Berlin is an awesome city. There is nothing like going to the fifth floor of an abandoned, bullet marked, and graffitied building to find a nice bar and lounge.
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Europe invented ‘loft apartments’ and other re-uses of abandoned or debilitated properties, long before Soho became a hot spot in NY, NY.
Be sure to view photographs of what Berlin was like at the fall of the Nazi Third Reich. You could see clear out into the countryside for 50km of flattened land directly from the Brandenburg Gate. Standing there amidst this reconstruction will really give you a shocking sense of how urban blight & destruction can be reclaimed into ergonomic & ecologically sound systems.
That train station was working ever day of the war, even after being destroyed many times by Allied bombing raids.
Young people constantly ask me what makes antiques valuable: It’s not just that they’re old, or from another time, but because they were durable or valuable from earliest fabrication.
Travel southeast to the twin cities of Istan & Bul, there you will see two thousand years of war damage reclaimed for future generations in much the same manner as Berlin’s hidden clubs.
See also how the ‘new & modern’ Operplatz Berlin is closely integrated into the older neighborhood and it’s Empire structures.
Be sure to keep all these memories & creative re-imagined use of space & structures when you begin to actually convert modern urban centers into the City 2.0 of tomorrow.