Ber­lin Back­yards are some­thing spe­cial. In our new series, we want to show you the diversity of these par­al­lel worlds that are unseen from the street side. For our first edit­or­ial, we showed you two very dif­fer­ent back­yards (or, as I’ve learned later, court­yards might be the bet­ter word) and told you a little bit about the impres­sions they left on us.

This time around, our first back­yard does not leave a spec­tac­u­lar impres­sion at all. But once you walk inside the gate you see how the mood and the atmo­sphere change. Through the third entrance you finally arrive at a beau­ti­ful Mosque, where plenty of chil­dren are clam­or­ing about and the reli­gious Islamic com­munity are hold­ing their pray­ers. We got lost in the details of the low walls that let us view the hori­zon of graf­fiti. The white­ness of the build­ings made it look sterile and new, although it was nowhere near that. And, as always: old bikes, new bikes. Bikes everywhere.

Our second back­yard is another com­plete oppos­ite. It’s wild and green and lush and rich in nature. When we walked about the premises, we got to talk­ing with a res­id­ent. He explained to us that this block used to be a squat. Occu­pied ter­rit­ory. And the squat­ters, back in the days, really had to fight to keep the house and hous­ing pro­jects like it. There was a time when politi­cians were really con­sid­er­ing the option of clean­ing the blocks out — that is, ser­i­ously erad­ic­at­ing all those beau­ti­ful courtyards-complexes to build shabby new archi­tec­ture type of row houses. Thank­fully, they didn’t get through with the motion.

This hous­ing pro­ject is still a cooper­at­ive. A real example on how thinks can work out in Ber­lin. There’s a wood man­u­fact­ory, a lan­guage school, a really big garden and loads and loads of ivy.