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The “mouse bunker”: the building used to be an animal testing laboratory
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / imago images / Joko
For some it is a gray concrete pyramid, for others an icon of brutalism. The Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology at the Berlin Charité, known as the “Mäusebunker”, is becoming a model procedure for the State Monuments Office. The earlier animal laboratories were originally intended to be demolished. Because of the eye-catching architecture, however, the preservation of the unusual building was advertised at home and abroad. The iconic exterior has now become an internationally known calling card, according to a message in the cultural administration.
With the model process, possibilities for the preservation of the building are now to be shown.
It is also about questions of a contemporary and monument-compatible conversion.
As a first step, expert opinions and planning materials for the "mouse bunker" were published on a website.
At the beginning of the year the building was placed under a preservation order.
The institute is a total work of art, "a building of international standing and an important contribution to the 'organic' and 'brutalist' architecture of post-war modernism," the reasoning said.
ime / dpa