Archives for “museum” tag

The futuristic appearing building of the Bauhaus-Archiv is a real landmark in the urban landscape of Berlin. Combining two houses and a bridge on which you can walk “over” the house makes the museum a special playground of architecture. Planned by the Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius in 1964 and built up in 1976-79 in a modified version the white building is a hidden eye-catcher on the bank of the Landwehrkanal.

The Archive/Museum attends to research and retrospection of Bauhaus architecture, art and design in the 20th century. It is the worldwide biggest collection of originals of the classical modernity. In a permanent exhibition which will be showed in December again, you can only see a part of the collection but the most interesting Bauhaus examples of architecture, furniture, ceramics, metal, photographs as well as artworks of the famous Bauhaus teachers Gropius, Itten, Klee, Feininger, Kandinsky, Albers, Schlemmer, Moholy-Nagy and van der Rohe.

Here you can find information in English about the permanent and the special exhibitions.

For a deposit of €10.00 you can rent an audio guide that explains the samples in your language. On wednesday, thursday and friday the entrance fee is one euro cheaper.

Martin Gropius Bau was built in 1881 as Museum for applied arts and reopened after the renovation of war demolitions in 1981. Since 2001 it’s one of the projects of the Berliner Festspiele cultural organization. It’s located in the heart of Berlin, close to PotsdamerPlatz and is an imposing building. The venue welcomes the viewer with a mixture of elegance, comfort and good art.

MGB is a distinctive and established art space which finds itself somewhere between a museum (as it does not have a permanent own collection) and a gallery (as it does not sell works of art). Some of the exhibited artists are Rebecca Horn, Richard Avedon, Olafur Eliasson, and Cindy Sherman.

MGB is a venue for many international exhibitions (covering photography, archaeology, art history and contemporary arts) and its profile makes it comparable with the Grand Palais in Paris and Royal Academy of Arts in London.

There are 90 of them. Standing disciplined on the side – equally distanced from each other and tirelessly straight – except for the five headed one, the ballerina in the middle of the intersection of the park alleys.

Public gas lighting from 25 German cities and 11 other European cities, from Dublin to Budapest, are on display in an open-air museum on one of the outskirts of Tiergarten. They are aligned quietly, somewhat taller and not as talkative as the beauty-and-the-beast-Lumière, yet more emancipated and obediently wearing their descriptive etiquette. Nevertheless, one can easily sink into conversation or inner introspection and miss out on the spectacle of light and time. The museum has been around since 1978 and is merging with the landscape.

In the same area you’ll find wonderful restaurants with tradition all around you. Schleusenkrug, the guardian of the water lock; Capt’n Schillow, the ship restaurant steered, now on the spot, by her adventurous captain Norbert and Tiergarten Quelle, the restaurant with the many hand written beer mats, hidden under the arch of the train station. 

Weekends come with the ever-returning flea market across the Straße des 17. Juni. Further intertwinement of times and stories.

When you alight from the S-bahn at the aptly named Botanischer Garten station, take a moment to notice the Jugendstil structure of the station, this might give you a clue as to when the surrounding area was built up.

A few streets removed from the station, the garden itself has an impressive history that dates to the 1600s though it was moved to its present location in the 1890s. The German botanist Adolf Engler established the 43 hectare gardens as a place of learning and as a home for botanical specimens brought back from the German colonies. The grounds are laid out geographically with over 23000 botanical specimens from the various continents arranged around an Italian garden, an arboretum and a large pond.

The real attraction here is the Tropenhaus, one of the largest green houses in the world. First opened in 1906 and renovated in 2009, the Tropenhaus is a transparent shell built without obstructing pillars which provides simulated micro-climates to a variety of plant life. Inside climbing vines reach to the 25 meter high ceiling; giant bamboo tower over bromeliads, hanging orchids and birds of paradise. A waterfall cascades over rocks into a carp pond; Epiphytes parasitically grow from the trunks of banyans. In the desert house thorny cacti remind you not to get too close.

The Botanic Garden belongs to the Free University of Berlin and is actually a learning institution. A Botanical Museum, which currently features an exhibition entitled The World of Palms, is also housed here.