Grounded Fortress (2020)
Flughafen Tempelhof ceased functioning as an airport in 2008. Since then, it has been home to various other projects and institutions, most of them impermanent. It has been an exhibition space, an office building, a university, a racing track, and even a vaccination center. However, most of the building is still underutilized. Especially at night, this massive structure is virtually empty and devoid of human activity.
Grounded Fortress captures the eerie other-worldliness of Flughafen Tempelhof at night. During these hours, this building—once the largest in Europe—becomes a hulking, inhuman monument to Berlin‘s dark past. Bathed in many sources of artificial light, its endless doorways, windows, towers, gates and passageways take on an almost alien quality. As if this seemingly endless structure was built for some strange world, other than our own.