successful and suggestive of the importance of retaining the historical aura and thus authenticity of the original structure that is fundamental to the continued creative innovation of the culture.

This sentimental preservation of original artefacts from the Leipzig Strasse location which de-authenticates the new ruinous location through an artificially added palimpsest layer alludes to the wider issues encountered in an attempt to argue for the value of the ruin as a fertile creative environment. Whilst Tresor continues to contribute to creative production, on a wider scale, the sentimental preservation of the Spree area as a ruinous landscape

51. Huyssen, A. (2006). Nostalgia for Ruins. Grey Room. 23. 18.

52. Edensor, T (2005). Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality. Oxford: Berg. 88.

53. Houston, M. (2007). Interview: Dimitri Hegemann – Call it Techno. Available: http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/ features/interviews/dimitri-hegemann-call-it-techno-interview/. Last accessed 03rd January 2015.

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Fig 3.23 The new vault: The main Tresor dancefloor in the basement of the former power station. The space is maintained as a ruinous space, with artefacts from the previous Leipziger Strasse location installed, including iron bars and safety deposit boxes.

Fig 2.4 Heterotopian labyrinth: The subterranean tunnel leading to the main Tresor dancefloor. A series of passageways, antechambers and niches creates a labyrinth to be explored.

would not necessarily preserve it as a fertile creative environment, for the area would lose the authenticity of a true ruinous state. This authenticity, Andreas Huyssen argues is key to maintaining creative originality: “The desire for the autartic and authentic has always reflected the fear of inauthenticity, the lack of existential meaning and the absence of individual creativity.�54 Its preservation is akin to historic retrofitting based upon an imaginary of ruins. If preserved, the landscape would become a deliberately organised assembly, akin to historical sites where props are used to create a nostalgic imagined scene, and thus the happenstance montages produced by the accidental juxtapositions, so important to the creative process, would be lost.

54. Huyssen, A. (2006). Nostalgia for Ruins. Grey Room. 23. 11.

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Part Four: Mediaspree Versenken 4.1 Techno and the Ruin: A Developed Understanding Fig 4.1 Gritty and Informal: View of the main dance floor of the ‘Golden Gate’ Club, in the Mediaspree area of Berlin.

Fig 4.2 Entering the Heterotopia: The stairway to the main Tresor dance floor in its original Leipziger Strasse location, 1991-2005.

Having spoken about the case of Tresor in regards to the importance of authentic ruinous spaces as creative heterotopias, it is interesting to revisit the Berlin-centric gentrification definition established in part one. Following the discussion of the ruinous heterotopia and its inherent importance to both the identity of, and continued cultural innovation of the musical subcultures in Berlin, a critique of the Mediaspree development plans, having been established as an indicative example of the Berlin-centric gentrification defined, can be made.

As discussed, the fundamental programatic aim of the Mediaspree project is the establishment of a centre for Berlin’s audio and visual media industries through the provision of speculative office space and the establishment of key global music players in the area as anchors. From our earlier examination of the Mediaspree plans which questioned the need for this speculative space being provided, we were able to establish that in fact, the true driving force of the plans are a desire by city authorities to order the chaotic and fragmented urban environment of the Spree based upon principles more characteristic of European norms, in order to rejoin the two districts of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. The ruin and ruinous landscapes defy the contemporary desire to aesthetically order the urban environment, whilst acting as memorials to the period of division which Berlin so desperately wishes to overcome. Critical reconstruction of Berlin’s nineteenth century fabric, evident in projects such as Potsdamer Platz and Pariser Platz are evidence of this widespread desire to rebuild Berlin upon an imagined historicism of a perceived better time. This nostalgic policy even borders upon the fetish when applied to the Mediaspree area, for which no bourgeoise-centric nineteenth century fabric can be recreated due to the area’s industrial heritage. Yet, dense courtyard blocks, based upon nineteenth century principles are planned which ultimately rejects both the area’s distant and recent urban history and identity in favour of homogenisation of the urban fabric based on an imagined historicism. It is this nostalgic rebuilding of an imagined time of Berlin’s past to connive a constructed amnesia against which criticism of the gentrification of the area can be made.

Andreas Huyssen states that “nostalgia counteracts, even undermines linear notions of progress, whether they are framed dialectically as philosophy of history or sociologically and economically as modernisation.”1 As such, the homogenisation of the urban fabric in the process of constructing an imagined past de-authenticates the urban landscape, an authenticity which is integral to the continued siting of subcultural uses in this area. The systematic de-authentication of urban environments - the process of zombification, to use Lutz Henke’s terminology - has resulted in a cyclic movement of ‘urban pioneers’ around the city since 1990, a movement which Holm argues reflects the need of subcultural movements to “constantly discover new and authentic places.”2 Why the retention of authenticity is important to creative endeavour is explained through the examination of ruinous heterotopias conducted in part two. Creative subcultures are built upon values that seemingly counteract dominant culture and behaviours. Techno, as was established through the recollections of early pioneers of the movement and a study of the particular socio-political conditions of pre-unification Berlin, was the soundtrack to a youth movement built upon the promise of alternative futures. This movement, rooted within the anarchist squat culture, carved out autonomous spaces providing liberty to act outside of dominant culture, society and the law. The creative atmosphere they provided then could only be maintained through a heterotopian disruption in the spatio-temporal continuum of the city, 1. Huyssen, A. (2006). Nostalgia for Ruins. Grey Room. 23. 7.

2. Holm, A. (2013). Berlin’s Gentrification Mainstream. In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 175.

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Fig 4.3: Private Spree: Section through the offices of Universal Music, illustrating the small public Spree side path and the private enforcement of space between it and the street.

Fig 4.4: Diagram illustrating the location of the street side wall.

Fig 4.5 Diagram illustrating the urban realm designated as private parking space.

Fig 4.6 Diagram illustrating the designated public Spree-side river walk.

