16.01.2025 Views

Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut

ISBN 978-3-98612-030-6

ISBN 978-3-98612-030-6

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS
  • No tags were found...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut

LUDWIG HEIMBACH

(ed.)

Two Berlin Brutalist Icons



Table of Contents

17 Foreword

Kristin Feireiss

Context

23 Why Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut?

Ludwig Heimbach

27 The Soloistic Ensemble

Ludwig Heimbach

The Buildings

47 Institut für Hygiene und Mikrobiologie

Thorsten Dame

59 Mäusebunker: Freie Universität Berlin’s Zentrale Tierlaboratorien

Anja Wiese and Christoph Janik

From Draft to Completion

74 Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut

84 Hygieneinstitut

179 Inside Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut: The Scenographic Intensity of Technical Clinical Spaces

Kay Fingerle

204 Mäusebunker

280 Positions

Andreas Fogarasi, Lothar Hempel, Tracey Snelling, Julian Rosefeldt, Alexis Dworsky,

Cecelia Vincent, b+ (bplus.xyz), FORWARD Planung und Forschung, ludwig heimbach architektur,

Make_Shift

Debate and Outlook

315 The Debate: A Social Experiment

Ludwig Heimbach

331 The Healthy Human: The Berlin Center for the Biology of Health

Andreas Diefenbach

337 The Mäusebunker Model Process

Christoph Rauhut and Kerstin Lassnig

343 Heritage Preservation in the Vanguard? An Interview with Christoph Rauhut

Francesca Ferguson

353 Vers un Béton Vert: The Mäusebunker as Brutalist Metabolism

Rachel Armstrong, Ludwig Heimbach, and Jan Wurm

369 Analyses of the Biodiversity of Biofilms on the Façade of the Mäusebunker

Julia von Werder and Alexander Bartholomäus

Appendix

374 Accompanying Illustrations

400 Biographies

403 Bibliography and Filmography

404 Acknowledgments

405 Editor

406 Picture Credits

408 Imprint



Why Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut?

LUDWIG HEIMBACH

Context

23 Why Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut?


When I’d just started studying architecture at Technische

Universität Berlin in 1992, debates were being held

about how the newly reunified city should look in years to

come. The venue for these events was the Berlin Pavillon in

Hansaviertel.1 Finding the venue itself to be more interesting

than most of the competition-winning projects being discussed

there, I began traveling across the city in search of

other works by the pavilion architects, Fehling+Gogel. While

visiting their Hygieneinstitut (Hygiene Institute), I discovered

an eerie, mysterious structure standing opposite that was entirely

cordoned off: Gerd and Magdalena Hänska’s Mäusebunker

(Mouse Bunker).

My affinity with this pairing is perhaps related to a key

architectural experience: as a child growing up in Cologne, my

parents regularly took me to the Brühler Schlosskonzerte, a

series of concerts performed in the fabulous Schloss Augustusburg

staircase designed by Balthasar Neumann. Returning

home along the Cologne-Bonn autobahn, we’d drive through

the petrochemical works in Wesseling p. 374, which would suddenly

loom into view like a dream vision of a brightly lit city.

In my mind, this experience crystallized into a kind of architectural

amalgamation that still captivates me to this day. In

a strange way, this combined experience is echoed by these

two buildings in Berlin, each representing a distinct take on

the exposed concrete aesthetic of postwar modernism—one

harnessing the fluidity of the material to revisit the dynamics

of architectural form, the other taking its cue from the technological

beauty and scale of industrial complexes.2

In January 2020, I learned that the Mäusebunker was

slated for demolition and that a demolition notice had also

been issued for the Hygieneinstitut. I decided to use my position

as an honorary trustee of BDA Galerie Berlin to organize

an exhibition aimed at provoking dialogue about the two

buildings, ideally with the aim of preventing them being torn

down pp. 384–385. The exhibition celebrated the architectural

1 The Berlin Pavillon was the result of a 1956 competition held in preparation

for the 1957 Interbau exhibition. The winning design was created by Hermann

Fehling in collaboration with employees Daniel Gogel and Peter Pfankuch—

the jury chair was Hans Scharoun. By the time the Berlin Pavillon was built, the

practice was operating as Fehling, Gogel & Pfankuch, remaining as such until

1960; from then on, it went by the name Fehling+Gogel.

