Design Reaktor Berlin

BERLIN —Cultural city Arts venues: more software are close behind. than 400 art galleries, The number of companies 150 theatres, three opera in this sector grew 16 per houses and 170 museums. cent from 2000 to 2005 . Cinemas: 289 . The Media: Hamburg media Berlinale, Berlin’s company Axel Springer has international film festival, is a major operation here, and rising to Venice and Cannes the national tabloid, Bild , levels of recognition and moved its headquarters from celebrity count. Hamburg to Berlin in March Creative industries: film this year – a seismic shift in and TV make up the majority the media landscape. of the work force in the Funding: Berlin receives creative sector, with 35,997 35 per cent of the federal employed. Publishing and government’s € 1.1 bn literature and games and culture budget. 01 02 issue 15 — 091 reporT Previous page Culture city: Berlin 01 Tanja Mühlhans, of the Berlin Ministry for Economics, Technology and Women’s Issues 02 Café Luzie on Oranienstrasse in Kreuzberg This spread 01 Gallerists at the Jablonka Gallery 02 Christian Boros at his gallery in a former Nazi bunker 03 Jörg Koch and Sandra von Mayer- Myrtenhain, the publishers of fashion magazine ‘032c’ 04 The Haus der Kulturen der Welt by harnessing the same sort of inspiration behind Tony Blair’s short-lived Cool Bri - tannia, and pushing its creative industries. In the detritus of a once-thriving textile and manufacturing industry it has recog - nised a luxury largely unavailable in other European capitals: space. “There are buildings a few blocks away from here, right on the Spree River, that are completely empty,” says actor Clemens Schick, who first moved to Berlin in 1993 and still has a flat in the city’s punk and Turkish neighbourhood, 01 02 03 Kreuzberg. “That’s what makes Berlin different. The potential is still there.” All that potential has fed a titanic wave of hype. The travel sections of the world’s newspapers are regularly filled with Berlin love letters. Armadas of creatives from Brooklyn, east London or Madrid, in black jeans and keffiyeh Preface The most anticipated event of Berlin’s hub has emerged that MoNoCLe feels just scarves, have migrated here for the city’s Berlin’s unemployment recent gallery weekend was the soft might be unparalleled in Europe. cheap studio space and round-the-clock rate is dismal and its once- launch of one of Germany’s best private Visitors to the recent gallery week - nightlife. New York’s Goff & Rosenthal thriving industry is defunct. But the abandoned collections of contemporary art. Clutches end, when out-of-town curators and col - gallery, Mumbai’s Bodhi gallery, and warehouses and power of invited guests – some hollow-eyed lectors perused the offerings of Berlin’s London’s Haunch of Venison have all stations now provide a from the excesses of the Saturday night burgeoning art scene, were able to see opened up spaces in the capital. home for galleries and before – slowly walked past pieces by work in over 400 galleries and 170 muse - studios that are leading Olafur Eliasson and Sarah Lucas, col - ums. More than 150 theatres, three major The German music industry, beginning the European avant-garde. Monocle salutes the winner lected over the past two decades by opera houses, and a world-class philhar - with Universal Music and MtV , began a of our culture capital award Christian Boros, an advertising executive monic orchestra await visitors at night, migration here from Hamburg and and wonders how many of from the west German city ofWuppertal. not to mention scores of nightclubs se - Munich in the past few years. Pity Ham - the city’s hungry, energetic But perhaps more impressive than creted away in abandoned power burg’s mayor, who in a recent interview creatives will ever get fed. the 500 pieces of art was the location – a stations, breweries and gDr- era pre- expressed the wish that people would writers former Nazi bunker cleverly transformed fabricated office buildings. consider his city as “exciting, magnetic Andreas Tzortzis from a five-storey concrete behemoth Berlin’s institutions reflect the legacy and interesting” as the German capital. into a maze of light, airy rooms and bal - of its cultural heritage – from the august “No one in the media business who photographer Jörg Koopmann conies. “It’s a sculpture,” says Christian neo-classicism of the 19th-century needs visibility can afford not to be in Braun, a visiting Munich architect. “The Staatsoper Unter den Linden and its Berlin,” says Jörg Koch, the lanky, effu - idea is absolutely wonderful.” It is also tribute to Prussia’s pomp, to the 1960s- sive publisher of the postmodern art and not possible anywhere else. era Hans Scharoun-designed Berlin Phil - fashion magazine 032c . The