Art, Faith & Death: Unusual Churches & Crematoria in Berlin
This city is just full of surprises: To a newcomer here, a lot of Berlin’s ways might even come as a bit of a shock, until one gets used to it. Among these shocking things, is seeing spaces with a very particular context, such as churches, not serving solely their religious purpose as gathering points of worship, but instead being used for other cultural activities: exhibition spaces, concert stages, theatre stages. For most other parts of the world that’d be unthought of: but Berlin is just like no other city, haven’t we established that already? In terms of, well, everything; and churches confirm it.
Spaces so holy, designed to create awe and devoutness, connected with faith or death, both parts of life that are hard for us to conceive, find other, secular uses, and thus step off their high place somewhere closer to us. That’s got a lot to do with the city’s tendency of giving a new life to things old and abandoned: from the secondhand scene being so strong here, people reuse every chance they get, to abandoned places that often become art spaces, to churches and crematoria being reused, having a new life, and gain new meaning. A collection of such spaces, that caught our eye somehow, either with their design, or with the whole new use, we are about to present to you 🙂