2 The Dynamics of Architectural Form (Berkeley: University of California Press,

2009) is the title of a book of lectures held by Rudolf Arnheim in 1975 at Cooper

Union in New York. Michel Ragon’s The Aesthetics of Contemporary Architecture

(Neuchâtel: Griffon, 1968) concludes with the chapter “Technological

Beauty,” which is dedicated to engineering buildings and which “not surprisingly

… will appear to many as the chapter with the most enchanting images.”

Context

24 Why Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut?


achievements of the two buildings’ creators, presenting the

discussion process around their preservation or demolition

as a form of “social sculpture” to use Joseph Beuys’s term.

Associations were made with other contexts, from the aesthetics

of the uncanny to cyberpunk, and their cultural implications

were highlighted. Meanwhile, explorations by artists

were complemented by student projects which foregrounded

the buildings’ historical uses (as well as their potential repurposing),

thereby evaluating and taking stock of what these

two buildings mean to us today.

To dedicate an exhibition to this pairing was also to

take a cultural and political stand; after all, the demolition of

these two preservation-worthy monuments had already been

announced—and, in one case, even scheduled. Elsewhere in

Berlin, however, reconstruction with “modern elements” was

underway on the Wilhelmian baroque Stadtschloss, located

on the former site of East Germany’s Palast der Republik—

the Humboldt Forum, this humorless project, constitutes a

pseudo­ heritage mashup that epitomizes a particular revanchist

attitude p. 374. Next in line for such architectural maltreatment

is Schinkel’s Bauakademie, which once stood directly

opposite the palace.

Such decisions and deliberations are, to my mind, an

indication that the economic and political collapse of the East

triggered the cultural collapse of the “free West.”

The constitutionally guaranteed “freedom to build”3

seems to have been largely lost in the thicket of rules, regulations,

and norms that not only inform everyday planning but

also fundamentally shape the design of individual buildings.

The architectural consequences of this straitjacketing can be

seen in the standalone premises of large supermarket chains;

they offer an example of what happens when architecture is

honed inside the wind tunnel of German building regulations

and local development plans. In years to come, these commercial

sites will likely attain the status of “period buildings,”

which we’ll be forced to retain.

In this context, it becomes even more imperative to

preserve high-quality examples of postwar architecture,

works that, as Reinier de Graaf suggested, were created in a

heyday of public architecture, “a short-lived, fragile period of

naïve optimism—before the brutal rule of the market economy

3 In German law, the “guaranteed ownership” principle enshrined in Article 14 of

the German constitution goes hand in hand with the principle of “freedom to

build.”

Context

25 Why Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut?


became the common denominator.”4 Likewise, it’s vital that

we enable new chapters to be written in the stories of these

buildings. After all, only when a structure is of use can its preservation

be guaranteed.

At the time of writing, the breadth of public debate

around both buildings has led to each being designated a historic

monument: the Charité now intends to continue using the

Hygieneinstitut building, while the “Modellverfahren Mäusebunker”

(Mäusebunker Model Process) has galvanized public

conversation to the extent that planning for its future use

can now begin. It is, therefore, time to set down the story of

these two unique buildings in print, as Kristin Feireiss encouraged

me to do after visiting my exhibition—to document the

process of their rediscovery, their narrow escape from demolition,

as well as the search for an alternative way forward.

I regard this book as a “retroactive project”—a call to

preserve our built environment instead of wantonly destroying

it, but also an encouragement to rediscover and rekindle

the sense of freedom that shaped these two striking architectural

works. As Christian Kerez mused when I took him to see

the Mäusebunker and the Hygieneinstitut on a visit to Berlin:

“Maybe it’s more important these days to save good buildings

than it is to design them—bad or even mediocre ones can no

longer be justified anyhow.”

