Welcome to Berlin. My name is Jörg Stohmann and I'm the founder of DMY Berlin and the Berlin Design Week.
I moved to Berlin in 1993 after the war breaks down. We had a really amazing situation because half of the city breaks down, the whole economics and the whole structure breaks down.
Berlin is a never-finished city and so the living cost is not so high here, so that means that the people have time to think, that they have time to make experiments.
This is a quite comfortable situation for the designers, but we have also problems. It's not everything only easy.
We have not so much industry in Berlin. We have not so much companies who need design, but we have a lot of creative people and so the competition is really hard here in Berlin.
I think now, after 20 years, it's changed a bit. Now the money is also coming to Berlin. We can feel that the rent is going much more expensive.
The investors come, but it's also a positive side. For the designers, they get more contracts here, they have more work.
We still have a lot of free spaces and creative areas. Like here, Kreuzbeck is an old immigration area. During the time we had the war, Kreuzbeck was at the border.
So nobody wants to live in Kreuzbeck. So a lot of foreigners moved to here because it was really, really cheap.
Now a lot of creative people also come into this area. The mix is really interesting.
I like to sit here in the sun, watching the people and it's quite lazy. It's really nice that you can have this easy neighborhood so near to the center.
For me, this area is really important for my inspiration, for my ideas. We have a lot of galleries here, studios, clubs, bars, cafes.
You can start on Friday evening with your party and they continue until Monday morning.
For Berlin, it's typical. A lot of people are going out after breakfast.
Here you have the Esso 36. This was an old supermarket. In the 70s they started here with the first punk club. It's a really authentic place.
Now we will pass the Burgermeister. It was a public toilet before and now it's a really fancy burger restaurant.
Most of the people don't know that it was a toilet before.
A lot of young people come to Berlin and they think, okay, I'm now in the hot spot and I get successful here.
But after a while they find out it's a really hard fight here. If you don't go outside, you will be stuck here.
You can have a nice life here, but you have a low income and you're stuck.
And then it's really complicated to come out of this situation.
Most of the successful designers here, they're working here, they get inspiration.
There's studios here, they live here, but they're working with companies outside from Berlin and they're showing the works also outside from Berlin.
I think that's really important.
