Berlin: Where the Funk Lives on Makeovers Turn Places Abandoned Since 1989 into Quirky Apartments

Posted on: Friday, 10 October 2008, 06:00 CDT By Liza Foreman Finding a commercial or cultural use for quirky properties abandoned after reunification has long been a feature of the German capital. Think of the East German post office, in use as a museum, or the Wertheim department store, which became the techno club Tresor. Now, two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, adventurous residents have been following suit, creating unusual residences from some of the city's most mundane buildings. One of the most recent additions to Berlin's real estate scene is a home created inside a waterside warehouse building with a crane on its roof; another is a penthouse stuck on top of a World War II bunker. In 2003, Christian Boros, the owner of an advertising agency with offices in Berlin and Wuppertal, Germany, acquired the... [read full story]