Fig 4.7-9: Homogenised landscape: The Spree river front around the Universal Music offices in its completed condition, 2014.

created through the retention of and juxtaposition of artefacts carrying connotations and varying meanings associated with the dominant culture the space broke away from. Authentic ruins and their retention as such, which as established is a key spatial strategy of the Techno movement, achieve this spatio-temporal break by “simultaneously producing disorder and semiotic and material excess. They contain manifold unruly resources with which people can construct meanings, stories and practices.”3 Homogenisation, through its very nature, removes the authentic juxtapositions accidentally produced and thus the stimuli for creative innovation which makes indeterminate space appealing to subcultures. As John Ruskin states in his ‘Seven Lamps of Architecture’: “Let us not talk of restoration, then. The thing is a lie from beginning to end.”4 I suggest therefore that the Mediaspree project in its current form, founded upon the forcing of an urban condition based upon a nostalgic imagined past upon the area is fundamentally flawed in its aim to ferment the area as the centre of Berlin’s music industries. The complete removal of ruins and filling of all voids for speculative office space is a premeditated displacement of the very cultures which the project aims to protect.

This is exemplified in parts of the Mediaspree masterplan already constructed, notably the river edge area directly to the East of the Oberbaumbrucke. This area consists of the largest concentration of original pre-war harbour buildings which have, in the past few years, been restored as part of the Mediaspree masterplan. These former industrial ruins now house the offices of Universal Music, MTV and Coke-a-Cola to name just a few. An examination of the completed works and those currently ongoing to infill the voids between these former ruins reveals a homogenised landscape not dissimilar to other European cities. In contrast to the chaotic scenes further West around the Eisfabrik which are occupied by anarchist squats, the riverside here has been reordered and controlled. The former industrial ruins have been restored to remove all trace of their former ruinious past. Unlike other parts of the Mediaspree area, no graffiti is displayed here, and the masonry construction of the prewar buildings rivals those of new constructions in its cleanliness. In this process, the area surrounding these buildings has been homogenised and designed it seems, in a way that connives to dissuade the public to inhabit and territorialise it. In short, the urban realm along this stretch of the Spree has been purposefully designed to enforce the ownership rights of the private landowners and to make clear that this land is not public property. Figures 4.3-6 illustrate that this is primarily achieved through the hard paving of the entire area first and foremost, to avoid prolonged ‘loitering’ which one may be tempted to do on a grassed or naturally landscaped area. Secondly, the area is purposefully detached from the public realm along Stralauer Allee by the presence of a band of private parking, separating the street from the offices, a division literally enforced by the erection of a wall. The result is an area void of any character and lacking in public usage. The car-parking defends this riverside walk for the private enjoyment of office employees, detached from the public life of the rest of the city. Most notable is the lack of any form of uncontrolled usage in this area. No evidence of any subcultural usage that may have occupied this area immediately following the collapse of the DDR can be seen. This entire section of riverside is regimentally controlled and homogenised in a manor which alludes to the fate planned for the rest of the unruly landscape of ruins and voids which makes up the Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain border should the Mediaspree masterplan as an example of the Berlin-centric gentrification definition be constructed in its current form.

3. Edensor, T (2005). Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality. Oxford: Berg. 88.

4. Ruskin, J. (1849) The Seven Lamps of Architecture. New York: John Wiley. 159

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Fig 4.10: Techno Cathedral: The concrete bar in the Berghain Club, nestled between the columns which once supported electrical turbines and equipment. The main dancefloor can be seen above.

The danger in this criticism is that my argument against homogenisation and the destruction of ruins and ruinous spaces along the Spree slips into the realm of sentimentality. Of course, the maintenance of the Mediaspree area as a ruinous terrain is an impossibility and in itself, a form of nostalgic restoration which ultimately leads to the loss of authenticity, as demonstrated by the premeditated reconstruction of the original Tresor vault in its new location. The club venues which have established themselves within the Mediaspree area as a cluster are themselves, by international definitions, gentrifying pioneers which will ultimately attract future investment into the area and thus the upgrading of the urban fabric even without the Mediaspree plans due to their own success and popularity. Bader and Scharenberg point out a contemporary trend for diversification amongst consumers within the music industry. This trend, in which consumers seek alternative music and its associated culture due to the social distinction it awards, has resulted in international record labels looking for niche markets to exploit, something which Bader and Scharenberg argue motivated the move of Universal Music to the Spree despite government subsidies.5 Similarities can also be drawn with the gentrification of Manchester since the 1980s which Kevin Ward argues, was the result of the growing popularity of the subcultures which had taken root in the cities abandoned industrial fabric, ultimately drawing the attention of developers: “This creative, local and young ground breaking popular culture activity [..] raised the profile of Manchester so others became interested in the physical redevelopment of the city.�6 Thus, it can be assumed that even without the Mediaspree project, a form of gentrification following the continued popularity of the Techno movement will undoubtably lead to the loss of authenticity and heterogeneous spaces in this area.

Through this expanded understanding therefore, I theorise that a mediation between the proposed development and retention of characteristics inherent to area may in itself produce a heterotopian landscape which will retain a element of authenticity and thus a continued fertile environment for cultural production.

5. Bader, I and Scharenberg,A (2013). The Sound of Berlin: Subculture and Global Music Industry. In: Bernt, M. Grell, B. Holm, A The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism. Bielefeld: Transcript. 244.

6. Ward, K. (2013). Urban Centre Reloaded: Subculture in Manchester’s City Centre. In: Oswalt, P. Klaus, O. Misselwitz, P. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use. Berlin: DOM Publishers. 77.

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4.2 The Site: Berliner Eisfabrik Fig 4.11 The Site: Figure ground map illustrating the location of the Eisfabrik within the Mediaspree development area.

Fig 4.12 (Next page) Eisfabrik: External view of the Ice Factory, looking towards the Spree.

One ruin facing destruction as part of the Mediaspree project is the Berliner Eisfabrik.

Located on Kopenicker Strasse, the factory was built by the ‘Northern Ice Works’ company in 1906 from a design by Albert Biebendt. The factory produced large blocks of artificial ice which were used to refrigerate perishable goods in cold-storage warehouses, breweries, stores and homes at a time when electrified refrigeration was not available. Part of a wider complex, the factory was the centre piece of a series of courtyards surrounded by a combination of cold storage warehouses and worker’s residential apartment blocks. These courtyards and the factory were accessed from Kopenicker Strasse via a passage beneath one of the apartment blocks facing onto the street.

