Well, forget Finland, Milano and New York. It's a looooong story but my class and I are going to Berlin instead for 4 days (8th-12th of April '06).
We know about the Vitra Design Museum, the Bauhaus Museum, Foster's Reichstag, Daniel Liebeskind's Jewish Museum, Gehry's bank and Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion ... and it's a bit too tourist-like, I think.
I personally love Berlin. But I'm interested in something that might top these sites. Something related to design. Unfortunately it seems like the Vitra Museum is closed until fall this year. It doesn't have to be vintage design, actually I would prefer some "fresh" design as we're constantly fed with Aalto, Jacobsen and Corbusier at our school (and frankly I'm sick of it). Any ideas for galleries, exhibitions and events to visit or persons to visit/talk to?
I can't advise on places, but I can pass on
a technique for viewing Berlin a former neighbor of mine found fascinating. He collected images of locations of Berlin before WWII and after WWII and coded them on a map of Berlin. Don't ask me how he did it, for he's moved away and I've lost track of him. I'm sure there are probably urban design or architecture books that consider before and after the war Berlin. Why do I suggest this? Because it is fabulously enriching to be able do distinguish how a city came to be what it is at the time you are in it. Every city has a story--a spatial legacy so to speak. I grew to appreciate this dimension of cities when I worked as a real estate consultant on feasibility studies for developments. Take Los Angeles for one example. To drive through it and see it simplistically as some grotesquerie of sprawl is to miss the whole wonder of Los Angeles. A book called Ancient LA by Michael Rochlin creates a kind of historical atlas of Los Angeles that brings it all into coherence. I would recommend finding an equivalent book for Berlin before going there. Historical atlases are an increasingly lost art, despite the marvelous suitability of Geographic Information Systems to embrace them. Geography is taught less and less and so cartography focues less and less on creating historical atlases for ordinary persons. This is a serious loss. To know the spatial history of a place is one of the most intimate and revealing forms of experience of a place one can have. I would highly recommend not only experiencing the great design artifacts of Berlin, but also the design of Berlin itself...and not only what you can see as you walk from one design museum to the next, but the historical dimesions of its design. One thing I learned from Rick Steves, is that preparation to travel enriches travel. You are right to make a list of what to see in Berlin. Just make sure to put Berlin on that list too. http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&qi=mRz,KrGTIadpMrceYeg6LT,...
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