When it comes to the art landscape of Berlin， the first thing that comes to the mind may be the world-class art museums and numerous private art galleries all over the city. However， Berlin is more than a gigantic repository of stationary artworks. The vibrant city also buzzes with young artists busily trying out new ideas. Some of them are in Berlin not for chasing fleeting fame overnight. They are there for a space where they can create without restraints. It just happens that Berlin has many deserted buildings in downtown and artists have turned them into studios. The best known is the Kunsthous Tacheles.

The department store came into being in 1906 and soon went bankrupt before it was turned into a showroom for exhibiting and marketing electrical products. One of the first German television transmissions took place in the building in the 1930s. During World War II French war prisoners were imprisoned there in the attic. The building was seriously damaged in air raids in the war. After the war， the building remained derelict under the rule of East Germany. After the German reunification， the Berlin government decided to demolish it. In February 1990， two months before the scheduled detonation， an organization of artists occupied the building. As the result of a series of discussions between the city government and the organization， the building was handed over to the artists. They turned it into a paradise of art studios.

Today， it is no longer an illegally occupied building. It has a legal status and is home to the collective of artists. The collective pays rents to the property owner， but it declines both government subsidies and business grants. It makes money by holding exhibitions， concerts and poetry recitations. Artists need only to pay for water and electricity bills. For young artists and art students， the building is their paradise.

But the building is still in extremely poor repair. Tacheles presents a badly damaged faccedil;ade as if tainted by smoke. The front wall flaunts TACHELES carelessly written in lime. The word is punctuated with a few red crosses. The whole building looks like a field hospital just after a bombing.

The art scenes were overwhelming once I stepped inside the building. The walls along the staircases were covered with layer upon layer of giraffes， giving me an impression that the wall would collapse any moment under the pressure of the giraffes. After a rusty iron-bar gate， I entered a corridor with separate studios on both sides. Peeping into these rooms， I saw collages or oil paintings heavily covered with dust， a refrigerator painted green in a corner， a broken lamp on a steel wire across the room， a heap of broken glass on the floor， etc. Those familiar with modern art would pay close attention to such artworks. I ran into two visitors studying a chair nailed onto a wall with a caption beside it: “happiness and pain”. They figured out the meaning of the chair on the wall: happiness derides from the realization that you finally have a chair to sit and then pain is trigged off by your fear that the slipshod chair may crash at any moment.

In another room， I saw a pile of finished oil paintings in a corner; on the desk was an album of artworks， apparently printed at the expenses of the artist himself and marked with a price for sale; beside the desk was a threadbare spring mattress and an ancient hi-fi system. All of a sudden， a swivel dentist chair rose out of the trash furniture showing the artist reclining in it， wearing a pair of dark glasses as if waiting for a dentist who would never come.

Later I asked the house master why the collective did not refurbish the building. She said that it had inadequate fund to launch such an ambitious project. With great pride， she remarked it was exactly where the glamour and glory of Tacheles was. “Just think where else you can find another building as dilapidated and proud as this one?”□