In 1945, the apartment buildings to the East of the factory were destroyed by allied bombing and never rebuilt. Yet the factory continued to produce artificial ice following its acquisition by the East German state owned ‘VEB Cold South-East’ company. Yet the declining demand for artificial rod ice resulted in the gradual reduction of production from two hundred and forty tons in 1952 to sixty tons by 1962. Following reunification, the site was restored to the Berliner Kuhlhaus GmbH company, the descendant of the original owner Northern Ice Works, however production was ceased and the site sold in 1995. Since then, despite their designation as a ‘Historical Monument’ by the Berlin Senate in 2008, the factory and adjacent buildings have suffered from the combination of weather and decay, resulting in the demolition of the cold storage warehouses to the West of the factory, built in 1914 and a smaller structure linking the ice factory to an adjacent residential property which has since been refurbished and let. At the time of their demolition in 2010, these warehouses were considered the oldest examples of such a typology in Europe.

In the twenty years since it ceased to operate, the factory has become a popular cultural icon and a recreation ground for subcultures, including one-off club events, the location of a squat protest movement and use by the general public as a place to enjoy between club venues, the roof becoming particularly attractive for casual drinking and music due to its views across the city. Its cultural importance is demonstrated by a number of initiatives against its planned demolition by the TLG development group, including being one of the focus topics for the annual ‘Fuckparade’ in 2007, a parade which has since 1995 been organised to demonstrate against various examples of commercialisation of culture and public space7. In early 2013, the building became home to a group of East European squatters who were, in December of that year forcibly evicted but not before they had constructed personal living compartments within the labyrinth of rooms within the building. This squat has resulted in the full closure of the Eisfrabrik, complete with security patrols and bricked up windows. Yet, this has not ended the factory’s role within the subcultures of the spree, with the erection of a squat within its grounds. This teepee village, the home for societal drop outs and artists comes complete with its own bar, stage for live music, community centre and lending library.

As discussed in part three, the spatial strategy of the techno subcultural movement can be described using the Foucaultian notion of the Heterotopia, a placeless-place within the city which both reflects the wider urban environment and suspends it. Ruins are particularly adapt locations as heteropias due to the connotations of wider culture and society which they carry, becoming a disorganised landscape of objects and juxtapositions of peculiar associations.

The Eisfabrik is especially virtuous as a heterotopian environment as a symbol of industrialisation and the destructive power of free market capital, reflecting wider society as an identifiable symbol of industrial production, whilst suspending it through its abandonment.

7. Anon. (2007). Auf zur Fuckparade. Available: http://www.fuckparade.org/presse/2007-08-16/. Last accessed 12th January 2015.

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Fig 4.13 Eisfabrik: 3D representation of the existing ice factory fabric, illustrating opennings which have been bricked up for security.

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Fig 4.15 Eisfabrik ground floor plan

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Fig 4.16-19 Graffiti ruin: Interior views of the Ice Factory.

This paradoxical set of associations continues within the building on a smaller scale, with the sequencing of spaces so vital in the production process, and the hierarchies associated with power structures, such as the offices of foremen and managers now redundant and equal: “The signs of production with its sequential order become elliptical as walls erode and rooms appear to be at the centre of formless labyrinths, and no longer do social barriers to progression through these spaces pertain. All are equal in their status as ruined and decaying spaces.”8 It is these paradoxical associations which make the Eisfabrik as a heterotopia, so appealing for terretorialisation by subcultures and youth movements. The semiotic clues to regulated and ordered society within its fabric, and their present redundancy, has a liberating effect upon the visitor from the self-regulating forces of homogenous society, that encourages one to explore.

Yet its virtue as an uncontrolled heterotopian island in the city itself is problematic. Whilst heterotopias provide freedom and stimuli for creative endeavour, they also provide freedom for social delinquency. Unsupervised derelict structures and land are attractive to societal undesirables, those associated with crime, drugs and wider cultural malaise. In the Eisfabrik, a peculiar collection of creative individuals, Berlin locals looking for recreation and social delinquents explore the labyrinth side by side, each with a different purpose but all attracted by the societal freedom it provides. This malice is illustrated by reports of incidents at the Eisfabrik, including that of an attack on a group of twenty youths aiming to have an informal party within the factory by two armed assailants9. Such criminal activity and the continued decay of the structure not only taints creative endeavour but hinders it. Incidents such as the attack at the Eisfabrik also contribute to the historically reactive arguments for the removal of these memories of Berlin’s chequered past. The holistic retention of the Eisfabrik, and of other structures within the Mediaspree area as ruinous environments then, is not only a sentimental notion as previously discussed, but also impractical.

The argument which I have made against gentrification in Berlin is not an argument against all forms of investment and urban fabric renewal. Rather, as discussed within the previous chapter, my criticism lies in the hurried reordering of the city based upon a nostalgic past, thus the destruction of the city as palimpsest and its authenticity which is integral to the cultural innovation of the city’s subcultures. I acknowledge from my findings that a mediation between preservation of heterotopian sites and the economic needs of the city and investors must be made. It is my position, arising from the findings of my research, that considered projects of urban renewal actually positively contribute to the heterotopian landscape and thus continued existence of Berlin’s innovative subcultures. For heterotopias within the city to fulfil their role as heterogeneous and paradoxical environments for creative freedoms, a homogenous landscape is required. In other words, these heterotopias can not exist without the forces of gentrification. For the Eisfabrik, the homogenisation of the urban environment surrounding it, including the building of new office block adjacent can be contributed to its success as a creative heterotopia, providing active representation of dominant society and culture against which the factory can contrast. At the same time, the enclosure of the factory on three sides by these gentrifying schemes has limited lines of site to the Eisfabrik to the Spree and the opposite bank. Access too, can only be gained via a small and informal riverside path. These unintentional results of urban gentrification surrounding the site has thus only enhanced the heterotopian characteristics and the appeal of the Eisfabrik for subcultural use.

