Wolfgang Jokisch, Johannes Uhl · 1974 · Berlin
Stand on Adalbertstraße under the concrete bridge with the Zentrum Kreuzberg sign.
Wolfgang Jokisch and Johannes Uhl built this twelve-storey curved block at Kottbusser Tor between 1969 and 1974. It holds 367 flats, shops and two car parks, and was planned as a buffer for a motorway that was never built.
The NKZ came out of West Berlin's first urban renewal programme. Tenant turnover and empty shops followed, and the protests helped shape the gentler renewal policy of the IBA 1987. Its heavy concrete form links it to brutalism.