The ‚Forum of Water‘ was an alternative design to the increasingly discussed option of rebuilding the Schloss on Berlin’s Museum Island. It dates from 1993 − shortly after reunification, a time requiring not old but new national symbols. It was concerned with a reconstitution of the surrounding urban spaces, urban rooms. Schinkel’s dynamic (practically Greek) choreography between Bauakademie, Altes Museum and the Schloss itself.

A hovering building (underside 22 m high) with the ground below removed, the ground free, flooded, accessible only by pedal- and tourist boat. The geometry of the hovering Schloss pushes exactitude (an exclusively square exactitude) into new realms. The form is one of the building blocks of fractal geometry, a Menger sponge (3D Sierpinski-carpet) − nine squares with missing centre. First iteration = urban scale, second iteration = courtyard scale, third iteration = window scale etc).

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Berlin, Mitte, ‚Das Schloss‘ Exhibition 1993