Between 1965 and 1985 the Soviet Union launched some 57 satellites from their rocket launching base on Berlin's Alexander Platz; thus, making Berlin the single most important launch site in the Soviet block.
Following the disintegration of first the Berlin Wall and subsequently the Warsaw Pact, satellite launches from Alexander Platz ceased and the area was converted to a nature park for tourists and those who prey on such.
In 1995 Berlin City Council erected an exact replica of a satellite and its carrier rocket on Alexander Platz to commemorate the former launch programme.
The organisers of DMY Berlin have followed Berlin's rich satellite tradition with their "Satellite" fringe programme.
And under the title "DMY Berlin Sputnik" we will bring you our personal highlights from this years DMY Berlin Satellite programme.
Unwary tourists who take the wrong exit from Berlin Alexander Platz train station and head unwittingly towards Münzstrasse could be forgiven for thinking that they had passed through a worm hole and arrived in the early 1970s. Studio Ulrich Merz is not in that particular part of Berlin-Mitte, but his wonderful My Scool side table transports us back to a similar period. But that's not why we like it. What we like is the simple, effortlessness elegance of its form and the quality of the construction. Good design genuinely doesn't have to be complicated. Just good.
We can well imagine a My Scool in our hall as an Old Skool telephone table, or on our balcony supporting a late summer evening G+T.
