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The first thing I remember about Berlin, apart from the confusion of Tegel, is a ruin towering over the street: the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The church was originally opened in 1906. It was bombed during the war, in 1943, and was something of a loose end for a decade. The architect and artist Egon Eiermann rebuilt the church from 1959 to 1963. He wanted to demolish the ruins of the bombed church, but he caved to public resistance and left the original tower standing. The tower has been preserved in its bombed state and Eiermann built a cluster of buildings around it, including a new chapel and a new bell tower. The façades of these new buildings consist of concrete lattices inset with stained glass panels. It's really something to see during the day but it is also lit up at night. In the preserved spire is a cross of nails from Coventry. The church, a beautiful and ugly trace of the war, is surrounded by consumer culture and the bustle of the city. It is flanked to the north by Budapester Straße and the Bikini Berlin mall. To the east is the Europa Center, famous for its giant spinning Mercedes-Benz logo that lights up in the night. An H&M and a Forever 21 sit to the south, just across Ku'damm and Tauentzienstraße, two of the famous shopping avenues of former West Berlin. To the west is the Waldorf Astoria hotel. To the north west, along Budapester Straße, is the Bahnhof Zoo, which was the only long-distance railway station in West Berlin. I know the church has five buildings, not three. But I decided after a month of fiddling with pieces that they would be intractable to build with any degree of accuracy at this scale, particularly the one next to the belfry. Also, having walked past the church around a hundred times, I had entirely forgotten about the small buildings so I don't think it is essential to include them. See a couple more pictures on flickr. All renders were done using the wonderful Bluerender software. Thanks for looking!
