Berlin and its backyards. They are always go deeper than one would expect. While Berlin never feels like a small city, it is fairly hard to assess its size because of how some of its boroughs are build. Between seemingly closely connected streets, there is this space in between. The unseen, unknown space.

Unless you knock on the door.

There are many of those gigantic backyards especially in Mitte. In the Scheunenviertel, the area between south of Torstraße, where today many of the prominent galleries, restaurants and bars are now part of a growing establishment, the streets are narrower than in most other parts of Berlin. It feels somewhat stocky in comparison. This heavily distorts the spatial awareness of the area, because so much is hidden behind those big, wooden doors of those late 19th century, early 20th century housing blocks.

This area, before the war, was heavily populated by Jews and the working class. Not out of a specific sense of aesthetic, but out of pure necessity for more density, Mitte’s Scheunenviertel has been build quite differently.

After the wall came down, those areas where especially popular for the illicit, the creative who strongly shaped the identity of an area in an amazing pace of transformation. Today’s 150 Euro per square meter real estate places used to be underground party locations just 10 years ago.

Today, the people who arrived back then, who organized the early days electro parties in those squatted are the ones building new companies, opening galleries, shaping the perception of Berlin around the world.