8. Edensor, T (2005). Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality. Oxford: Berg. 67.

9. Waleczek, T. (2013). 20 Jugendliche in leer stehendem Haus brutal attackiert. Available: http://www.tagesspiegel. de/berlin/polizei-justiz/berlin-mitte-20-jugendliche-in-leer-stehendem-haus-brutal-attackiert/8899904.html. Last accessed 12th January 2015.

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Fig 4.20 Heterotopic Island: Perspective section through the existing Ice Factory fabric and site.

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4.3 Transitory City Fig 4.21-22 Informal Heterotopia: Young Berliners enjoy informal gatherings in the Eisfabrik ruin.

The enhanced heterotopian characteristics of the Eisfabrik by the developments surrounding it suggests that gradual development of the Spree, rather than its rapid and holistic reordering as currently planned, is a more appropriate model which will allow for and support continued subcultural use of existing ruins. I have acknowledged as a result of my findings that gentrification and urban renewal itself is not something to be feared, yet it is the style of Berlin-centric gentrification, in which large swathes of the city are completely restructured in rapid developments to overcome the historic events of the twentieth century where criticism can be drawn. Instead I advocate that “urban development is not viewed as an urbanistically structured accumulation of building mass, but as a successive condensation of activities, programs and networks that also structurally manifest themselves in phases.”10 Vibrant cities can not be constructed in one mass building program, they develop overtime and are always incomplete. Berlin-centric gentrification is driven by a desire to complete the city, to fill the voids and thus order the city along European norms, but in doing so, its cultural vibrancy which has been incubated within its ruins over the past twenty years is threatened.

Techno itself is no longer an underground, informal movement as it began in 1990. Today, the venues along the Spree attract visitors from all over Europe each weekend and the music industry centred here now has an annual turnover of 185 million euros.11 Despite this, the movement remains committed to its initial values and to continued cultural innovation. The analysis of the Tresor club in part three highlights this move from informal to professional institution, but also the commitment by the movement’s key players to maintaining cultural innovation in a changed socio-economic context. Dimitri Hegemann alludes to this when speaking about the new Tresor location and the larger ruinous power station in which it is sited. The turbine hall, which has been appropriated as a cultural exhibition space named Kraftwerk, he envisions as a space that will “close the gap between the National Gallery and similar institutions in the city such as the Hamburger Bahnhof or the Deutsche Museum,”12 a space of cultural incubation for artists, movements and others who would not get exposure or the opportunity to experiment in other places: “It will be a space in the centre of Berlin where you can show great productions that wouldn’t find exposure at these other places. Most of them are restricted in what they can do as they have to look after private collections, for example. They can’t be so flexible. However I don’t need to worry about this. I can experiment with different concepts – I have so much more freedom.”13 The unique urban, social and political conditions of Berlin following the fall of the wall can not be created artificially, and a preservation of the urban realm in order to do so is an impractical sentimental notion. This period was a transitory phase which allowed for a techno movement to root itself within Berlin and grow. Today, ruined spaces are not so easily accessible. The chaos and lack of owners following the dissolution of the DDR has gone and thus a compromise between property owners and temporary uses must now be struck, a combination of top down and bottom up approaches to planning the urban realm. Kraftwerk/Tresor is just one example of a possible compromise between the two approaches, maintaining heterotopian ruins for continued re-appropriation by subcultural movements without the ambiguity of a vacant site which drives the perceived need to gentrify.

As my analysis of the techno movement in part three illustrated, informal movements become ingrained in the image of the city and associated with its economic future. They become another layer of the palimpsest city. In doing so, planners and bureaucrats must recognise the importance of the transitory and the informal in the development of the city.

10. Oswalt, P. (2013). Towards a User-based Urbanism. In: Oswalt, P. Klaus, O. Misselwitz, P. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use. Berlin: DOM Publishers. 373.

11. Droner, A.. (2014). The Club Scene: From Hard Beats to Big Business. 38 Hours in Berlin Berlin Berlin. 1. 30.

12. Houston, M. (2007). Interview: Dimitri Hegemann – Call it Techno. Available: http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/ features/interviews/dimitri-hegemann-call-it-techno-interview/. Last accessed 03rd January 2015.

13. Ibid.

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Part Five: Conclusions “Vacant sites and disused premises are not a constraint but a prerequisite of restructuring.

They are spaces of the future: a training ground and experimental zone for the future city.

They are part of this city’s wealth.”1 Throughout this research, I have attempted to argue for the value of the ruin within the city.

Berlin’s complex relationship with the ruin, owing to its historical circumstances, has resulted in a desire to remove them from the city fabric and in doing so, removing the ambiguity that accompanies them and the historical events they memorialise. This process of critical reconstruction from which a Berlin-centric definition of gentrification can be defined, homogenises the urban fabric, reordering it along an aesthetic perceived as normative along European classifications. In this way, each attempt to regenerate the urban fabric is a premeditated attempt to forget the turbulent events of the twentieth century and establish Berlin as a normal European metropolis. As highlighted through the examples of Potsdamer Platz and Parisier Platz, an imagined historical Berlin, found in the boom years of the nineteenth century is usually the model by which this aesthetic reordering occurs. Yet, for Berlin as with all cities, through their vacancy, ruins create value which can’t be reproduced artificially. As heterotopian landscapes, they offer a play ground to creatives and pioneers in which creative experimentation occurs. The chaotic years following the dissolution of the DDR provided the space in which this experimentation could occur, experimentation which today has created a model by which the Berlin senate has structured the city’s economic future: the creative city.

The ruins of communism provided the space in which a movement was rooted which today underpins Berlin’s international reputation as a creative metropolis and thus are fundamental to the city’s ‘poor but sexy’ identity. The investigation into the development of the Techno movement highlighted the importance of the location for both the success of a venue and as a tool within the creative process. Whilst originally a case of stumbling across extraordinary locations, the movement quickly became intwined with the spaces inhabited, with the space and the music both having a formative effect upon each other not seen in other reuse examples. Through this developed understanding of the formative effect of spatial environments upon creative endeavour, I hope to have established that rather than a site of ‘lost vitality’ as viewed by Berlin’s bureaucrats, the city’s ruins are actually its most valuable commodities. Through an understanding of the spatial-reuse strategies of the Techno movement, those inherently linked with heteroptopia and the peculiar juxtapositions available within ruined spaces, I hope to have established the value of these spaces for the future of the city. The ruinous, fragmented urban landscape of East Berlin in the years following the fall of the wall, allowed for the evolution of a culture which has today made Berlin the world’s most important centre for electronic music, and I acknowledge that ruins will continue to be of value in the evolution of this and other cultures in the future.

