Sketches for a new urban quarter

Book, Marc Kocher, Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1999

Marc Kocher creates the vision of a new urban quarter on the grounds of the former central livestock halls of Berlin, located at Eldenaer Straße in the south-east of the district of Prenzlauer Berg, on around fifty pages. The photos and drawings combine to form a veduta of a small city: bird’s eye view photographs, drawings of the market halls and gates of the slaughterhouse with its brick architecture, with an aura of sacrality. The linking of interior and exterior through covered squares is reminiscent of the historical city of Berlin and its reforming qualities: the courtyards of the tenement blocks of the early 20th century with their green spaces, the nearby estates of Bruno Taut and the lavish façades of the bourgeois apartment buildings.