Bonjour Tristesse
Photographs by Esra Akcan
In 2009 and 2012, Esra Akcan visited Wohnhaus Schlesisches Tor in Berlin, a project by Álvaro Siza also known as Bonjour Tristesse (after graffiti that appeared on the building’s facade immediately before it opened). The photographs that appear below, of a second-floor corner apartment, interstitial spaces, and the building in context, were taken as part of her ongoing research into urban renewal and architecture at the intersection of global politics.1
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See, for example, “A Building with Many Speakers: Turkish ‘Guest Workers’ and Álvaro Siza’s Bonjour Tristesse Housing for IBA-Berlin,” in The Migrant’s Time, ed. Saloni Mathur (New Haven: Clark Institute and Yale University Press, 2011), 91–114. Akcan is currently working on a book titled Open Architecture that also addresses the project. ↩
Interior of a second-floor corner apartment in Wohnhaus Schlesisches Tor (Bonjour Tristesse), Berlin, 2009
Interior of a second-floor corner apartment, 2012
Interior of a second-floor corner apartment, 2012
Interior of a second-floor corner apartment, 2012
Interior of a second-floor corner apartment, 2009
Corridor, 2009
Corridor, 2009
Facade, 2012
Street with Bonjour Tristesse in background, 2009
Álvaro Siza. Standard floor plan and elevations, Bonjour Tristesse, c. 1980. ARCH274283
Several of Akcan’s photographs, as well as the drawing by Siza above, were included in our exhibition Corner, Block, Neighbourhood, Cities. Álvaro Siza in Berlin and The Hague. Akcan was also a 2008–2009 Visiting Scholar here.
