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Aerodynamic Park

ADLERSHOF

A stroll through Adlershof’s Aerodynamic Park could leave you wondering if aliens have landed in Berlin. The site’s bizarre structures were built in the early ’30s, when it was home to the German Research Institute for Aviation. Active until the end of WWII, it was stripped of its equipment by Soviet forces.

It’s the dull silvery sheen of the large wind tunnel that first catches your eye as you head up Brook-Taylor-Strasse. With an entrance like the opened hatch of a spaceship, its concrete shell still bears the grain of the wooden planks used to mould it. Inside, a giant fan once blasted winds of up to 200km/h against the aircraft parts being tested inside. A note in Russian on its side advises Soviet soldiers that it has been ‘Checked. No mines.’

With twin chimney-like towers, the soundproofed engine testbed was used to test engines and propellers to their limits. The towers helped direct the airflow in such a way that noise from tests inside was muffled on its way out. Now the only sounds come from the meeting center for students of the Humboldt University, which owns the Aerodynamic Park site. The Trudelturm, with a staircase winding its way round its pepper-pot-like exterior, was a vertical wind tunnel. Inside, model aircraft were dropped into an upward airstream to research the phenomenon of spin. Its bullet-scarred concrete is a remainder and reminder of its capture in April 1945. Set slightly apart from the other buildings, the engine altitude testbed looks positively normal by comparison. Beneath its gently undulating series of barrel roofs, aircraft engines were tested for performance at different simulated altitudes.

On the lawn between the buildings, collections of mini red flying saucers screech and burble away to themselves – an art installation called AIR BORNE,by Stefan Krüskemper. Recordings from the German radio archive have been processed by Karlheinz Essl into the unnerving soundscape of otherworldly noises that emerge from the red ellipsoids. RC

Newtonstr., 12489; S Adlershof

Map: Overview G4