Using virtual reality to rebuild the past, reconstructing the Zum Nussbaum restaurant.

Tags

"1920s berlin project", "second life", "Zum Nußbaum", "zum nussbaum", architecture, building, history, reconstruction, restaurant, The 1920s Berlin Project, virtual reality

—The Zum Nussbaum in 1903.

According to the media, I should be using Second Life for all sorts of wacky kinky pervy stuff, but I’ve found something a lot more exciting… time travel!

For the last 6 years I’ve been recreating a 1920s Berlin neighbourhood, in the progress gathering a wonderful community of people from all over the world who bring life into the narrow streets and small dark courtyards.

We’ll be celebrating the 6th anniversary of our sim at the end of this month and for almost all its existence we’ve managed the pay the tier, so I guess I’m not the only one who thinks Second Life has a little more to offer than what it’s reputation seems to suggest.

When I first started The 1920s Berlin Project, I realised the sim, just a tiny skybox back then, needed a hotel, a place to stay at.
I wasn’t sure anyone would want to actually rent a home and live there permanently (Oh how wrong I was), and a nice hotel where you can rent a little room to live for a few days would be more interesting.

The Zum Nussbaum building as it looked in 2010

After some research I found a nice looking building that wasn’t too big and an actual building in Berlin, with my very basic knowledge of how to build, basically walls with pictures and alpha texture windows, I recreated the first building for the sim that was based on a RL location.

Because of its age, the Zum Nussbaum has become a much loved little corner of our neighbourhood, people enjoy sitting there and chatting, having a meal and for many its tiny, dark, damp rooms were the first place they could call their own.

And although I rebuild it once or twice, it clearly was an older building.
As part of my massive “mesh Berlin campaign”, I’ve been meshing, and in many cases improving and rebuilding all the Berlin buildings from scratch.

Drawing by Heinrich Zille, 1922.

Most of the time meshing a building means that its land impact goes down but it actually looks better.
But sometimes I don’t care about the land impact and just want it to look great, even if that means the land impact goes up.
I especially feel that way when I am building something that is an actual RL building or that I just really really like.

The Zum Nussbaum (Or Zum Nußbaum) restaurant is one of those buildings.
Originally build in the 16th century, it was destroyed by bombs in 1943 and rebuild in the 1980s.
But that didn’t keep it from becoming one of Berlin’s few typical old fashioned bars.
Unfortunately for me that meant that most modern day photos of the building were pretty useless for reconstruction purpose as the modern rebuild version doesn’t look much like it looked in the 1920s.

So all I had to work on were old photos, pictures and paintings.
Together with the building next to it, I think I succeeded pretty well in making the building looked like the way it did before the bombs fell.
Someone alive back then would at leas  at least recognise it.

So, after 72 years people can once more head over to the Zum Nußbaum restaurant for a good cheap meal.