Mäusebunker or the Research Institutes for Experimental Medicine was planned in 1971 and completed in 1981 as a purpose built facility for animal experimentation. The construction of the building ballooned from 4 million to 126 million Deutsche marks and opened to a general dislike from the public because of it’s grim purpose and the cold, evil aesthetic of this brutal, monolithic laboratory.
It has opened and closed multiple time in the last decades. In 2010 it closed for 10 years and was under threat of demolition the whole time. It was renovated and reopened in 2020 just to be shut down again in the same year for the last time.
Fortunately, the attention of brutalist architecture enthusiasts and preservationists was caught and enough noise was made that the government listed this building as a cultural heritage site in May 2023 protecting it for the foreseeable future.
It is such an interesting building, when you stand towards the front it looks like an angular battleship stranded upon land. The blue exhaust tubes all sticking straight out like cannons pointed at the horizon. The triangular windows, looking like port holes, looking forward. It is austere and evil looking. It is angular and both rough and sleek. It is evil in style and intention and it stirs up a feeling of wonder and unease.
I would make a great gallery space and because the building is full of little rooms with triangular windows, would make excellent artist studios. Whatever it’s use ends up to be, if they’re able to repurpose the building and give it a new life it will be good to see this building house something a little less sinister and ghoulish.
The Mäusebunker, location in Stieglitz, Berlin was only a few minutes from the Bierpinsel, which I shared photographs of in a previous post. In one afternoon I visited and photographed both brutalist buildings and then continued onto Natur-Park Südgelände, a train depot that was abandoned in the 1950s (when the city of Berlin was divided by the Wall) and reclaimed by nature. More on this coming later…
While doing research about the building I came across a trailer for a short-form documentary, Battleship Berlin. It was shown at a few film festivals and may have helped in the campaign to save this building.
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