Remem­ber the Zoo Palast? The one next to the Bahnhof Zoo? Some of those who’ve been here a while know that this used to be a swell cinema with a story reach­ing back to the 1920s. Although it was des­troyed in WWII, today the facade and the cinema halls on ground & first floor are under monu­ment pro­tec­tion. The Zoo Palast was rebuilt in the late 50s, sport­ing quite an inter­est­ing archi­tec­ture. Embed­ded in the stale envir­on­ment of the Bahnhof Zoo, it used to be a prom­in­ent build­ing. Most charm­ing were the exclus­ively hand-drawn movie posters for every premiere.

Unfor­tu­nately, the Zoo Palast had to be shut down in 2010. The lease was up. Nowadays, the scenery is taken by a vast con­struc­tion site. Did I ever men­tion my knack for con­struc­tion sites? I think I said it before, but the whole concept is like an open sur­gery on the infra­struc­ture of the citys guts. Fas­cin­at­ing to say the least. Next to the Zoo Palast used to be the Bikini­haus, a quite hideous com­plex, also under pro­tec­tion, which basic­ally sep­ar­ated the Zoo from Bud­apester Straße and the Breit­scheidplatz with its Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche. The name derives from its archi­tec­ture, basic­ally being two dif­fer­ent parts and there­fore resem­bling a Bikini (I don’t get it).

Both the Zoo Palast and the former cul­tur­ally and com­mer­cially intact Bikini­haus are going to be remodeled within the next two years. I haven’t quite grasped the concept of the new “Bikini Ber­lin”, to be hon­est. I sup­pose it’s going to be a sleek and expens­ive super-mall of some sorts. How obnox­ious of them to go and fig­ure that a com­mer­cial use for this essen­tial land­mark of Ber­lin is going to be the best use.

The Bikini­haus is not inten­ded exclus­ively as a temple of con­sumer­ism, but as an urban oasis for people

I ser­i­ously have no idea how a newly con­struc­ted build­ing atop of what used to be a per­fectly fine piece of his­tory is more of an “urban oasis” than the Zoo in its back or any park. See, I’m quite relieved they’re restrict­ing their remod­el­ing of Ber­lin to the City West (mostly). And yet I can’t refrain from think­ing “oh my God why is every­body an idiot”. It makes me roll my eyes til they touch the back of my head. This is so Ber­lin.

Let’s save the per­sonal judge­ment of polit­ical and eco­nom­ical decisions for another day. I’m quite excited to see how the build­ings and com­plexes will change the land­scape between Harden­berg– and Breit­scheidplatz. Bikini Ber­lin will also be host to a brand new 25Hours Hotel, a very pop­u­lar design hotel chain with fran­chises in Ham­burg, Frank­furt and other cit­ies. To cre­ate an “urban oasis” in the mean­time, the makers of the hotel have decided to go with a mobile bur­ger diner called “Bur­ger De Ville” which serves good bur­gers right in the sur­gery room of our future temple of consumerism.

The con­tainer type arrange­ment and tem­por­ary use of the space reminds me of Lon­dons very own Shored­itch Box­park. Then I figured that com­par­ing any­thing in Ber­lin to any­thing in Lon­don usu­ally makes Ber­lin look bad so we’ll just leave it at that. Go & try the bur­gers (and those flam­boy­ant fries with parmesan cheese and gar­lic and other fancy stuff — quite the Bikini Ber­lin spirit there!) and let’s look for­ward to the open­ing of the Zoo Palast in 2013 (unless it ends up as ridicu­lously delayed as the air­port. I’m kind of even hop­ing for that. It would make for a great inter­na­tional joke).