2009: In a small street in Berlin, I had arrived at the AEG Turbine Factory exactly on time, but a hundred years too late.

I have written about the timeless beauty and architectural influence of Peter Behrens's architecture of 1909. Now that Modernism with all its idealism has been put on the shelf alongside other architectural "styles," I wanted to revisit the columns of the building in this drawing, zooming in to the point that the they are almost abstracted.

In Berlin, no one I asked knew about this building. And few people I know would understand why I went all the way to Berlin just to see these columns.

40"x54" ~ pastel on paper

Detail

Real innovative progress took place in the small industrial towns of Germany, spreading from there to the larger cities, and then to the rest of the world. Stuttgart is one such town.

I headed to Stuttgart right after Dessau. Situated on a big hill, Stuttgart is home to the Weissenhof Housing Estate, a model neighborhood where several modernist architects were invited to design workers’ homes in the new International Style in 1927 under the supervision of Mies van der Rohe. It is home also of the little-known but extremely important Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, a thriving force for Architecture and Industrial Design in Germany, as well as of the Porsche Museum which I had no idea existed.

I had spent a little more than 24 hours in Berlin. In those 24 hours I had visited and got to know my two main destinations in the city: the AEG Turbine Factory by Walter Gropius, and Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altes Museum. I had walked along the river, had a nice lunch, walked into the closing ceremony of a certain pride parade, saw much more of Berlin’s architecture at night, and ended up spending several hours of the night at a huge party called GMF which took place on three levels at the top of a Berlin skyscraper. I had had to take a cab home and had spent half the night at the bus stop right outside my hostel. I am glad it was Germany and not France or Italy. Finally I had passed out on my bed at 4am.

I was woken up at 10am because that was the check-out time at the hostel. I had missed my 7am train to Dessau and Stuttgart. I would have to renew all my reservations and contact my workplace to let them know I would be taking Monday off.

I arrived in Stuttgart at 11:30pm on the ICE train, which is Germany’s TGV and is much more impressive and comfortable than the TGV. I took a taxi to my hostel, and it pulled up on a mountain street overlooking the town below, with just a small entrance on the cliff. The rest of the building was on lower levels on the slope below.

I’ll go directly now to the three things I wanted to write about in Stuttgart. The first is the tram system. It was extremely impressive how these trams glided smoothly up sloping streets, through tunnels, on regular streets alongside cars, and down steep slopes. The map and guide was crystal clear and intuitive and it must have been the easiest train system to use that I have ever encountered.

The second is the Weissenhof Housing Estate. The Germans are not ashamed of Modernism like the French or Americans. The housing project was well maintained. The most remarkable thing was that these houses – most of them small and not luxurious – were occupied by real people living there. Each house had a small sign outside it, explaining the concept and displaying the plans. People parked their cars, got out with their groceries and walked into their home, even as others took pictures of the neighborhood.

Mies van der Rohe’s building was highly reminiscent of some of the dilapidated architecture I had seen in Clichy-sous-Bois. It made me realize that renovation and maintenance plays a very important role in the perception of architecture and, more importantly, that the same forms may have different symbolic value in different places.

Chair on display at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste

After walking around the Weissenhof Estate, I stumbled upon the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart. I reminded me of Harvard GSD and the Indus Valley School in Karachi and other places that seem to exude a spirit of creative energy. It is the Bauhaus of the 21st century. I was so excited to walk around inside that, for a moment, I seriously considered trying to learn German and applying here for grad school. Earlier that morning, I had met three German students from various parts of the country who had come to take an admissions test for the Industrial Design program at this school. They had had to send their portfolios earlier on for a preliminary selection process. They were super-impressed that I was a Pakistani studying architecture in the US here just to visit a housing project that they didn’t even know about.

The AEG Turbine Factory, designed by Peter Behrens in 1910, is a major crossroads in the history of architecture.

The roots of Modernism can be traced to Peter Behrens and the German Werkbund. From 1907 to 1912, Peter Behrens' students and assistants included Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Adolf Meyer, Jean Kramer and Walter Gropius. All of these people were highly influential in charting the course of architectural history in the twentieth century.

In his capacity as "artistic consultant" for AEG, Behrens designed the company's corporate identity: everything from graphic design to product and industrial design, to architecture. One of the most historically significant of these works is the AEG High Tension Factory in Berlin.



The building combined, for the first time, elements and forms of classical architecture with the modern aesthetic of industrial design, articulated by the overt use of modern materials such as glass and steel alongside the more traditional masonry. What made the project truly remarkable was that this was a factory building that combined the grandeur of a classic temple with the functionality and good working conditions made possible by the newest developments in construction. In doing so, it created a whole new aesthetic form, paving the way for later modernist architectural innovation.

While I was in Berlin I visited the factory building because it is one of the six destinations on my project proposal for the Shellmann Prize, a fellowship that allows me to follow the path of Le Corbusier's travels through Europe almost a century ago.

Berlin: the setting of immense upheaval and reform in the last century, home to giants such as Peter Behrens and Mies van der Rohe, the last stronghold of the movement that was the Bauhaus, a city bold in its embrace and expression of modernity, the very streets of which exude an understated but distinct elegance in their simplicity.

Berlin might not be as “Beaux Arts” pretty as Paris, but there is bold and utilitarian experimentation in its architecture. It is not a city shaped by a tentative curator whose main concern is to preserve precious relics, but by craftsmen who are unafraid to design contemporary architecture in the spirit of the contemporary age.

On Friday, I took the night train to Berlin.

Adolf Loos would have highly approved of the Berlin street facades

If I had spoken a single word of German, perhaps I would have felt even more at home there. At the end of three days, I had learnt only one word: Hauptbahnhof (meaning Central Station). The reasons for this ineptitude on my part tell something about Germany. First, most German people I encountered were extremely respectful and I did not at all feel estranged. Second, most German people I met spoke at least a little bit of English. My three-day trip went by in a flash and I simply did not get a chance to buy a dictionary and begin my first German lesson. And lastly, everything in Germany is extremely intuitive and organized.

The process of “getting to know” a city is fascinating. You start by walking around and getting a sense of its identity, or DNA. This identity may be discerned in the smallest of things, like sidewalks, trash cans, the shoes people wear, the street signs, etc. In the Berlin streets, for example, the grass is untrimmed. The layers of the building facades and the visual imagery, or graphic design, tell the story of the city’s past, convey its present spirit, and hint at its future.

The night train to Berlin

The train stopped at Metz at what must have been 2am. It reminded me of my friend Stephanie who lives in Metz and who had invited me to visit her. I was sitting in the bar cart because I couldn’t bear the couchette anymore. It had been a shock to walk into the tiny compartment with six “beds,” three stacked on each side of a very narrow passage in which two people could barely fit. I had one of the lowest bunks and its ceiling was so low I couldn’t even sit up and read. So after a small conversation with the two American girls from Seattle and the German man above me (the last two were a French couple who went to sleep immediately – they must do this a lot), and after shifting restlessly in my bed for two hours, I left with my copy of Les Miserables to find food and a chair in which I could sit upright and read.

The blue sign glimmered in the night: Metz. People got out to smoke and breathe the Metz air.

To be continued (maybe).

The Altes Museum, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1825

Detail of the Altes Museum, revealing intervention at entrance

The Berlin Hauptbahnhof