Dienststelle Marienthal app for iPhone and iPad
Developer: Andreas Magdanz
First release : 02 Dec 2009
App size: 61.27 Mb
The redesigned iPad optimized version, comming with a documentary film from the formal and since 2005 destroyed shelter system.
Available September 2011.
Marienthal Government Bunker – monograph on a building by Andreas Magdanz
The first and perfectly animated photography book on your iPhone.
FULL PAGE REVIEWS:
- New York Times, 2004, "Pictures at the Hotel Armageddon",
"......There are 25,000 doors in the bunker complex at Marienthal, only 38 of which open to the world outside. Among the hundreds of rooms where the sun never shone are 897 offices and conference areas and 936 sleeping cubicles. Canteens, showers, medical areas, a printing shop, a hair salon, a television studio and — most touchingly — a post office were provided for the inhabitants, along with two large bays for bicycles, the chief form of transportation around the nearly 12 miles of galleries and tunnels........"
- TAZ, 2001,"Andreas Magdanz - The German Government Bunker in Marienthal",
"....The Marienthal bunker, codenamed »Rose Garden” for cosmetic or cynical reasons, is the most extensive construction in Europe, if not world-wide. One cannot really use the word architecture to describe it since the rooms inside the bunker are purely functional, whereas the exterior is camouflaged in the guise of a peaceful vineyard. For this reason, it was engineers and not architects who were involved in erecting this monstrosity of German perfection....."
- Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2000, "The End of the End",
".....What was the Cold War? A never-ending series of military exercises? A collective terminal madness? A real threat to humanity? As you travel on the electric vehicle through the bunker tunnels beneath the Ahr vineyards you finally understand how state secrets work: Like all myths - political, economic, and religious - they are composed of fantasies of fear, behind which there is nothing other than the force of authority organised in administrative procedures......"
- Frankfurter Rundschau, 2000, "No Future for the German Government Bunker",
".....He suddenly had the privilege of taking a close look at this »vacuum of social, historical and aesthetic history”. Having been captivated by the inexplicable, Magdanz took the bull by the horns and published his book at his own expense, organised its marketing, made a video film as well, and set up his own webpage (www.dienststellemarienthal.de)......"
- International Herald Tribune, 2001, "Cathedrals of the Cold War,
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2001, "Kathedrale des Kalten Krieges,
- De Telegraaf(Dutch), 2001, "Regiringsbunker Bonn ontmanteld",
- Jungle World(German), 2001, "Just in Case Something Happens"
- Humboldt 133, Goethe Institution, South America, 2001 "Un edificio que no tiene rostro"
...and more Reviews in more than 60 European Newspapers and Magazines, on TV and Radio. You will find excerpts of the Media on the Website of Andreas Magdanz.
"...one of the most important Photobooks ever", mentioned by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger in "The Photobook: A History - Volume 2".
What the photographs might fail to provide can be seen in a supporting one-hour video film(not included, downloadable - www.andreasmagdanz.de/shop) In a range of sequences, Magdanz leads the observer through endless cathedral-high corridors and arched tunnels, producing a feeling of vertigo stemming from the monotonous movement, as if a violent jaw is about to open up, but naturally less abstract than the »Canal” video by Fischli/Weiss. This aggravating movement through the bunker is accompanied by dull echoes or hissing noises, caused by the heavy doors, weighing tons, as they slowly close, or by the ventilation system, or what is left of it.