Helvetica as World Culture, I Think Not

In modern-day Berlin architectural oddity and innovation is now an ordinary part of the booming landscape. Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, Norman Foster’s addition to the Reichstag and Frank Gehry’s DZ Bank are unarguable highlights, but there is one building that, at least on my visit, stood out as one of the most intriguing: The House of World Cultures (Haus der Kulturen der Welt). Designed in 1957 by architect Hugh Stubbin, the building’s iconic concrete roof is beautiful from afar, vertiginous up close, and surprising from any distance — delightfully offset by its massive copper-hued facade. The best way I could describe the building is as if a UFO would have landed in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange: Surreal, sensual, and slightly dangerous.