It is difficult to imagine now that less than twenty years ago Berlin was divided into two parts. However, interest in the Berlin Wall and the route it took is unabated.
An estimated 250,000 people attended the small Wall Memorial Visitor Center on Bernauer Strasse last year alone. Now this small complex, dedicated to the most important period in the modern history of Germany, the Berlin Wall as a historical monument and the people who died trying to leave the GDR on this section of its border, will be significantly expanded.
The Berlin authorities held an international competition, in which three workshops from the same city won, who presented a common project. They are Mola Winkelmüller Architekten, landscape architecture firm Sinai. Faust. Schroll. Schwarz Landschaftarchitekten and exhibition designer Christian Fuchs from ON architektur.
According to the project of the winners of the competition, a "memorial landscape" will be created along the Bernauer Strasse on an elongated stretch of 1.5 km. The openings between the remaining sections of the Wall will be supplemented with 3 cm thick steles made of corroded corten steel; this material should remind of the reinforcement of the destroyed Wall.
The steles are located at a small distance from each other, but so that a person can pass between them to the other side, and so that different parts of the ensemble are visually connected to each other through the line of passage of the Wall.
The second part of the project is the construction of a two-story information center located at the bend in the Berlin Wall route. It should serve as an entrance pavilion for the entire complex, and there will also be an exposition introducing visitors to the main facts of the history of the Wall.
