Jakob Tigges is the mind behind The Berg, a creative concept for using the now closed Airport Berlin Tempelhof. As the The Berg Manifesto states:

While big and wealthy cities in many parts of the world challenge the limits of possibility by building gigantic hotels with fancy shapes, erecting sky-high office towers or constructing hovering philharmonic temples, Berlin sets up a decent mountain. Its peak exceeds 1000 metres and is covered with snow from September to March…

While big and wealthy cities in many parts of the world challenge the limits of possibility by building gigantic hotels with fancy shapes, erecting sky-high office towers or constructing hovering philharmonic temples, Berlin sets up a decent mountain. Its peak exceeds 1000 metres and is covered with snow from September to March… Hamburg, as stiff as flat, turns green with envy, rich and once proud Munich starts to feel ashamed of its distant Alp-panorama and planners of the Middle- East, experienced in taking the spell off any kind of architectural utopia immediately design authentic copies of the iconic Berlin-Mountain. Tempelhof no longer only is on Berliners’ minds: People come in flocks to – not to see the mountain. Thus, Come and see The Berg!

(Read the German version of the manifesto here.)

For some images of The Berg as well as some more background about Jakob Tigges please read on after the jump.

Some images of The Berg

Jakob Tigges studied architecture and urban design in Aachen, Rome and Berlin. He complemented his architectural education with studies in sociology of communications at ‘La Sapienza’ in Rome and Management at ‘The London School of Economics and Political Science’, supported by generous scholarship-awards of the European Commission and the German National Merit Foundation. In his academic as in his practical work Jakob pursues to combine knowledge and methods from all the three disciplines.

After graduating in the year 2000 with the award-winning thesis ‘Villa Fantozzi’ he worked in different architectural practices in the Netherlands, Spain and Germany before starting to teach urban design at the chair of Prof. ir. Kees Christiaanse / Prof. Dr. Wouter Vanstiphout at ‘Technische Universität Berlin’ in 2003. He also works on commissions as strategic or creative planner for brand consultancies and advertising agencies.

His academic domain is the formation of ‘Strategic Urban Design’, an approach that aims at analysing and experimentally deploying the ‘real forces’ of urban development. With a small English-speaking class of international students he investigates inter-city competition in Europe and transformation in the world’s biggest, culturally most diverse and fastest changing urban societies.