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Sketches from an Antique Shop The Sky Above Berlin The Prussian tsar Friedrich Willhelm chose Berlin for his Charlottenburg residence, the controversial German producer Fassbinder created a cult by filming Doblins novel Alexanderplatz, the expressionless Berlin square. Today Checkpoint Charlie is a synonym for freedom, the Berlin wall is a historical memory of alternate interests between East and West. The greatest architects such as Sir Norman Foster, David Liebeskind, Renzo Piano, Helmut John, etc. created colossal buildings in glass and steal and we also remember Berlin from the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire. In the 1930's the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe worked in his studio in Berlin, building department houses, business premises and designing furniture equipment in the spirit of researching constructions and handling materials with the goal of reaching a perfect synthesis of the created buildings and surprising with design creations. In 1927 Mies van der Rohe created the chair entitled model MR20 with imaginative static that enabled the chair to stand on two legs made out of bent metal tubes - a perfect harmony in technique, form and material. Following his idea this chair is still being made in Berlin's Josef Muller workshop. In Mies' designs as well as in the designs of some of his contemporaries from the Bauhaus school, Modern Movement, de Stijl, we magically discover the perfection cleansed of unnecessary decoration and with all respect we can merely remain their pupils today. Karin Košak |
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