FMP Research&Inspiration: BERLIN

 I Went to Berlin for a job, but also mainly to soak up the fantastic creative culture over there ahead of this epic self initiated project Ill be starting.

I was there designing the identity for and decorating a breakfast cafe for a good old friend, opening later this year.

As its much earlier than I expected most of the time spent working was more discussions, leaving loads of time to catch up and explore the amazingness of berlin!

very good inspiration and research..heres a few things that caught my eye

I absolutely love how these menu's are basically menu zines!!
love it!!

I'm much more interested in street art / urban interventions than graffiti
i feel I've seen enough jaggy hard to read explosive graff type

its great, i love it, but seen it and it just bores me now.

whereas this is fucking brilliant. it feels as if people just had enough of something
snuck out and did something about it.

simple, clear, memorable. love it.
[I also saw loads of lovely guerrilla gardening, even a trolley filled with soil and plantsbike locked to bits of
street poles n fences]

SUPER COOL!!
SUPER TREND!!

nearly every pole is smothered in years of
private advertising creating this onion layered random dirty collage
-love it!

here and there the scars of history can still be seen.
these fascinate me.
like right were I'm standing was literally a WW2 shoot out
and remains unchanged since.

i absolutely love these little courtyards.
full of creativity,
note the D.I.Y. bar+bbq area.

and again with the history, a lot of berlin seemed to be this hodgepodge of haphazard buildings hiding almost anything

its also not uncommon to find some fucking ooold building still standing amongst the shiny glass and new office buildings

GENTRIFICATION:
never have i been more depressed about gentrification than i have been in berlin
as i was there Tacheles was closed down.

it really got to me, especially when i went to Potsdamer Platz. basically a massive environment of impenetrable shiny offices
litrally that
like what they fuck are they doing in there??

im worried it won't be too long until every city looks the same leaving nothing to explore and do other than stale overpriced galleries.

especially in berlin, the highly unique and creative squats are so amazing, such a preservation of history too

im gutted to have found "O2 World" and that tacheles closed down not for another miserable impenetrable shiny building
what do these buildings do???what do these offices make or do???
it all looks the same, it has nothing for anyone

brilliant

i hope places like this remain for the future

loads of these amazing mechanical mosters were made from what was left from the destroyed 40's machinery
found in these buildings. [which were owned by otto wield-a real life schindlers list style guy,
only discovered by urban explorers long after the end of WW2]

this is where i was dropped off by car one day and went for a walk...

LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!!
I FOUND A BASE!!!

right let me just say how utterly fascinating i found things like this to be
i completely jibbed any kind of guide book suggestions in favour of exploring abandoned
bases, buildings, factories etc

these are living real histories and are fascinating

prison.
fucking eerie

possibly a secret CIA swimming base

you can't really see it as my camera is gash in low light
but this is a couple guys with what i can best describe as a home made
cannon. the guy on the left has literally got an actual flame thrower

it fired -fucking loudly- loads of packing styrofoam

this was some street art about Knut, the german polar bear [???]
that sadly passed away, by the morning someone stuck this up, and was originally white fur stuck into the wall

more random collage
I've millions of these

tacheles.
a day before it was closed by bank taking over for its valuable central location
such a shame

this is an old ice factory! i climbed in!! it was great!!

apparently this was a GDR admin building just left with the collapse of the wall
[it lies literally along remnants of the wall]
inside that was weird, it was as if new, but really old and ghostly, still haven't found more info as to what the hell it did

spreepark!!
-an abandoned 80's adventure park!!
imagine chessington but not shit, and 80's, and abandoned
the perfect horror movie setting

i really want things like this into my self initiated project

this bus is still on diversion

this is amazing.
nothing to do with anything, but by chance i went into a supermarket quite late and it turns into a disco supermarket
check the crazy multicoloured trance lighting!!
brilliant!!