Bergfried Center: for an Active Street Level

The Bergfried Center opens during the festival for locals, businesses and international visitors: a temporary meeting point with a book café, which doubles as a place for hosting exhibitions, workshops and discussions. It showcases the residential building complex between Bergfriedstraße and Wassertorplatz in Berlin’s Kreuzberg – a distinctive 1970s concrete building by Werner Düttmann. Many people live here, and the ground floor is partly used by small businesses of many kinds. An exhibition shows private and public spheres of the complex as two distinct sites, as is typical for post war buildings. During our 3-day-event, the space in between gradually fills: in workshops, the Bergfried Center uses a leftover space in the ground floor, and features four parts. The book-café contains a table curated by Books People Places, an exhibition explores the invisible connections experienced by every resident and user in everyday life, a walk explores around and through the building, and an evening talk reflects the themes of the Bergfried Center.