Image Courtesy of Lexus.
With the new Lexus UX 250h, fresh histories can be imagined and unexpected stories can be uncovered. Designed with the modern urban explorer in mind, the Lexus UX 250h is a compact crossover comprehensively upgraded with efficient hybrid technologies and a striking design. On a constant quest for discovery, Lexus invited guests on an electrified drive to Berlin’s unique Teufelsberg (literally, “Devil’s Mountain”) for a guided tour conducted by a former employee of what was once the US National Security Agency (NSA) listening station. During the tour, eyes scanned the imposing domes as curious minds pondered on what may have unfolded in such a place. Fingers traced the walls that once witnessed historical events, walls that are now the canvas for some of Berlin’s most impressive street art.
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Set upon a man-made hill rising 120 metres over Berlin’s Grunewald district, and constructed from 75,000,000 cubic metres of the city’s debris during the Second World War, Teufelsberg was for many years a symbol of a divided Germany and the struggles that came with it. While rubble from destroyed quarters in East Berlin was deposited in several areas such as Volkspark Friedrichshain or Weinbergspark in Mitte, debris from West Berlin was gathered into this one place which then became one of the city’s most advantageous viewing points. In Berlin, many sites are symbolic of the war – the Berlin Wall, the Reichstag and the Berliner Dom to name but a few – but there’s something a little different about Teufelsberg. What makes it especially interesting is that the never-completed Nazi military-technical college (Wehrtechnische Fakultät) |
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designed by Albert Speer, architect and Nazi Germany’s Minister of Armaments, lies buried beneath it. The school was built in a way that made it almost impossible to destroy, despite numerous forceful attempts to do so. The only solution was to build on top of it. On the hill’s peak sit the most eerie of domed structures, believed to have once been a part of a global network of listening stations. The Cold War relic was supposedly run by the NSA to spy on communist East Berlin. Soldiers manned this station around the clock, listening in not only on the GDR, but also on the Soviet Union and other countries behind the Iron Curtain. Over the years, many theories have emerged about what exactly happened inside the Teufelsberg listening towers, as well as the former college buried deep in the structure’s core. Aside from its fascinatingly complex and more-or-less secret history,Teufelsberg is an example of one of Berlin’s most astonishing architectural sites. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Teufelsberg was left abandoned. And while there were many plans throughout the 1990s to convert it into luxury apartments and hotels, none of them came to fruition. In its isolated vacancy, a sense of eeriness developed that still prevails despite it being frequented by visitors. Being in the space, which has been officially open to the public since 2016, feels somewhat forbidden, a thrilling adventure for anyone who enters. The site’s uneven surfaces, broken glass and scattered debris make for an exciting terrain for the most daring. Proving to be the ideal city companion, Lexus’ guests were able to drive up to the listening station towers; familiarising themselves with the UX 250h’s impressive multimedia and connectivity features while discovering the panoramic views of Berlin’s urban jungle below. What was once a symbol of division is now, much like the new Lexus UX 250h itself, a symbol of new futures: a paradise for urban exploration, where artists gather to use the concrete space as their canvas, the views as their muse. Emerging from its abandonment, Teufelsberg is now a kind of rendezvous point where creatives from all over the world meet to imagine and establish new worlds, new stories and new histories. |