Between 2002 and 2009, approximately 4,900 apartments in former East Berlin were decommissioned as part of the “Stadtumbau Ost” program. The demolition efforts focused exclusively on prefab buildings in the Marzahn-Hellersdorf district. There, vacated apartments were often not re-rented to achieve the necessary vacancy rates, which led to demolition becoming the norm in urban re-development.

The three ex-posed concrete steps once belonged to a prefab building in Berlin’s Marzahn district. After the building was decommissioned, the steps found temporary refuge in a storage yard before appearing on eBay Classifieds, offered freely for anyone willing to transport them. A soundscape, layered from a passerby’s cellphone recording of the demolition, accompanies the installation. Composed by Margarita Wenzel, this sonic texture captures and repeats the singular, haunting resonance of collapse in an endless loop.