Soft Opening at Choriner Höfe
I’d first heard about the Choriner Höfe by following the work of my Slab colleague Ian Warner in his inaugural article on Berlin Marketing Balls. And then one evening last November I biked past this now nearly completed property develpoer’s wet dream, rubbernecking when I noticed that there was no gate in front of the construction site’s entry drive. I didn’t hesitate to make a U-turn. Stealthily I prowled through layers of scaffolding and into the central courtyard, bobbing over scraps of wood and mud-filled potholes. What I found deeper within this nascent lifestyle community was strangely unsettling. I became overcome by an autoletic trance, a compulsive desire to record what I found. I was drunk, and I couldn’t stop taking pictures. My visual journal of this encounter follows; accompanying captions can be read by clicking to enlarge the pictures.