publication, Berlin may lack major industries harmonic building and the expressionist which Koch runs with his wife Sandra and boasts an unemployment rate of 16.5 Schaubühne theatre, where West Berlin von Mayer-Myrtenhain, recently opened per cent – higher than the Dominican Re - expanded its acclaimed music and the - its first office and “museum store” near public – and the schizophrenia of its di - atrical reputation thanks to millions in a new, central townhouse development vided existence may continue to burden government subsidies. designed for an increasingly upmarket its search for a place among the world’s In the past decade, the city has made Berlin resident, within sight of the capitals, but in that vacuum, a cultural up for the dearth of blue-chip companies Foreign Ministry. Follow the river Spree 04 092 — issue 15 issue 15 — 093 01 southeast from the government quarter, past Rem Koolhaas’s sleek Dutch Em - bassy, and you reach a growing cluster of music labels, publishers and multimedia gaming companies opening in former shipping warehouses and industrial buildings lining the banks. 02 03 01 Alte Schönhauser Strasse in Mitte 02 Actor Clemens Schick Here, in Kreuzberg,Turkish mingles with 03 Hans Scharoun’s Berlin German, and, increasingly, American Philharmonic building English. Older Turkish immigrants pull 04 Nicole Srock-Stanley, managing grocery carts past young graphic design - director of architects dan pearlman ers on their way to the cafés, MacBooks 05 At the Karneval der Kulturen in Kreuzberg and packets of cigarettes in hand. Along Köpenicker Strasse, the Acting up in every other city in Germany. So it since the fall of theWall. Berlin’s one con - conduit from Mitte to the new emerging makes sense to have one here.” sistency is its refusal to conform to the enclave of Schlesisches Tor, Konrad von Though no one would A bit further down the Spree, past expectations of others. Löhneysen in 2000 opened up the Berlin mistake Berlin Mitte in the the Munich insurer Allianz’s Berlin out - Indeed, the rise of Berlin’s creative offshoot of the Ministry of Sound record early 1990s for Silver Lake, post and near the lush expanse of Trep - class has happened, as Koch points out, Clemens Schick’s CV had label in a turn-of-the century industrial a decidedly Hollywood tower Park, are the loft offices of event “without any sort of government struc - building. “If we were doing something start. A fellow actor and brand architects, dan pearlman.The ture or economic pressure”. And therein new, it needed to be in Berlin,” says von hooked up the then-waiter company’s four founders picked Berlin lies one of the biggest challenges for the Löhneysen, who still has the slim frame of at Cantamaggio, a over Hamburg eight years ago because it city government: how to find an unob - a veteran clubber and smoker, but whose favourite of the Berlin seemed to have more “oomph”, as part - trusive way to steer the growth of Berlin’s theatre crowd, with hair has faded with age. “It was clear that auditions, launching his ner Nicole Srock-Stanley puts it. Its list €18.6bn creative industry so that some - more was going to happen here.” career. In the 15 years of clients includes Munich’s BMw and thing comes out of the hype. Jobs, for The transformation is illustrated by since, Schick, pictured Escada, Leverkusen’s Bayer, as well as example, and revenue. the view out of Löhneysen’s light-filled above, has worked in Hanover Zoo. “If you’re based here, you Among the grey legions of Berlin’s office, across the river and beyond the theatre companies in need to travel a lot,” she says. bureaucrats, Tanja Mühlhans stands out. Vienna, Berlin, Zürich and longest stretch of the Berlin Wall still Hanover, but keeps a flat But, she adds, “We’ve always done The attractive 39-year-old has lobbied for standing. An abandoned railway station, in Berlin. “I wouldn’t be well. There’s an advantage because Berlin’s creative talent since 2001. She’s once the home of one of Berlin’s premier able to do the same in clients love to come to Berlin. And if hosted round-tables between aspiring gay clubs, was razed two years ago to Munich,” he says. The you’re from Berlin, you automatically fashion labels and Germany’s notoriously city’s reputation as theatre make room for the o2 World arena, built get a little creative bonus.” risk-averse bank creditors and worked on capital of the German- 04 by the US media magnate Philip An - speaking world will also Never mind that Srock-Stanley and building networks and websites aimed at schutz. “The Police toured Germany last continue to be a magnet her partners waited a lot longer than helping creative companies grow. year and played in Hamburg, Düsseldorf for Schick.

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