12 Juni 2012

Began the day at the Memorial to Fallen Soldiers. The building that houses this memorial is the old guard house and doesn't really seem symbolic or connected to what it's representing at all. Once you step inside however, the message is clear. The figure of a mother holding her dying son is meant to show you the heartache a family feels when someone dies fighting for their country. Its sadness definitely gets its message across.

We then continued on to the German History Museum and got to see I.M. Pei's addition to the building. You turn the corner to find a glass spiral staircase leading up into the exhibits, and a heavy building behind it. It housed exhibitions on fashion, Freidrich the Great, DDR, and all of Germany's history. I enjoyed seeing I.M. Pei's addition because it is not something I would typically expect to see done by him. While the building does use a lot of glass, it is not nearly as much as some of his projects. It is a heavier building of concrete and stone which is uncharacteristic of Pei.