The Boxi

Boxhagener Platz: Beauty and the beast
Boxhagener Platz: Beauty and the beast

COVID-19, all that spare time and nothing to do. 

So instead of making myself comfortable at home, the TV remote in one hand, a stale beer in the other, I decided to do something radical, and get myself all tooled up with some useful qualifications for when the crisis subsides, so I’ve enrolled to do an MA in Photography, online in Edinburgh, but being Anglo-Scottish myself, that’s almost like doing it at home.

Zu verschenken: To give away
Zu verschenken: To give away

Pecha Kucha

First real project: a Pecha Kucha.

A what?

Apparently it’s a very restricted narrated PowerPoint presentation, 20 slides, each no longer than 20 seconds.

And the theme is to critically explore a local issue in a wider context.

Is that all ?!?!

Feuermelder, the "Fire alarm" bar
Feuermelder, the “Fire alarm” bar

The Boxi

After ceaseless hours researching the German press for some inspiration, and watching dozens of Danny Dorling videos on YouTube, I suddenly had an idea: Gentrification and the negative effect it has on rents, it’s a huge issue here in Berlin at the moment.

So I decided to head on over to Boxhagener Platz in Friedrichshain, one of the trendier areas of Berlin, to see what all the fuss is about, and the following are some of the photos I took of the area.

“The Boxi”, as it is locally known, wasn’t quite what I was expecting, it’s a curious mixture of recently refurbished housing and what look like squats, everything at ground level covered in a thick layer of urban graffiti, and to compound the effect of the area having all the charm of Skid Row, it was market-day on the square.

Now all I have to do is write something about it !?!?

Further Info

Danny Dorling is a professor of Geography at Oxford, and very hot on inequality and the reasons for it – so interesting, a real eye-opener.

Danny Dorling: YouTube

Danny Dorling: Website

Image Gallery





© Andrew James Kirkwood – 2024


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