Verberge is a modified piece of urban furniture, a subverted recycling-bottle tank. Thousands of them are standing on the streets of Berlin. The size is interesting because it seems to be as big as it can get before beeing considered architecture. Taking advantage of the mimicri, it is transformed into a small living capsule that is big enough for two people. Inside is a bed, a small kitchen and a periscope to see whether the coast is clear.
Every day, thousands of city cleaners are cutting their way through the city. They seem to be doing their best to preserve some parts of the city while rigorously erasing others. In doing so everything works as instructed. Regulations define what has to vanish and what may remain. Those parts considered inofficial apparently look accordingly and are thus deleted sooner or later. But what if one secretly adopts the official use of forms? One is successfully disregarded and silently gains every bureacratic legitimation.
The »Verberge« is a puristic living space that is hidden under the magic hood of one of Berlin’s 5000 recycling-bottle tanks. Its heart is a multifunctional floor-module which can be expanded to body size to offer dry space to sleep, store luggage and cook. Verberge is playing hide-and-seek in urban banality and ordinariness. In doing so, it’s not even hinding, every single one af us masks it out and does not want to see what one does not expect. Verberge was installed without permission at Alexanderplatz, Berlin. It lasted from August 2010 till late December 2010 when it was brought to a new location.
