Berlin: Axica by Frank Gehry

Back to pictures of my Berlin trip. For two days, we had meetings in a fantastic conference center designed by Frank Gehry.  Axica, is located inside a squarish building which houses the offices of DZ Bank.  The bank is located next to the US embassy and the Brandenburg gate (Brandenburger Tor) in Pariser Platz.  To preserve the overall look of Pariser Platz, Frank Gehry provided his magic touch inside an otherwise mundane looking building.

Entrance view: Whale ? Amoeba ? It looks as if it is spitting out a torrent of reflective glass.

Alien?  Squid ?

View from the top. Sculptural clouds.

Just before the meeting.

Another conference room on the top floor with view of the city.

The conference room inside the mouth of the organism is pure Gehry –  curved surfaces everywhere.  The room is notable for its layout which dictates the seating arrangement of the room users – an oval table in the middle, a fixed podium for the speaker, 2 giant monitors,  two rows of facing balcony seats on either side of the room.  The room engulfs those who enter, and subtly invites a face-to-face discourse.  There is only a narrow entrance into this cozy space – the attendees walk in together to solve a problem, cannot leave until a resolution is reached, and walk out together into the light.

The coolest looking meeting space I have ever been !

I am one year old !

My then new iMac

Dear readers, thank you for visiting.  This blog has been running for just a little bit over a year.  Happy Birthday to me.

This is the 170th post!  How did I manage? The first post was put up on November 4, 2009 – “Hello World” was just a test.  So was the second post.  Then came our First Post with content, which was followed by pictures and stories of our trip to Mexico – some were even posted during the trip.  And we continued …  If you are curious, please visit the 100th-day index which has a list of links to those early posts.

Edgewater stormfront

No.7 train

Initially, this blog was meant to be used for keeping in touch with our friends during our move and to capture my thoughts about leaving New York.  Well, it is now becoming a travelogue and a place to discuss my pet topics.  I am surprised that my interest in blogging has not waned. Partly due to my numerous local and foreign trips, I have a lot of photos to share.  Also, I found a comfortable “voice” and it is becoming easier to write.  But do excuse me if my prose come across as pompous or the content too self-indulgent. I don’t mean to take myself too seriously here.

Priya’s

Storm King

Here are some interesting statistics:  with 169 posts, we received 5,373 views, 245 comments from friends and strangers, and unfortunately 597 spams, i.e., roughly 1 spam per 9 views, 3 spams per post and 2 spams per comment.

Shrouded

The busiest day with 86 hits was logged by a food porn post about Sushi Taro on October 7, 2010.  Apparently, a blog about DC provided a link to my post on its front page on that day.

One of the perennial favorite here is the post about HSBC’s poster campaign “Different Values”.  That post published on December 19, 2009 has now been updated to provide links to pictures of additional HSBC posters on the blog.

Cool

Come back for more, and please tell me what you think.  Or try the “Like” button (of course, only if you liked it).

Berlin: 5 nights of opulent minimalism

Grand Hyatt, like all chain hotels, look alike – the one in Berlin is an exception.  It was one of the 19 buildings built in the no-man’s land near the Wall (Postdamer Platz), by José Rafael Moneo.  The interiors was described by Wallpaper as “opulent minimalism” – I am not sure what it means or how it should feel.  But I liked my bathroom, especially the enclosed shower and tub combo, and the blueish gray marble.

There is a TV above the shaving mirror, is it necessary ?

The conference rooms are each named after one of the 19 architects.Anyone could have done those wall paintings, just need a ladder.

Just in case you are stuck in the elevator, you can sit down while waiting to be rescued.

You can tell the floor by the sculpture in the elevator lobby, this is the donut on the 6th floor- the balls and flute above is on the 3rd floor.

Eames …

Berlin cityscape

My employer organized a week-long conference in Berlin.  It was a chance for members of the group from around the world to meet each other and us in the operating center.  Of course, there were training sessions every day but they did provide entertainment and dinners at spectacular locations.  Three of the locations were even mentioned in Wallpaper’s Berlin 2010 city guide.  I stayed an extra day and explored the city.  There was so much to do, I really liked the place.  So, I will be doing a Berlin special in the next few posts.

First up is a panorama of the city which was divided by the wall until about 20 years ago.   The area near the wall (including the kill zone on the east side) was empty of buildings since the 60’s when the wall went up.  Since reunification, the empty land was reoccupied by brand new skyscrapers erected by star architects.  In the middle of it is the Postdamer Platz, a hotel, shopping, entertainment complex planned and built by a team lead by Reno Piano.  My hotel is one of the 19 buildings located in this area (see next post).  These pictures were taken from Panoramapunkt on the 24th floor of the Kollhof Tower which claims to have the fastest elevator in Europe (24 floors in 20 seconds).  Click on the image to get a bigger hi-res picture, it is worth a look, especially the one below.

German parliament building (with the glass dome) on upper left and Brandenberg gate on the lower middle-right

Tiergarten in the background, Sony center by Helmut Jahn

Postdamer platz atrium below the tent roof

Holocaust memorial by Peter Eisenman

GSW Hochhaus on the right in a distance; Detlev-Rohwedder Haus in the foreground (Europe’s biggest office building)

Peter Eisenman

Aerial views of Turkey

The day we left Antalya, the sky was cloudless as you can see from these pictures taken from the plane.  The white rectangles are greenhouses for fruits and vegetables.  Antalya is the fruit basket of Turkey.  The mountains on the far side of Antalya are impressive as they go right out to the Meditteranean.  Kemer is hidden somewhere behind them.

Click on the picture to get a bigger hi-res image.

I found a match between my picture taken from the plane with Google’s satellite map.

This is Gemlick, a small city on the edge of the Sea of Mamara, the waterway that connects the Black Sea to the Mediteranrean Sea.