Haus der Kul­turen der Welt. This name is not just weirdly uncom­fort­able to for­eign­ers, but to Ger­man speak­ers too. Haus der Kul­turen der Welt. You’d think that Ger­mans, who like to put words together, would call it “Weltkulturenhaus”.

It’s remote area is pretty excep­tional, too. To me, it seems just SO out of the way of any­thing that you’d have to be really ded­ic­ated to go to an event or exhib­i­tion. I know I used to pass it on one of my many trips with the des­ig­nated tour­ist bus line “100”, and keep think­ing: man, what the hell, why would they place such a gor­geous object right into the middle of nowhere (and yes, Tier­garten is right in the middle of nowhere to me, because IF IT’S NOT IN KREUZBERG THEN HOW CAN IT EXIST?!).

All jok­ing aside, this is an excep­tion­ally import­ant place in Ber­lin. The Haus der Kul­turen der Welt (House of the Cul­tures of the World — ser­i­ously, can we just call it Bert or some­thing from now on? It just feels so cold and imper­sonal) is an insti­tu­tion full of cul­tural insights, from con­certs to exhib­i­tions to read­ings to films to con­fer­ences and whatever else can be visu­ally exhib­ited in the “world cul­tures” con­text. Remem­ber how every­body went crazy about the Trans­me­diale partys a couple of days ago? Well, if you were so inclined to actu­ally par­ti­cip­ate rather than just get wasted, you’d have known that the Haus der Kul­turen der Welt plays a cent­ral role in enabling the exchange of cul­tural prac­tices, even in music and pop­cul­ture. Besides, it’s one of the last insti­tu­tions that is still com­pletely fun­ded and com­mis­sioned by the state, a grow­ing rar­ity in Berlin.

The con­gress hall was sponsored by the US for the Inter­na­tional Archi­tec­tural Exhib­i­tion in ’57. Remem­ber how we covered the Hansavier­tel last sum­mer in the con­text of Inter­bau? The HdKdW is not too far away from it and basic­ally springs from the same cul­tural, archi­tec­tural and social time. It was a gift from the Amer­ic­ans to Berlin-West and is now “Ger­manys cen­ter for non-European con­tem­por­ary art”, which is a very spe­cific cat­egory if you’re temp­ted to believe Wiki­pe­dia. But from what I saw and heard at the HdKdW, it extends bey­ond these bor­ders and offers great per­form­ances and insights into any­thing contemporary.

The archi­tec­ture is stun­ningly mod­ern. The build­ing was cre­ated by an Amer­ican, Hugh Stub­bins, who was a stu­dent of Wal­ter Gropius (which, in all basic-ness on the mat­ter of archi­tec­ture, should explain enough about the chosen style of com­plex mod­ern­ity). The build­ing fits right into the scenery, even though it would seem dar­ing to build some­thing so “for­ward” right on the Spree bank, sur­roun­ded by greens. And yet: it works.

From the web­site of the Haus:

In 1955, Hugh Stub­bins star­ted work on a design for a build­ing that would soon become a remark­able land­mark in the city­scape of post-war Ber­lin. Stub­bins, who had been Gropius’s assist­ant at Har­vard before the Second World War, was famil­iar with Ger­many. Want­ing to make a state­ment on that con­flict between the sys­tems com­monly referred to the Cold War, Stub­bins planned a build­ing with a hall to hold cul­tural events and con­gresses. It was inten­ded to serve as a sym­bol and beacon of free­dom with its mes­sage reach­ing the East too. The former Zel­ten­platz square was chosen as the site. To ensure its con­tours would be clearly seen from Communist-ruled East Ber­lin, the Con­gress Hall was erec­ted on an arti­fi­cial mound.

Stub­bins described the sym­bolic value of his archi­tec­tural design as ‘com­pletely free’. The form of the curved roof bore a strik­ing resemb­lance to that of wings. In Stubbins’s view, the roof upheld the prom­ise that there would be no restric­tions on the free­dom of intel­lec­tual work — a polit­ical vis­ion shared by the Ben­jamin Frank­lin Found­a­tion, which com­mis­sioned the building.

Haus der Kul­turen der Welt though wasn’t actu­ally foun­ded til 1989 — before that, it exis­ted purely in a pur­pose of hoard­ing people in its chique con­gress hall. The year the new concept was born should really tell you some­thing about its mean­ing and its per­fect — its only — tim­ing. The focus on inter­dis­cip­lin­ary, cul­tural exchange was needed for Ber­lin to grow out of its long last­ing restric­tions. So when Ber­lin reuni­fied, the HdKdW became a cul­tural sym­bol of that uni­fic­a­tion, an insti­tu­tion that knows no bor­ders at all as opposed to lim­it­ing itself to one city or one coun­try or one con­tin­ent only.

Appar­ently, the HdKdW is lov­ingly reffered to as “the preg­nant oyster”. Allegedly because it looks like a “preg­nant oyster”. I have never heard any­one call it that. Please do not call it “a preg­nant oyster”. I’d rather say its whole, lanky and dis­turb­ingly uncom­fort­able name out time and time again than “a preg­nant oyster”. I bet that’s the inven­tion of some “poor but sexy” type of politi­cian who wanted to be flashy with dub­bing things. Just.. don’t.

If you’ve never been inside of the HdKdW (Bert), you should def­in­itely check the event list­ings and see for your­self. The interieur is dra­mat­ic­ally awe­some. Whether it’s an exhib­i­tion or per­form­ance, never have I been sucked into a space like this before. The feel­ing of being in a truly unique and iconic place is overwhelming.

Any­way. Stefan, tal­en­ted and will­ing as always, went around to take some great pic­tures in the snow of the whole thing. Please do check out the latest events on the pro­gram, they are usu­ally worth the trip. Speak­ing of: the Ber­linale also takes place at the HdKdW in some aspects.