Kant Triangle, Berlin – kleihues+kleihues

Kant Triangle – 1995

What genius loci could we be talking about in this place where Tingeltangel, banks and the Berlin stock exchange coexist? The district court and House of Merchants, Kempi and Trödelmarkt, Jewish Community Centre and the Künstlerhaus Fasanenstraße 13, Paris Bar and Theater des Westens. The large “cock’s comb” made of riveted sheet metal, which crowns the house and turns in the wind, greets in different directions and also in the past: greets writers in the Romanesque Café’ and the artists of the Secession. This place, where melancholy and cheerfulness balance each other out, the Kant-Dreieck is supposed to correspond pictorially.

The deliberately used playful attitude of the house “Kant-Dreieck”, which can be clearly seen in the weather vane moved by the wind, is only conceivable in this place: and the measure of unconventional behaviour, which can be experienced in the pictorial symbolism, reminds us of the unbound individual, also the dancing, which relativizes everyday reality, and which makes the life of Josephine Baker, to whom the Kant-Dreieck was dedicated, so admirable.

Address : Fasanenstrasse 81, Berlin-Charlottenburg

Architect : Prof. Josef P. Kleihues

Client : KapHag Group of Companies

Type of Use : Office and commercial building

Realization : 1992 – 1995

Competition : 1986, ( 1st prize)