Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe

In the immediate vicinity of the new center and not far from Potsdamer Platz, the BVG, Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, has had a new administrative building built on Tempelhofer Ufer 31/32 in a prominent location next to the Museum for Transport and Technology.

In its architecture and the building materials used (metal cladding of the facade, glass and stone), the new building by the Berlin architectural office Joachim Ganz refers to the technical urban landscape surrounded by various types of transport such as underground railways, roads and ships. Particularly striking is the "Raisin Bomber" mounted at the Museum of Transport and Technology, which appears to be flying over the Landwehr Canal.

The central section of the new administration building ends with a 6-storey glass facade facing the Tempelhofer Ufer. Behind this facade is a triangular courtyard that all offices face. In front of the offices, walk-in galleries, including the glass facade, run around the entire courtyard.

Samuelis Baumgarte Art Consulting was initially commissioned to develop an art concept for the artistic design of this space, which was designed to have a large external impact. The aim of the considerations was to have different artists from different art fields develop models that on the one hand should congruent with the specific architectural space, but on the other hand also had to be related to the fields of activity of the BVG and the urban development environment.

After the presentation, the board of the BVG decided to implement the concept developed by the Berlin artist group Inges idee under the leadership of Samuelis Baumgarte Art Consulting, which gave their work the title: People (traffic jam-free zone).

The artist group Inges idee, consisting of Hans Hemmert, Axel Lieber, Thomas Schmidt and Georg Zey, has made a name for itself in recent years with its unusual, often subtle art projects. Your thoughts on the artistic design of the new BVG building are as follows:

The new BVG building on Tempelhofer Ufer is in an exposed location, right next to the Museum for Transport and Technology and the newly created center of Berlin. In addition, the function of the BVG becomes visible through the underground line 1, which is raised between the building complexes. This unusual situation is cleverly dramatized at night by a "light gate" between the buildings.

The glass entrance area intended for the competition is subordinate to the symmetry of the light gate, especially when it is dark. An additional focus on a solitary object in the sense of the suspended cherry bomber of the Museum of Transport and Technology does not seem sensible to us. The already existing large objects, aircraft and incoming subways, make a third competing solitaire seem impossible. The image of the traffic is already sufficiently represented by both objects.

The proposal therefore envisages a staging of the entire entrance hall, with no movement or vehicles selected as the image, but figures that represent the passengers of the BVG.

Approx. 200 figures are suspended from the ceiling of the entrance area in the entire anteroom. The figures are loosely staggered in three different sizes and positioned in the air space, which further enhances a perspective depth effect. The result is the impression of a floating cloud of figures that populate the entrance hall in a uniform density. All figures are painted in different colors so that from a distance something like an abstract-pointillist image emerges, which pleasantly contrasts the architecture, which is strictly kept in form and material.

The design focuses on people, the passengers, as the central theme of the BVG. From a distance the installation is perceived as an airy "allover" structure, but when approached, the individual figures become more specific: individual clothing, different genders and origins become visible. The figures could represent a cross-section of the Berlin population and thus the users of the BVG. Thus, the social significance of the BVG and its actual task - the transport of people - is pointed out.

In addition to the content-related factors of the design, explicit reference is made to the architectural and urban planning context. The floating figures with their vertical alignment counterpoint the predominant horizontal lines of the building (parapets), as well as the passing traffic flows (street, subway, shipping), all of which move horizontally. The image of the floating "rain of figures" is a quiet pause as the traffic rushes by. The design offers a wide variety of perspectives from a distance as moving, abstract volumes of color, in front of the building and when entering as a crowd, as well as from the individual offices as differentiated characters the air currents in the building allow the figures to turn slowly, creating a light and poetic image of movement. At night, the targeted use of lighting can create an imposing image that adds an additional atmosphere to the neighboring gate. In contrast to the neighboring museum For traffic and technology, our proposal puts the focus on the human being. The emblematic image of the various passengers, recognizable from afar, deliberately relies on a multi-part structure that splits up into different individuals when approaching relaxed feeling and thus conveys a completely different attitude towards traffic than the gesture of the immediate neighbor.