This developed understanding allowed for a critique of the contemporary Berlin-centric gentrification policy exemplified by the Mediaspree project, revealing the paradoxical condition of the project’s aims to centralise this musical culture along the spree through the homogenisation of the urban fabric. Through its nostalgic vision of an urban fabric based on historic principles, the Mediaspree project removes the heterogeneous character of the area provided for by its palimpsest nature, afforded by its ruinous characteristics, thus hindering creative endeavour. Fred Scott’s argument against restoration of buildings can quite easily be applied to the wider urban scale here; “the usually assumed innocuous processes of repair are often responsible for the widespread destruction of the original fabric.”2 Yet I have

1. Overmeyer, K. (2007). Urban Pioneers: Temporary Use and Urban Development in Berlin. Berlin: Jovis. 18.

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acknowledged that the retention of a ruinous landscape is not only impractical but would not ensure continued creative endeavour as one might initially believe. A suspended ruinous state rather is in itself a form of nostalgic reproduction which de-authenticates the landscape, reducing its subcultural appeal. Rather than argue for a complete retention of a ruinous environment, I argue that a cautionary development of the Spree should be implemented which will only enhance the heterotopian appeal of the area for creative individuals.

Through my reading of the techno movement, and spatial strategies employed, I acknowledged that the experimental and innovative character of the movement in the years directly following the fall of the wall was made possible by the underground, illegal and temporary nature of the venues inhabited. The Tresor existed in its original location for fourteen years without agreeing a permanent contract with the site’s owners, rather a temporary contract was renewed every three months. The subcultures inhabiting the ruins of the spree are temporary endeavours and it is this which mades them so culturally innovative.

Ruins and abandoned spaces are ideal locations for them to inhabit because of the lack of financial and time commitment. Just as the ruin is a transitory space, a structure in-between its previous use and future use, so a temporary endeavour is a transitory socio-cultural model existing between a city’s previous and future economic purpose. As I acknowledged, this requires authentic heterotopian spaces which reflect and contradict current dominant cultural trends. As such, temporary uses will continue to search for new locations, allowing for us to conclude that with or without the Mediaspree project, it is a sentimental notion to imagine that a space can be preserved indefinitely as an authentic location for temporary use. Whilst gentrification seeks the complete aesthetic ordering of the city, it will never be achieved, for the globalised flows of capital and labour will continually produce ruins which symbolise the passing of a particular period in the economic development of the city. As such, whilst a critique can be drawn against the style and nature of Berlin-centric gentrification I do not advocate that gentrification and urban renewal in itself is something to be feared, new ruinous heterotopias will always be produced in which creative subcultures reflecting that time can flourish.

With that said, the hurried implementation of a plan such as the Mediaspree, which still remains a speculative development, in order to achieve ordered environments is not the model most appropriate to achieving its aim of fermenting Berlin’s music culture in one place.

The prohibiting of temporary habitation of ruins, such as the Eisfabrik without imminent development but simply to make the vacant site more appealing for purchase is the result of this model. A network of music industry players has already developed in the area, thanks to both the initiatives of subcultures themselves and the Mediaspree plans. The dense concentration of Berlin’s musical institutions in the area, including such venues as The Berghain, Tresor and Watergate will continue to draw temporary uses and musical subcultural endeavours to the Spree, aided by the close proximity of record labels. Rather than providing just homogenous, speculative office space as is currently proposed, the Mediaspree plans will better achieve its programmatic aims by the provision of space, free from the private control in which these uses can operate. The retaining of structures such as the Eisfabrik, connected by space free to be colonised for temporary use would create heterogeneous pockets which would retain the characteristics of the ruin which, as demonstrated in part three are fundamental to creative endeavour. The homogenisation of areas surrounding these pockets would enhance their heterogeneous nature, allowing for considered market driven development to occur within a framework which gives equal weighting to the needs of subcultures. In short, a framework for development, rather than a master plan based upon

2. Scott, F (2008). On Altering Architecture . Oxon: Routledge. 118.

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nostalgic principles, which does not prioritise large developers as a means of achieving urban renewal may in fact contribute to the creation of new heterogeneous environments for continued cultural production without nostalgically preserving a ruinous landscape or nostalgically building an imagined historical Berlin.

In this manner a mediation between the needs of creative subcultures and the economic needs of the city can be achieved. More than this, rather than a suspension of the continuum of the city which results from both critical reconstruction and the preservation of ruins as such, this mediation would constructively contribute to the palimpsest evolution of the city. The urban landscape of the spree as such will become a much richer heterogeneous place with a continued rich cultural identity. By acknowledging that the conditions required for subcultural use can not be artificially produced, a non-sentimental compromise can be established. The retention of the ruinous landscape may not be the model for continued subcultural production into the future, but the destruction of these ruins to make way for an aesthetic reordering of the fabric will simply displace the subcultures that are already there. Retaining existing ruinous heterotopias and the memories of previous times which are ingrained into their fabric, such as the Eisfabrik, and re-appropriating them as spaces aiming to contribute toward subcultural production, combined with the provision of spaces which provide an opportunity for colonisation by temporary uses will ensure that the Spree remains a centre of cultural production for some time to come: “The value of history and memory, in an architectural respect, lies not in the fact that something notable once occurred, but in the fact that notable events might continue to occur.�3

3. Littlefield, D.. (2007). Introduction. In: Littlefield, D. and Lewis, S. Architectural Voices: Listening to Old Buildings.

Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. 15.

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Part Six: Approach to development in Berlin’s terrain vagues 6.1 Using Precedents to discuss conservation of the ruin Fig 6.1 Time-specific heterotopic experience: A study of the present condition of the Eisfabrik Ruin river front facade.

