Pictures from the Agency (German UBA)

[Swatopluk]

My humble office


View from the tea kitchen window

Different views of the 'Atrium', i.e. the inner courtyard







The room called the Aquarium from the ouside



Exterior shots will follow in the next post

[Sibling DavidH]

That's really interesting.  Is that your chair in #1 and #2?  And what's the brick tower-thingy in #3?  Also, whereabouts in Berlin is it?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Your humble office is yours and yours alone, plus you not only have a large window but the pleasure to avoid living in cube-ville!

[Swatopluk]

It's in Dessau. The main railway station is just beyond the street. I commute to work.
The brick tower is known as Räucherturm, so I guess it was once used for smoking meat and/or fish. I think there is now a gallery below it.
That's a standard office swivel chair and yes, it's the one I use.

The inside of the Aquarium


More inner courtyard





The passage between inner and public outer courtyard.


The outer courtyard. The auditorium is to the left


The backside (East) of the building



The former railway station and the former gas works now serve as the library



Views of the agency canteen. It was high noon and sunny. No idea why it looks so dark




The left side of the main entrance. The auditorium sits in the center between the doors


The West side of the building. The is a large terracotta crossword puzzle. The rusty towers are part of the low energy ventilation system.



Some shots from inside the canteen





And again Bruno the UBA bird. It's located near the entrance to the inner courtyard. You may be able to spot him in the third picture in this post.


Btw, the black bands on the floor are not just for aesthetics but also serve as guidelines for blind people. The handrails of the stairs have Braille markings.
The vegetation has still not fully recovered from the harsh winter.
The long poles you can spot in some pictures have birdhouses on top where smaller birds of prey nest.

[Griffin NoName]

Amazing building and surroundings. What a good place to work..... I see you have a clear desk policy.

[Swatopluk]

The cleaning service will not do its job on the furniture, if something lies there. So I usually empty the desktop in the evening and put the stuff on the shelves.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Seems like a pretty nice place to work, gotta say.

[pieces o nine]

That looks like a very nice work environment, Swato.

[Aggie]

Something is wrong here.....   



Oh! A government agency in an attractive modern building, that's what's wrong! Impossible in Canada.

[Swatopluk]

The old UBA building in Berlin (now used mainly by the administrative department) is far more normal. It is the former headquarters of the Reichsarbeitsdienst and later housed a print and publishing company.

http://www.berlin.de/imperia/md/images/bacharlottenburg-wilmersdorf/bezirk/gebaeude/umweltbundesamt/080910umweltbundesamt_004.jpg

Since building codes have changed and are to change even more in the future towards environmentally friendly practices (low energy consumption etc.), the new building (5 years old this month) was intended to serve as a role model.
Of course it was also part of the horse trade between the federal government and the Länder (states) that led to the migration of the agency from Berlin to Dessau in the first place. After the German reunion each of the 5 new Länder had to get a federal agency too and Sachsen-Anhalt got the UBA.

[Lindorm]

Very nice offices, and very interesting to finally get to see the Sanctum Sanctorum of tea-making!  

Are the ponds surrounding the building used for water treatment? I do know that some experimental environmental low-impact sites here in Sweden have used decorative ponds for grey water treatment, so I was wondering if it was a widespread practice.

[Swatopluk]

No, I fear the pond is purely decorative (although it might be used in case of fire). There is fish in there, although I am surprised about that since there is quite a large heron population in the area that could probably eat the pond empty in a few minutes.

[Swatopluk]

Now for a change some pictures from my humble (I hope) living quarters.






This is the view out my window



That camera sometimes tends to pretend it is dark when is actually blindingly bright. All those images were done at the same time

[Sibling DavidH]

Looks like a nice flat and a pleasant area.  You're like us, books piled on every surface. 

[Griffin NoName]

mmmm  books. I like books.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Is that a poster of Russian composers? (I can only read Russian Al....)

[pieces o nine]

Looks like a very pleasant space, Swato.   

