Except for its silent monument to the Berlin Wall, the south side of Bernauer Strasse has long been a unused grassy lot of interest only to those picking wild flowers or walking their dogs. The apartment houses that once crowded along the busy thoroughfare were torn down when the hated wall was pushed through this residential neighborhood and later, after the wall itself was brought down, the area was used only to remember those who had lost their lives attempting to cross it.

But time heals all wounds, even those of cities, and so the grassy lots have begun to give way to spiffy new apartment projects and planned expansions of the Chapel of Reconciliation and the Berlin Wall Documentation Center. The new architecture uses this opportunity to redefine the housing model, with projects by SDU and X-TH framing their planned spaces to create a compact, yet lighter, more open urban fabric.

Welcome to the Life Strip.