Following my critique of the current mediaspree plans and my initial analysis of the Berliner Eisfabrik study site as an example of a ruinous heterotopia threatened by Berlin-centric definition of gentrification, it is necessary to discuss the practicalities of maintaining the unique heterotopic qualities of sites with cultural significance in tandem with the natural urban evolution of the city through redevelopment and re-programming without losing authentication.

As discussed, the sentimental notion that the managed preservation of a ruin as such within a development plan will maintain cultural innovation is flawed due to the loss of authenticity that results. The authentic ruin is transitory, its state as ruin a moment in its timeline and its evolution. When one enters a ruin, it is a time specific experience. A combination of natural elements and human intervention by others seeking its heterotopic characteristics will all leave a trace that combine within the palimpsest of the structure to form your aesthetic and physical experience of it. Ruins which are preserved as such and ‘saved’ from further decay, such as a Roman fort structurally preserved by English Heritage, immediately lose authenticity. Whilst remaining heterotopic in many respects, the authenticity which makes them viable alternatives to the homogeneous urban environment and thus spaces which foster creativity is lost.

To maintain its authenticity, the heterotopic ruin must either be left without intervention which will lead to further decay and ultimately a return to nature, or it must be re-appropriated along a contra-amnesia strategy. In short, in agreement with Ruskin, both restoration and complete preservation destroy the authenticity of the heterotopic ruin. In balance, an approach which seeks to enhance the palimpsest is the most appropriate method of achieving the balanced intervention promoted within this thesis.

Within Berlin, a number of projects can be studied to explore this contra-amnesia balanced development of the terrain vague in more detail. At a building level, the Neues Museum illustrates a way in which a well managed conservation strategy can be applied to reappropriate a ruin whilst maintaining its authenticity as heterotopia.

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6.2 The Neues Museum: Re-constructing the whole Fig 6.2 Restructuring the whole: The main stair hall in the Neues Museum by David Chipperfield Fig 6.3-5: The Ruinous state of the Neues Museum following the second world war

The Neues Museum, located on Museum Island in Berlin was originally completed in 1855 to the designs of Friedrich August Stuler. It functioned as a museum until the outbreak of war in 1939, at which time most of the artefacts were removed and held in storage for safe keeping.

The victim of incendiary bombing raids in both 1943 and 1945 which badly damaged many of the interiors, with parts completely burned out, the building was left largely untouched in the following years and burned out areas were not protected from further decay from the elements.

In the 1980s, the DDR took extensive measures to make safe the ruin and prepare for its reconstruction. This involved hastily laying bricks into the large cracks which had formed, as well as the strengthening of the basement and temporary underpinning of the masonry walls.

Many of these measures were intrusive and careless, since it was presumed that rebuilding would involve the re-plastering and restoring of the original interiors. In 1989, only a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin wall, officials of the DDR laid a foundation stone for the rebuilding of the museum. 1 A fierce debate followed the reunification of the two state museum committees which eventually resulted in the publication of a document in 1994 ahead of a reconstruction plan by international architects titled: “A conservation plea for complementary restoration.”2 This debate, between those in favour of critical reconstruction and those in favour of a more considered approach is illustrated best in the exterior urban realm surrounding the museum. A strategy of reconstruction of that which is lost, the basis of the critical reconstruction school, was adopted by the architects planing the wider museum island masterplan, resulting in the re-errection of the original stone columns forming the external colonnade. These columns were removed and held in storage by the DDR authorities, but were brought back to museum island and damaged areas painstakingly reconstructed to achieve continuity of both form and material. At present, the difference between these new additions and the original can be seen by the difference in colour of the material. However in time, weathering will remove this distinction until the new and the old are inseparable and indistinguishable.

In contrast to this form of constructed amnesia is an attempt by David Chipperfield architects to preserve the building fabric as a physical evidence of history and the passing of time, “motivated by the desire to protect and repair the remains, to create a comprehensible setting, and to reconnect the parts back into an architectural whole.”3 The overarching aim of Chipperfield and his restoration architect, Julian Harrap was for continuity. In short, the architectural aim was to reform the building as a whole, where old and new do not overtly contrast and yet does not remake as new the original building. They strived to achieve an architectural intervention which added to the palimpsest of the building, rather than its destruction or confusion. This progressive repair philosophy is best illustrated in the areas of the museum where most damage occurred, such as the main stair hall or the Egyptian courtyard. In the Treppenhalle, a new stair was constructed in polished concrete with attention to detail paid to Stuler’s original design but with a new architectural expression.

The stair, through occupying the original location of landings, returns that which was lost to once again reformulate the whole by reconnecting original pathways through the building, yet without reconstruction of the original. Similarly in the Egyptian courtyard, new concrete piers occupy the location of the originals allowing for the reconstruction of original mezzanine levels. The minimalistic detailing allows to the reconstruction of the original movement strategy as well as the reformation of the space’s original proportions to reform the holistic 1. Haspel, J. (2009). From Building to Rebuilding: The Early History of the Neues Museum. In: Seemann, E The Neues Museum Berlin: Conserving, restroing, rebuilding within the World Heritage. Leipzig: Seeman Henschel GmbH & Co. 17.

2. Ibid, 19.

3. Chipperfield, D (2009). The Neues Museum Architectural Concept. In: Seemann, E The Neues Museum Berlin: Conserving, restroing, rebuilding within the World Heritage. Leipzig: Seeman Henschel GmbH & Co. 156.

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Fig 6.6 An intervention with its own character and story: Chipperfield’s intervention within the Egyptian Courtyard

narrative and aesthetic reading of the space through a modern architectural intervention which tells its own story and adds another layer to the building’s palimpsest. The modern structure becomes a bridge through history, re-establishing the proportions of the space and building axis so that it can be understood as a whole whilst the history of the building can be read. The modern intervention just another chapter in the building’s history.

The modern stair, the new brick wings and the new structures within burned out shells within the Neues all express the continuation of history by illustrating the absence of something lost without reconstructing it as new. The architectural intervention by Chipperfield and Harrap can be read as its own ‘story’, as a separate entity to the building’s shell whilst simultaneously a part of it. Like a bridge, it formulates continuity of time and a part of the building, without disguising itself beneath a veil of confusion. The architectural intervention is very much of its time, whilst celebrating the history of the original shell. In many respects, the interventions can be compared to the principle of maximum adaptation explored earlier as the key technique used by sub-cultures in ruinous sites. What has been achieved by Chipperfield and Harrap, contrary to the many examples of historic impersonation evident within the many examples of Berlin-centric gentrification, is a form of anti-historic repression.

