TOWERING CONCRETE SCULPTURES inlaid with bright tiles, Brutalist housing blocks adorned with intricate patterns: the structures of post-Soviet Central Asia are a study in east-west contrasts, and include some of the stranger relics of the Cold War era.
THE U7 IN its current form was largely a product of Cold War-era West Berlin, and is arguably the most “West Berlin” of all U-Bahn lines. Despite being Berlin’s longest U-Bahn line (as well as one of the longest underground urban rail lines in all of Europe at 31.8 kilometers), every single one of its stations, from Rudow in the southeast to Rathaus Spandau in the northwest, falls within the borders of the former West Berlin.
THE SIEMENSBAHN WAS a short, “spur”-style urban railroad that served Berlin’s northwestern district of Siemsstadt from 1929 until 1980. Consisting of only three stations, it originated at Jungfernheide (a still-active station on the present-day Ringbahn), crossing the Spree and passing through the Wernerwerk and Siemensstadt stations before ending at Gartenfeld.
BRUTALIST ARCHITECTURE IS experiencing something of a renaissance – or at the very least, a zombified second coming. With the opening of formerly sequestered countries in the Eastern Bloc and the ease of taking and sharing digital photos, hulking tower flats and concrete curiosities have emerged from behind the Iron Curtain. In the words of the authors, “The Iron Curtain was understood in the West as The Concrete Curtain. Everything behind it was perceived as mass produced and grey.”
Shots of the ring road around Kawaguchiko (Lake Kawaguchi, Fuji Five Lakes Area) in springtime. The lake and surrounding areas are a wildly varied mix of posh resorts, working-class restaurants, dilapidated former-glory hotels, modernist developments, and empty lakeside parks, reminiscent of South Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border and countless other mountain resort towns.
WHILE THE PRIMARY campus of Berlin’s Freie Universität is in Dahlem, just west of the Botanischer Garten and just south of the US embassy’s imposing Dahlem location, the university also includes other satellite campuses in the former West Berlin. One of these is the Benjamin Franklin campus, located several kilometers southeast of Dahlem on the Spree.
