Overview

“The GSW Highrise in the Kreuzberg area of Berlin made the architects Sauerbruch and Hutton well known. The concave slab highrise of 18 floors has hundreds of windows, each with a blind colored slightly different from the next, producing a monumental composition that changes daily or even within the hour as the users of the building raise or lower them, partially or completely, as shade from the sunlight. The structures of these two architects appeal to me. They are bent on ecological efficiency, and they are lavish with their ideas. They are playful without being arbitrary. They are bound to the formal language of modernity without being dogmatic.”—Harun Farocki