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

[Swatopluk]

Is that a poster of Russian composers? (I can only read Russian Al....)

It's the Russian Alphabet with each letter represented by a famous Russian (in the widest sense, at least one not ethnic included)
Mainly artists of all kinds (writers, painters, composers etc.) plus a few historical figures (Ivan IV, Peter I...)

[Darlica]

Very nice photos! The agency building looks amazing and your office looks like a very nice place to work.

You're like us, books piled on every surface. 

Mmm. I recognise it too, only I think Swatos place is more well organized than L's and mine.  
We're book hoarders too, and plant hoarders and I'm a pen, brush and pencil hoarder amongst other things...

[Swatopluk]

It's worse than it looks. The books stand 2-3 rows behind each other. I often have to rely on intuition, if I want to find a specific book. And it is increasingly difficult to even reach the shelves because of the stacks and other material in front.

[pieces o nine]

You mean, like this?   

[Swatopluk]

Yeah, but I am at a disadvantage since I can't stack in front of the windows and prefer not to above the bed.
No intention to die by the book one night

[Griffin NoName]

IMO it's worth it. Otherwise one always wants the book that one sold/gave away. I have stacks too. I also have a friend who has >10,000 books in a tiny house. One has to navigate the stacks.

IMO it's the fault of pricing. If TV's cost the same as books, I'd have stacks of those too.

[Swatopluk]

Let's finish the way round the building

The commuter train I use

View from the train on the agency building


In front of the entrance looking South

The main entrance seen from the canteen. Sunsails are raised (mid-afternoon)

That's us and where we also boast how energy efficient the buidling is

Now walking backwards the Western front of the buidling (the green side)









Please note how the colour gradually changes from green to red tones
Finally the Eastern (orange) side going towards the back entrance

[Sibling DavidH]

Nice workplace, Swato.  Good pictures, too.  What camera do you use?

[Swatopluk]

One of these (or at least so similar I can't spot the difference)

http://www.webzeug.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/angebot_aldi_digitalkamera_medion-life-p43010.jpg
A 12 megapixel digital camera from the discounter (ALDI). About 80€ iirc.
Any picture quality is due to automatic corrections. If this was real film, it would be all out of focus and wiggly*.
The colours of the flowers are a bit pale. The shutter is also a wee bit slow, so true snapshots are out of the question.
The 'Ent' pictures I posted some time ago were actually done with the video function because any attempt to hit the gap between the trees failed despite the train going slowly. So I took a video and copied suitable frames. Uploaded the images are 640*480 anyway.
I'll probably never even try to use all the special functions even the most cheap camera has these days.

*especially because it is so light. Pressing the release leads to a significant downward move of the camera.

[Sibling DavidH]

We have an ALDI in Hereford and in Leominster.  They have some excellent offers.
Those little compacts are excellent for average conditions, my big black Fuji is only better for tricky situations.  Yes, yours is a bit light, but at 650 gr. mine gets a bit tiring at times.  The worst thing about compacts is bright sunshine when you can't see the screen.



My Pentax SLR was not as good and I've sold it now.

[Swatopluk]

I forgot the thing about the screen. That is a major issue. It's best to do the photos from a shady place. Maybe I could a playing card or something as simple to shade the screen.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Pity nowadays very few (cheap) cameras have an optical viewfinder.

My "good" camera is a Minolta dimage Z5 (discontinued) which at least has a "manual" focus control plus manual aperture & exposition controls. It has a pitiful 320 ISO which added to the poor control over manual focus makes low light pictures very challenging.

I still have a Sony P&S which takes wonderful video and has an optical viewfinder which at this point is the only option because the screen is all white now.  Hopeful to find a compact replacement I bought an Olympus fe but I haven't found a manual focus option which ends up causing many pictures with the subject out of focus with a clear background.  Oh, and I have a POS Polaroid I keep in the car just in case, nothing to write home about.

