Berlin Atlas

Graduate Architecture Elective

Washington University in St. Louis

Instructors: Götz von Stuckrad and Jan Trutz

Party walls define the boundary between one building and the next. In Berlin, a city with a history of destruction and reconstruction, the once continuous blocks of buildings are often eroded leaving these party walls exposed. In some cases these walls are claimed by people, perhaps using them as a canvas, or exploiting the opportunity to bring light into the interior of the remaining buildings. In other cases nature has claimed these walls using them as a surface on which to grow and climb. In yet other cases, the missing buildings themselves have laid claim to the walls, leaving behind remnants of floor plates, doorways, and structure. Over the course of the semester, wandering through the city I constructed a photographic atlas consisting of 96 instances of these ghostly conditions in Berlin.