Protruding ventilation pipes and slit windows make the 1981 building resemble a warship Florian Monheim/Alamy
A group of residents including the art dealer Johann König and the architect Arno Brandlhuber have campaigned successfully to save at least for the time being two Brutalist buildings in south-west Berlin that the Charité, the city’s university hospital, planned to demolish.
One of the buildings, nicknamed the Mäusebunker (Mouse Bunker), served as the Charité’s Institute for Experimental Medicine. For many years, scientists carried out experiments on animals in its laboratories. With narrow slit windows and protruding ventilation pipes that resemble guns, it looks like a warship. Designed by Gerd and Magdalena Hänska, it was completed in 1981. The building is connected by an underground tunnel to a second concrete building also threatened with demolition, completed in 1974.