Monthly Archives: July 2012

The Görlitzer Crater

One usual weekend program for Berlin is to sit around in Görlitzer Park, drink beers and have talks with friends while enjoying the Summer breeze. There is a huge crater somewhere in the middle where we used to settle – it is a nice spot covered with grass, but it’s quite a mystery as well: how did it get there? Was it really a bomb during the wars as other Berlin expats say?


Traces from the past: office building of the Görlitzer Bahnhof railway station

Because today it’s raining cats and dogs out there and we don’t have the option to go out anyway, I finally had the time to do my research on the topic. Who knows? Maybe I can end those rumors completely, or, if there was a bomb, I can tell when and where it actually went off.

Well, the story starts with Görlitzer Park being a railway station before.


Gleisplan from 1925 and Google Maps from 2012

The railway career of the now park and seasonal football stadium started in 1867, and lasted until 1951 – when all the trains going through West-Berlin from here were departing from Osktreuz instead. Although according to maps, the station was already demolished by 1954, it actually remained relatively undisturbed for ten more years, until the Wall has been built up and all the hopes for a reconstruction were gone. (More about the history on Wikipedia.)


The station in 1879, 1946, and people collecting wood in 1975, to use for heating their homes.
Images by © Landesbildstelle Berlin

Berliners are famous of reusing whatever they can – and traces of the railway station can still be found all over the park: some goods sheds and office buildings are used until this day, and there is a swimming bath built on the site of the former station. The old railway bridge offers a foot path to cross the Landwehrkanal and walk to Treptow.

I wanted to know about the crater though, and at this point it could have been a service pit as well as something made by the rumored bomb. The Wikipedia article mentioned the Görlitzer Tunnel that was opened to the public in 1910 – an underpass, connecting Oppelner Strasse and Liegnitzer Strasse. Suits well: it’s right where the crater is – was it maybe bombed?


The Görlitzer Tunnel in 1989 and the crater in 2012 (archive photo from the German WikiPedia)

The photo above shows the tunnel in 1989 in a rather good state, and according to the article the tunnel remained in use until the early 90s. When the area has been developed into the Görlitzer Park of today though, as soon as pedestrians had public access to the park, the tunnel became redundant – and later that decade it has been destroyed, creating the mysterious crater.

No bombs from the World War involved.

Sources of information used in this post, that were not directly linked (yet): 3D models of the station, Senate Department for Urban Development

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Touchscreens with something more to touch

Right after we got used to touchscreen keyboards and threw away our old devices full off buttons, a company wants to bring those keys back. Tactus Technology invented a user interface, where completely transparent physical inputs rise up from the touch-screen surface on demand, all controlled by the applications.

Tactus Technology Introduction from Tactus Technology Inc. on Vimeo.

One could say that for everyday users it’s completely useless to have buttons or physical feedback while typing: most of the people even switch off the haptic feedback while typing on Android. Nevertheless, it could be of use for people who need assistance, or work in a less ideal environment – say, a DJ playing and using an iPad on the stage, and with the Tactile Layer finds all the controls without looking.

We will see. Based on what the guys write on their webpage, the technology could come into our lives as soon as by tomorrow:

With the buttons enabled, users can push and type or rest their fingers as they would with any physical button or keyboard. When the buttons are disabled, they recede into the screen, becoming invisible and leaving a smooth, seamless flat touch-screen with maximum viewing area.

Our Tactile Layer technology easily integrates with today’s touchscreen-based devices (smart phones, tablets, personal navigation systems, gaming devices, etc.) by simply replacing the front layer of the display stack, known as the “lens”, “window” or “cover glass”. Our dynamic Tactile Layer component is the same thickness as the layer it replaces and requires no change to the underlying display or touch sensor.

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Coca-Cola cans and the new minimal

In general it’s worth watching how big brands redesign their products from time to time. Whether it’s carmakers applying facelifts to their vehicles, or Coca-Cola tailoring its image for a new audience, the design trends they follow can be determined with great accuracy.


London 2012 and Summer 2011 cans (images from DesignBoom and TheAWSC)

The idea for this blog post came from Coca-Cola’s limited-edition cans which they created for the USA team on the London Olympics 2012. Having Coke’s colors and image as a base, the graphics made full use of Transport For London’s strong corporate identity: its very minimalistic style is blended in the design as well as the original Johnston typeface.

Minimal is not completely new for Coca-Cola, last year they unveiled a summer collection that had a similar touch to it: simple silhouettes of every day objects with the company’s logo in them. That gives us a great opportunity to observe how “minimal” changed in a year.

Now, at least for London, the graphics became much softer, cleaner, the forms lack those sharp edges and tiny lines – but they are not monochrome anymore. The designers applied more shades of red, white and grey and even blue – and seem to used more tools: drop shadows, overlaying objects etc. With all these tweaks, the new can designs look cleaner and more minimal, while having significantly more detail. Quite a few magicians working there.

Called the Coca-Cola ‘Eight-Pack’, the cans designed by design studio Tucker Duckworth feature graphical silhouettes of some of Team USA’s Olympic champions, medalists and hopefuls in action within their sports.

More Coke cans from the last four decades at coke-cans.com.

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