The Design Panoptikum in Berlin is the creepy industrial museum everybody has been looking for. What appears to be an ordinary storefront on the ground floor of a grey apartment block on Torstraße is actually a bizarre collection of 3,000 historical objects and curiosities from the worlds of film, aviation, medicine, sports, construction, and household goods. Described as a Museum of Extraordinary Objects, it looks like a Kraftwerk album come to life, with its display of retro medical equipment and mechanical mannequins paired with everyday items.
If you’re brave enough to visit this place, owner Vlad Koornev might give you a personal tour of his design museum/house of horrors. He has described his collection as “50% about the visitor” in that he wants people to look at objects differently, not just visually but philosophically as well, so that by the time they step out into the reality of Berlin’s streets, their heads should be spinning (no, not like this, silly).
