Der Tagesspiegel | 17.09.2010

STARCK ALONGSIDE BRECHT

A stylish new building will be constructed on the Am Zirkus site right next to the Berliner Ensemble

Architect Eike Becker is wearing a lilac velvet coat and a black suit with purple strips running in lengthwise direction. Lilac seems to be the color of the season as it is also clearly visible on the scarf worn by Regula Lüscher, Director and Permanent Secretary of Urban Development at the Berlin Senate, the city government. On Thursday, the two are approaching the excavation of the long-delayed ‘yoo’ project on the Am Zirkus 1 site, together with designers and project developers wearing charcoal gray suits. Already two years ago, the gap in this prime location adjacent to the Berliner Ensemble theater should have been closed. Now the excavators are actually working, opposite the scandal-ridden Spreedreieck site.

The site is called Am Zirkus because the Schumann circus had used the property back in 1895. Later, Max Reinhardt took over the building, which had originally been built as a covered market. In East Germany, staged variety entertainment replaced the previous sophisticated theater performances: the site had served as the venue of the Friedrichstadtpalast until groundwater flooded the basements during the construction of the new Charité building. The Friedrichstadtpalast building was demolished exactly 25 years ago – but now we are seeing a new beginning: almost 52,000 square meters of luxury living space offered at prices of up to 10,000 euros per square meter, a hotel operated by the Israeli Fattal Group, and offices. Total investment: 140 million euros.

Almost one third of the 87 suites and apartments have already been sold.

“Virtually all buyers include some but not all elements of the Philippe Starck design”

says Thomas Wolfensberger. He is the CEO of the Zurich-based developer with the cheerful name “Peach Property”. For the Berlin project, he has joined forces with a company whose name is at least as unusual in the property business: “yoo”. Its CEO, John Hitchcox, radiates the nonchalance typical of a business founder, combined with a very British sense of self-irony:

“I could spread myself wider than Fidel Castro,”

he says. At that point, the former property developer had just reported on how he met Frenchman Philippe Starck, and on how he persuaded the hesitant star designer to go along with his idea of offering the luxury residential units complete with their interiors. This had happened twelve years ago, and many projects before. The members of the team that has become even more glamorous in the past four years as a result of contracting model and Rolling Stone daughter Jade Jagger are currently working on 45 projects in 27 countries.

But what’s so special about the yoo design? Chandeliers appearing in a matt silver-gray shade. Carpets with zebra patterns. A black leather sofa next to a footstool designed in a classical vein. Walls appearing in a pale yellow-green shade, just like the glass tops in the stainless steel kitchen. Yet the Am Zirkus model apartment also provides room for the “Cloud Chair” designed by Charles and Ray Eames. Functionalism and ornament, baroque style and modern art – the global potpourri is making its arrival in Berlin.

Director orf Urban Development Regula Lüscher is particularly pleased about the fact hat the investor opted for “contemporary architecture”. What remains to be seen of the Brecht theater once the “crystal mountain” has been erected? Who cares, Brecht would perhaps have said, quoting himself:

“One must live well to know what living is!”

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