Berlin’s Minimalist Post-War Architecture

Berlin has lots of these post-war housing estates across the whole city. When I was a child I had friends living in these post-war housing estates and we used to play there and ride our bikes. During the summer, I would spend every day in the public open-air bath located basically midst all these tall buildings.

For me they, therefore, have a lot of history, they are part of my childhood, but they are also part of Berlin’s history which makes Berlin such a special place. About ten years ago I left Berlin and moved to Copenhagen, but I return on a regular basis and all my latest projects revolve around my old hometown.

I was never really into art as such when I was younger, I wasn’t interested in who made a piece of artwork, but I liked to look at it and I knew that someone made it with a purpose in mind. It was by pure accident that I ended with a camera in my hands and with time I learnt to channel my interest for simplicity through that medium. It gives me satisfaction as I can work in projects, which combine my visual interests with my interest in sociology and architecture.

With “Stacked” I wanted to isolate these buildings and put them next to each other to have a closer look, to see what they look like on a sunny day and when there no distractions in your view. An important aspect was also to remove any hint on the social demographics. You cannot see whether they are located in a social hot spot area or in an idyllic park next to a university and you don’t get to see who is living there. You are left with the building only, which I think gives you space to actually see the building. How it is built and what features it has. I often find these buildings as being part of a different world as you have a lot of people densed in a relatively small area. All these housing estates have a different feel to them and the people there probably have somewhat different habits as to how the spend their lives. That’s what I draw my inspiration from.

All pictures were shot with a camera and a tele-lense to get this flat angle to the buildings. I took quite a lot of research and time to find buildings where I can have a clean shot. And then it was still difficult sometimes. I ended up on roof tops, balconies or parking decks in order to avoid trees and neighboring buildings. Also I shot on sunny and cloudless days.

More info: maltebrandenburg.com

Berlin's Minimalist Post-War Architecture