In doing so, the ruinous aesthetics which make it a heterotopia have been preserved in a largely authentic way. Where elements are missing, a repair with its own character and presence is created so that the authenticity of the original ruinous state is not deauthenticated. As such, the building is neither suspended in time like the preserved ruin of a castle, nor is it remade as new in a form of historic amnesia, both examples a lifeless charade. In this way, the Neues museum can be classified in the most part as a heterotopic ruin, which continues to inspire awe with its ruinous aesthetics and contrast the increasingly homogeneous gentrified urban environments of modern Berlin. The museum continues as a heterotpic island, an alternative to homogenous built environments, balanced with a formal programme which makes the ruin ‘useful’ in economic terms. In doing so, the city authorities have accepted the value of the ruin as a creative heterotopic environment, and acknowledged the historical incidents which have made it as such.

However, in striving to achieve this balance, one must acknowledge the shortcomings of the Neues museum. Whilst a historical continuum of the building has been achieved and the ruinous details have largely maintained authenticity, the ruin is no longer a true ruin as it has been preserved from an eventual return to nature. The treatement to the exterior of the building represents a decision to freeze the building at the point of the architectural intervention. The process of decay which makes a structure a ruin and continues to create new juxtapositions and new aesthetic experiences has ended. This is the natural result of making the building watertight and achieving the necessary internal environmental standards for a modern museum. With this said, this is just one of the compromises which comes from achieving the necessary balance discussed in earlier chapters between the various stakeholders to achieve the overarching aim of giving the building programme economic viability which maintaining the unique features which make up its palimpsest. It is a compromise which will be required in many cases in the Mediaspree area if a balance between then needs of the subcultural movements and economic investors are to be achieved. Yet in all, the Neues museum can be considered as a successful example of such a balance. Partly a preservation of what is there, and partly a progressive intervention to give the building a future, the Neues museum represents an example of a strategy best employed to achieve a preservation of the ruin as authentic heterotopia. If the repair and redevelopment of a ruin “is not to just become a lifeless and empty ‘place-holder’, must have a physical and material character of its own”4.

4. Ziesemer, J., Newton, M (2009). National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage and Germany. In: Seemann, E The Neues Museum Berlin: Conserving, restroing, rebuilding within the World Heritage. Leipzig: Seeman Henschel GmbH & Co. 59.

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6.3 Berliner Eisfabrik: Threshold Exploration Fig 6.7: Threshold Study: Section through the Eisfabrik illustrating the independent stair within the courtyard.

Fig 6.8: Diagrams illustrating the tectonic proposal for the Threshold.

In my early investigations, I looked at ways in which architectural interventions to improve the economic prospects of a ruin could be intertwined with an overarching aim of preserving the ruin as an authentic heterotopia. In the first instance, I investigated a small scale threshold intervention to open the Eisfabrik up for more formal programmatic aims, alongside those of the existing subcultural uses.

Unlike the Neues museum, the site’s context within the overarching Mediaspree masterplan opens up wider opportunities in terms of the preservation of the ruin as such. The Neues museum was re-inhabited in the context of a World Heritage Site, awarded to the whole Museum Island and carrying with it stringent conservation requirements. Further, problematically the Neues ruin was to be returned to the state of a functioning museum.

Logistically this requires quite particular requirements in terms of the internal environment to preserve the relics housed within. As such, a compromise was reached as discussed earlier where to ruin was preserved as an authentic heterotopian structure, but prevented from further decay and thus its life as a ruin ended. In contrast, in my early investigations which sought no stringent programmatic aims other than the simple desire to bring the Eisfabrik back into use by both sub-cultures and more formal tenants. As such my early threshold investigation sought ways to allow for temporary use of the ruin without the intervention becoming intertwined within the building’s structure in a way which would suspend its status as ruin. In short, I investigated low level methods of intrusive intervention which allow for the continuing decay and thus its continued status as ruin over a temporary period of time until other uses may be established. In this way, the ruin would continue to provide time specific experiences to those inhabiting it and allow it to continue as a truly authentic creative heterotopia.

The threshold manifested as a stairwell, as part of a strategy of maximum adaptation.

Located within the courtyard, this stair would provide a more formal access route to the largest hall on the first floor which could be used by more formal programmes on a temporary basis, such as performances, meetings and exhibitions. The stairway also aimed to provide access to the roof level, the most celebrated space within the structure for subcultural and temporal uses. However, the stair does not aim to bypass the existing labyrinthine series of spaces and antechambers as one finds their way to this space. To access the stair leading to the roof level, one is forced to explore the series of spaces and antechambers within the icefactory as they search for the landing from which it begins. In this respect, a formalised procession route allowing for a more efficient use of space for formal programmes is achieved without bypassing the heterotopic features which currently inspire one to explore and foster a creative environment, where homogeneous social characteristics are suspended.

Further, in a similar manor to the earlier explored Neues Museum, the intervention was designed with its own character and physical presence so that it may be judged on its own merit and not just be deemed as a lifeless place-holder. However, it is minimally detailed so that it does not compete with the ruinous aesthetics surrounding it. In this manor, it acts as a bridging element, at once a part of the ruin and independent. A break from what was before without destroying what is currently there. The stair is formed as an independent structure, only interacting with the existing structure where the columns meet the ground and landings meet an opening. As such it can be removed at any time and its traces become another layer in the ruinous dialogue. The stair and its landings are set away from the existing courtyard walls, at once preserving them in their ruinous state and allowing for their unique features to be examined in a way previously unattainable. Key however, is that this structure, independent from the existing ruin allows for its continuing decay around the new structure, preserving it as an authentic ruin for some time to come.

