Architectural Guide Berlin by Dominik Schendel
DOM Publishers, 2016
Paperback, 192 pages

In November last year I traveled to Berlin to cover the World Architecture Festival (WAF) for World-Architects (some highlights are here). Previously I'd visited Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart, but this was my first trip to Germany's capital, Berlin ? a much overdue visit. To plan for what to see in what little time I had outside of WAF, beforehand I bought a used book covering projects completed in the 1990s. With so much construction taking place this century, that dated guidebook was missing plenty of what I wanted to see, even obvious projects like Libeskind's Jewish Museum. So I was pleased to learn that DOM was giving out a Berlin guide to WAF attendees. Compared to other DOM guidebooks (I've reviewed those on Venice, Pyonyang, Japan and Taiwan), this guide to Berlin is shorter, more selective, but also more thematically honed.
There are many consistencies with other DOM guidebooks: the simple cover, the paper size, the page layout and graphic design, the helpful maps and aerials, and the presence of QR codes linked to maps for easy smartphone navigation. But whereas the guides to modern and contemporary architecture in Brazil, Venice, and other countries and cities present hundreds of buildings, Dominik Schendel's guide to Berlin is structured as four tours and is therefore limited to buildings sited along their routes. Each walking, biking or driving tour tackles a theme,...