Nollendorfplatz

Nollendorfplatz was once celebrated as one of Berlin’s most beautiful squares, designed by Lenné in the style of an opulent garden. In the golden 1920s era, it was a pulsating centre of culture and nightlife, cinema and theatre. Hoppla, We’re Alive! (Hoppla, wir leben!), performed at the Neues Schauspielhaus in 1927, was a “New Objectivity” play by the seminal epic theatre director Erwin Piscator, and a milestone in the history of theatre. The stage set for the play includes an innovative three story structure with seven rooms without front facade, giving the audience an X-ray view of the daily life of the actors. Few traces remain today in Nollendorfplatz of all the historic layers of theatre, gay life and counterculture.

The sculptural elaboration varies from the untreated, rough granite monolith to the interpretation of the human form. Neither gender nor skin colour can be read. The main material of the columns is granite, a common facade material in Berlin. Depending on light, viewing angle and veining of the natural stone, the figures and monoliths can create different visual effects. The figure facade is both a sculptural expression of the significance of the site and a statically effective component of the supporting structure.

Historical and contemporary actors serve as form-givers for the figures of the facade, they are parametrically abstracted and reduced to an expressive plasticity. The high degree of abstraction avoids competition with the figures of the Metropols theatre.