Funkhaus Berlin: Bauhaus Architecture, World-Class Acoustics in Saal 1, and Soundscapes on the Spree
Rising on the industrial banks of the Spree in Oberschöneweide, Funkhaus Berlin stands as the world's largest purpose-built analog recording and broadcast facility. Board the historic Tram 21 eastward through the post-industrial sprawl of Rummelsburg and Oberschöneweide, and you will eventually alight at an unassuming dead-end loop on Nalepastraße. Walk past rusting wrought-iron rail spurs and weeping willows bordering the Spree river, and suddenly the quiet surrenders to a monumental complex of red clinker brick, soaring steel-framed windows, and sweeping travertine colonnades. You are standing before Funkhaus Berlin: the legendary, monolithic broadcasting headquarters of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), and today one of the world's most revered temples of acoustic engineering, avant-garde music, and riverside subculture. Sprawling across more than 130,000 square meters of riverbank, this mid-century architectural behemoth was conceived during the height...