Page 56 - AIT0418_E-Paper

REDINGS ESSAY

AFTER THE

MILLENNIUM

An Essay by Benjamin Reding

N ineteen years. That’s a lot of time. Or not? The time from the first cry to graduation. became trendy, became “in”. The offices are total works of art, brilliant treasures, full
A lot of time. The maturing time of a 99er Château Margaux, purchase price 3,990
of hand-made unique items, from the door handles to the ceiling spots. The money from
euros. The ideal time. Just slightly more than four terms of office for Angela Merkel. A the investors but also the euphoria as to the future before the turn of the millennium
lot of time. Or not enough? As the time a marriage lasted, it would not yet be worth a made it possible. Wouldn’t it be something to simply set out and look how the visions
celebration and no company employee would already be given the gold watch after 19 of 1999 have stood the test of reality. The designs are elaborate, the workmanship valu-
years. Little time. Nineteen years, that something in-between somehow, not yet history, able, something like that is not thrown away. I drive off.
not set in stone and bound in leather, published after historians analysed it for getting First destination: Licht Kunst Licht, lighting-design office, Berlin-Kreuzberg, architect:
the creeps, ridiculing or forgetting and yet no longer a part of the here and now, still Edwin Smida. One cannot get inside. A steel gate bars the entrance. So, ringing the bell
alive, still within emotional reach. The presents from the one but last Christmas, do we somewhere and pretending. I announce: “Parcel delivery”. A buzz and I’m in the court-
want to remember them? yard. A good thing that AIT not only precisely lists the location, the architect and the

Foto: Friedrich Busam Foto: Benjamin Reding

Die vierte Adresse: Werbeagentur Publicis, Berlin-Mitte, Architekten: Katrin von Mallinck rodt und Maud Winkler-Momberger, vor 19 Jahren (links) und heute (rechts)

Nineteen years ago, in October 1999, AIT published an article on current office design client but always also publishes the layouts. The office must have been in the rear build-
with the title “Vision und Wirklichkeit”. It was the time of the New Economy, of global- ing, maybe on the fourth floor, to the right of the staircase. “Licht Kunst Licht?” “They
ization, of the dotcom bubble. It was before the turn of the millennium, people were moved out, a long time ago already”. The elderly gentleman shuffles with shopping bags
expecting something new, big, like never before. So did AIT. It demanded “visions for across the courtyard. “Do they still exist … I mean, somewhere else?” He shrugs his
the next millennium” and emphatically outlined the main features of the “new office shoulders. “Look on the internet”. I knock on the door, tentatively on the fourth floor.
architecture”: “Thinking with a vision means overcoming schemata and developing No bell, just a sticker with the names of the flat-sharing community. Nobody opens.
something really new. We prove this with the office spaces of a special kind shown in “I wanted to become Germany’s most famous designer”. Mr Smida leans against the
this issue. Here visions have become reality. Here worlds of experience are being conference table and smiles. He looks young, much younger than the fifty he is. He
designed that show that reality can be lively and diverse in the office.” Then the issue became something else: one of Germany’s most important lighting designers. He
showed examples: a lighting design firm, a creative agency, an internet service provider, worked for Licht Kunst Licht whose first office he designed at the time. “I came directly
an advertising agency, all of them in Berlin. The capital started to establish itself, from university, wanted to show what I could do. And I also wanted to make it into AIT

056 • AIT 4.2018