My wish is a DSLR ideally with a four thirds mounting mechanism but I haven't had the $600+ handy or the excuse for the expense...

[Sibling DavidH]

I still have a Minolta Dimage X, a tiny compact for its day and it has a viewfinder.  It's only 2MP but I've often used photos from it in lectures projected on a big screen, and they're quite acceptable.
I've been on the beach today with a Fuji S5200, quite like your Z5, (cause I don't want sand in the twist-zoom cameras) and the results are fine.  (This is cropped and resized.)

BTW sorry for hijacking your thread, Swato!

[Swatopluk]

No problem

[Lindorm]

Let's finish the way round the building

This is actually a Rns-z wagon, registered in Austria, and probably belonging to RailCargo Austria (ÖBB) or owned by steel manufacturers VoestAlpine, and used for carrying new lengths of rail. The black load bank in the flatbed is a special support for carrying rails, that can be locked on top of the lengths of rail to secure them for transport.

Caution! Immediate risk of Schienenersatzverkehr in the area! 

[Swatopluk]

You amaze me for it is true indeed. At the moment it is just changing trains but in the near future it will be busses for a few months on this section.

[Lindorm]

There's been a rake of these wagons standing around in one of the goods yards we frequent for quite a while now. The rails were used for some repair work by an infrastructure contractor, but now we seem to be unable to get rid of the empty wagons, and the bloody things are very much in the way in an already cramped yard.

By the way, the designation Rns-z translates as thus:

R -flat wagon with bogies (drehgestell-flachwagen)
n - total load capacity in excess of 60 tons
s - capable of 100 km/h when loaded
-z national subcategory, in this case indicating that the loading surface has a length in excess of 21 metres.

There, doesn't it feel better now, now that you have been properly introduced to the wagon? 

[Swatopluk]

I tried to catch the goldfish at the surface of the pond directly in front of the canteen but the shutter was again too slow



Wild greenery round the building (and flower beds near the entrance)
Colours again a bit pale on the photos







The silk trees (Albizia julibrissin) are blooming in the outer courtyard
Still some dry leaves reminding us of the hard winter. The pepper tree in the inner courtyard has not recovered at all.





The flower beds outside the main entrance through the windows. At about 1pm, do the sun is not yet shining on them


The library building (former gas works) from the East and West side



Upward shot in the inner courtyard


In memory of the people's uprising in the GDR on June 17th 1953 the flag is flying today


Autofocus not perfect today

[Sibling DavidH]

These are lovely pictures, Swato.  You're lucky to work in such pleasant surroundings.

The autofocus is only marginally out on one or two shots.  If your camera offers a choice of autofocus modes, try going for multi-point rather than spot or area, if it's not on that already.  Mind you, one or two of the slightly fuzzy ones look as if they were possibly taken through glass.  If you're standing a few feet back from the glass, the AF may register on that.

[Griffin NoName]

I can spot the goldfish !

[pieces o nine]

These pics make a nice series, Swato!

BTW: who is the  [French -?-]  mime just visible on the girder/rafter in the first courtyard photo from this set?

[Swatopluk]

It's part of the current art project (we have changing exhibitions in the public outer courtyard). Can't tell you at the moment who the artist is because our website is down at the moment.

The flower beds in late afternoon



The pepper tree did not revover from the hard winter


Eye to eye with Bruno looking quite sinister



The auditorium from above. Green even there. The building in the background is the canteen.



Totally unrelated. My commuter train was late and I walked up and down the platform when I spotted this.
I thought it was a nice motive and took two shots

[Swatopluk]

I noticed that I forgot one perspective. This is from a 3rd floor window (actually through, therefore the reflections) next to the building's main entrance.

The canteen


Shot across the entrance. The 'bunker' is the main auditorium

Although it does not look that way, the slope towards the road is quite steep. The buidling is not much affected by the noise of the heavy traffic.

[Sibling DavidH]

It's a lovely place to work.