4 OMA/AMO press release for the talk “Public Works: Architecture by Civil Servants”

held at the 13th Architecture Biennale in Venice, 2012.

Context

26 Why Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut?


Bauwelt

A 1561 C

• betrifft 329 • Die Lichterfelder Dorfaue 330

Versuchsanordnungen . Institut für Hygiene und Medizinische Mikrobiologie

der Freien Universität Berlin 331 • Biologische Institute

in Düsseldorf-Holthausen 344 • Institut für Biologie in München-Neuherberg 346

• Außerdem: Markt Information zur 8. ish in Frankfurt am Main 351

11

14.'März 1975 • 66. Jahrgang

139

110


140


141

111


142


143

112


144


145

113


146


147

114


148


149

115


116–117 – Views of the exhibition “Fehling+Gogel: Grundrißanalysen” at Aedes Galerie für Architektur und Raum, then

at Grolmanstraße 51, Oct. 11–Nov. 15, 1986

For the exhibition, Daniel Gogel created seven analysis diagrams for six projects, offering the following explanation in

the exhibition catalog:

“The plans and drawings exhibited here are not meant to be seen as works of art. They are intended as jumping-off

points. These site analyses document a thoroughly geometric approach to building. We have attempted

to shed light on our spatial configurations and structures by means of site plans. The third dimension is that of

the built space. In addition, we hope this modest exhibition will illustrate that, in creating these organisms, we

did not take our cue from Häring’s or Scharoun’s thinking, as many reports erroneously stated.

F+G

September 1986” 150

116


159

Kay Fingerle, Inside Hygieneinstitut, 2020







96


97–106 – Photographs by Georg Fischer, taken for Peter-Matthias Gaede’s report on the Mäusebunker titled “Ein Platz

für viele Tiere” (A space for many animals), which appeared in the November 1984 issue of GEO magazine 258


259

97


98

99

260


100

101

261


262


263

102


114



115

276


277

116


Positions

ALEXIS DWORSKY

296


297

What will happen to the Mäusebunker? Will it be demolished? Or will it be converted and used for an entirely new

purpose? One thing we know for sure is that its situation will fundamentally change. I am therefore carrying out

digital heritage preservation, reconstructing the Mäusebunker in 3D and preserving it in virtual reality.

This geodigital reconstruction is based on a large number of photos. In a process known as photogrammetry, their

individual pixels are compared and the images are arranged in space. A point cloud is generated which is then

transformed into polygons. Finally, a texture is created that can be “projected” onto the digital surface. The resulting

model resembles the original.

The virtual Mäusebunker offers all kinds of possibilities: we can don VR goggles and clamber around on it; we can use

AI to envision multiple different futures for the building; via 3D printing we can even create a miniature Mäusebunker

that we can hold in our hands.




Imprint

© 2025 by jovis Verlag

An imprint of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Texts by kind permission of the authors

Pictures by kind permission of the photographers/holders of the picture rights

All rights reserved

Cover images: Kay Fingerle

Translation from German: Iain Reynolds (except for pp. 281, 293, 301, 305, 353–372, 309)

Copyediting: Cecilia Tricker

Proofreading: Emma Fenton

Project management: Theresa Hartherz, jovis Verlag

Design and typesetting: Floyd E. Schulze

Production: Susanne Rösler, jovis Verlag

Lithography: Bild1Druck

Printed and bound in the European Union

For questions about the General Product Safety Regulation please contact

productsafety@degruyterbrill.com.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek: the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists

this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available

at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

jovis Verlag

Genthiner Straße 13

10785 Berlin

jovis books are available worldwide in select bookstores. Please contact your

nearest bookseller or visit www.jovis.de for information concerning your local

distribution.

www.jovis.de

This publication was supported by

ISBN 978-3-98612-030-6 (softcover)

ISBN 978-3-98612-032-0 (e-book)

408

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!