Alternative Realities: The Architecture of Berlin's Nightclubs

With the television tower shimmering like a disco ball above the city, Berlin has become the Mecca for partygoers in recent decades. It offers an exhilarating nightlife for fans of electronic music from around the world. The clubs where these parties take place have gained importance lately, as evidenced by a possible UNESCO World Heritage status. Rooted in underground culture, they exhibit unusual characteristics that this work addresses.

Drawing on texts, images, plans, documentation, interviews, and empirical data, this text explores some of the concepts underpinning the design of these clubs. By focusing on a selected group of clubs that are or have been part of this culture, the research project examines how discrete social and cultural phenomena manifest in built form and how they may evolve in the future given the current state of the city.