Mäusebunker and Hygieneinstitut
ISBN 978-3-98612-030-6
ISBN 978-3-98612-030-6
- 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