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6.4 Progressive Preservation: Toward a conservation strategy Fig 6.11: Conservation strategy: Eisfabrik Ruin Berlin

Reflecting upon my research this far, what is clear is the conservation nor restoration are processes by which to achieve the balance between the informal and formal within the urban development of our cities. As established, a programme of critical reconstruction and the desire to rebuild Berlin based upon a nostalgic understanding of a previous time in Berlin’s history lies at the centre of the Berlin-centric definition of gentrification, a definition which can be applied to the Mediaspree masterplan, and for which criticism can be made. This process of urban amnesia aims to fill the voids of the empty zones in Berlin so that the traumatic events of the previous century may eventually be forgotten. However, the identity and character of Berlin which has emerged since reunification, emerged from the ruins and voids which were left from this traumatic time. Upon this identity, established by subcultures inhabiting these terrain vagues, Berlin hopes to build its economic future. As previously stated, this must be done through a method of urban development based upon maintaining the heterotopic characteristics of the spaces which currently carry no economic value in the eyes of the state and free market. Whilst development can not forever maintain a place as authentic heterotopia, it can be done in such a way that its passing is more evolutionary and less traumatic. In a way which hopes to preserve its authenticity for as long as is possible, contrary to the Berlin-centric method of gentrification which sweeps away and recreates as new.

At a building scale, I have begun to explore this through my initial study of the Neues museum and my early threshold investigations. From this, I can draw the begins of a strategy which may allow for a ‘conservation strategy’ for the Eisfabrik ruin which can act as a testing ground for a progressive preservation strategy for the whole of the Mediaspree masterplan and beyond. Key to this is maintaining authenticity and the characteristics which make that place heterotopic and creative environments.

Any intervention within the Eisfabrik must be done to preserve the shell as a ruin, to maintain its ruinous aesthetics and the relative freedom from homogentic environments that it provides. Aside from key strategies such as the unrestricted access to the whole site and the freedom to inhabit it as whim, tectonically any intervention should first and foremost act independently and be read with its own physical character. No intervention should aim to restore what has been lost, for as is the case in the Neues museum, this would reduce the programme to one of critical reconstruction. As in the examples studied earlier, including the Tresor venue, a method of maximum adaptation must be at the heart of any conservation strategy for the Eisfabrik. As with the Neues museum, the process must be one of taking stock at what has survived and still exists and then to use to that restructure the building for its new programme. No alteration should be made to disappear and become indistinguishable from the existing fabric and no attempt should be made to remove more recent layers added to the palimpsest, including graffiti and aesthetics caused by decay and damage.

Whilst any re-inhabitation of the ruin with a new programme will unavoidably freeze the building in its current state and remove its status as true ruin, the strategy must be one where the new intervention bridges between the building’s history and its future potential. A conservation strategy which maintains the authenticity of a ruinous heterotopia for continued creative exploration must be one where the intervention becomes another layer of a clearly readable palimpsest.

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Image References Unless stated below, the images and drawings contained herein are the authors own.

Fig 1.2

http://stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/denkmal/denkmale_in_berlin/en/berliner_mauer/ mauer_aufbau.shtml

Fig 1.3

http://www.akg-images.co.uk/archive/Berlin,-Wall-Bernauer-Strase-/-Aerial2UMDHUVARTOM.html

Fig 1.4

http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/Life-of-the-Berlin-Wall/G1296

Fig 1.5

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/09/berlin-wall-anniversaryphotos_n_6094308.html

Fig 2.1

http://grutiers.forumactif.com/t31p180-chantiers-dans-le-monde

Fig 2.3

http://www.vintage-views.com/berlin-charlottenburg-spandau-railways-historicalmap.html

Fig 2.4

http://stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/stadtmodelle/de/innenstadtplaene/sp/ index.shtml

Fig 2.5

Potsdamer Platz: http://potsdamerplatz.de/en/history/german-divison/

Fig 2.6

http://potsdamerplatz.de/en/architecture/planning/

Fig 2.7

http://www.phombo.com/wallpapers/the-best-hd-hq-cityscapes/584320/full/ popular/

Fig 2.8

http://berliner-schloss.de/en/the-ancient-berlin-palace/significance-and-exteriorviews/

Fig 2.9

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palast_der_Republik

Fig 2.10

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1390928&page=32

Fig 2.12

http://www.taz.de/!20076/

Fig 3.3

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tresorberlin/5071679494/in/set72157625015820331/

Fig 3.4

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tresorberlin/5071679620/in/set72157625015820331

Fig 3.7

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/giovanni-battista-piranesi-the-drawbridge-plate-viifrom-the-series-carceri-dinvenzione

Fig 3.9

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lunamtra/4795952255/

Fig 3.10

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tresorberlin/5071070931/in/set72157625015820331

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Fig 3.11

http://www.akg-images.de/archive/-2UMDHU3T35PG.html

Fig 3.14

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tresorberlin/5071070931/in/set-72157625015820331

Fig 3.15

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tresorberlin/5071078711/in/set-72157625015820331

Fig 3.21

http://www.kraftwerkberlin.de/uploads/pics/Dimitri9693.jpg

Fig 3.22

http://www.kraftwerkberlin.de/typo3temp/pics/ebene_2_008_be191e8f8a.jpg

Fig 3.23

3.23 http://benswardrobe.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/vom-bleiben.html

Fig 3.24

3.24 http://www.kraftfuttermischwerk.de/blogg/download-das-kraftfuttermischwerk-rudistoher-visualberlinfestival-12-06-2010-tresor-berlin/

Fig 4.1

http://www.palladiumboots.com/blog/last-nights-party

Fig 4.2

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tresorberlin/5071677432/in/set-72157625015820331

Fig 4.10

https://innthemix.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/techno-aggression-berghain/

Fig 4.21

http://www.bildraum-f.com/eisfabrik

Fig 4.22

http://blog.ricecracker.net/tag/berlin/

Fig 6.2

http://www.davidchipperfield.co.uk/project/neues_museum

Fig 6.3

http://www.designclaud.com/neues-museum-david-chipperfield/

Fig 6.4

http://www.arcspace.com/features/david-chipperfield-architects/neues-museum/

Fig 6.5

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/de:Neues%20Museum%20(Berlin)?uselang=en

Fig 6.6

http://www.davidchipperfield.co.uk/project/neues_museum

Stuart Bacon