The colour print shows the futuristic restaurant building. The pure red top structure with windows is eye-catching. The lower section tapers inwards like a funnel, coming to rest on a narrow green concrete plinth with steps up the side. In the foreground, West Berlin traffic and passers-by.
Berliners like to think up witty nicknames for buildings in their city. The 47-metre-high restaurant over the metro station at Schloßstraße is known as the “Bierpinsel” (beer brush). True, the uncustomary shape might be identified with a shaving brush. And as the building had been designated as a restaurant, the name stuck.
The Tower Restaurant in Steglitz opened in 1976. It was the first building designed by this young husband-and-wife team Ralf Schüler (1930 – 2011) und Ursulina Schüler-Witte (1933 – 2022), to attract broad public attention. The angular, overhanging top was originally clad in plastic of signal red. Other design elements were facing concrete and bright paint. Visible from a distance, the tower marked the metro station under the building, designed in the same style with jazzy colours. Today this ensemble is valued as an outstanding example of post-war modernism in Berlin. Since 2017 it has been a listed building. In 2019, the State of Berlin also declared the International Congress Centrum Berlin (ICC), with which Schüler and Schüler-Witte became known worldwide, to be worthy of preservation.
Tower Restaurant Steglitz
around 1980
Colorprint
13 x 18 cm
Endowment from the architects, 2010
