Conventions: The "foreign office" of Adlershof
Guided Tours through the WISTA Technology Park
For more than ten years Frank Lauterbach has been guiding visitors through „his“ Adlershof
Petra Looks shows visitors the media city and still enjoys the applause of her guests
Hans-Dieter Tack knows everything about Adlershof‘s aviation history
Johannes Bense is expert guide, when it comes to renewable energy
A curtsey for the Thai Crown Princess, security for the Tunisian President, a prayer room for Indonesian students and the gift for the Saudi prince: when it comes to visitors and protocol, „Conventions“ is Adlershof‘s foreign office. Its special ambassadors are its guides who take the technology park‘s visitors to historic, secret and spectacular places and inspire them with their own enthusiasm for Adlershof.
Anyone visiting Adlershof from time to time will see at a glance how quickly the place changes. New buildings rise up with breathtaking architecture, while old buildings are filled with new life and exciting ideas. But there are areas and places, processes even – no less breathtaking – that only become apparent to visitors on closer inspection. The Windkanal and Trudelturm wind tunnels, the thermo-constant spherical laboratories, Europe’s largest television studio, the electron storage ring BESSY and the training factory for Industry 4.0 applications. All this can be discovered through Adlershof experience tours.
He couldn’t stop being astonished, said Frank Lauterbach, Engineer of Technical Environmental Protection, recalling the time he first got involved with the site and its history. He has been one of the guides for more than ten years and in his exciting “themed tours” he shows everything that sets “his” Adlershof apart. Petra Looks knows every corner of the media city that broadcasts election campaign battles, Anne Will and The Voice of Germany. The Windkanal and Trudelturm wind tunnel and the Aerodynamic Park are Hans-Dieter Tack’s specialist areas. He knows everything about German aviation history and research, which began here in Adlershof and Johannisthal. Johannes Bense worked in Adlershof for an international solar power company, assisted a lot of visitors there and is an expert in renewable energies.
Science, technology, media, history: but it is not just sightseeing that is appreciated by visitors. Adlershof’s recipe for success, experience of the organisation and processes of city planning, the links between science and industry, the booming community of company founders and new issues like Big Data and Industry 4.0 are of interest to business sponsors, companies in all sectors, students and city administrators alike. This is why presentations, meetings with company founders, scientists and entrepreneurs form just as much part of the tours as site visits to research institutes, workshops and laboratories.
“It is really great when during the tour abstract topics like start-up support, academic networks or science as an economic driver can be linked in with things that can be seen and touched”, said Bense, explaining what motivates him.
If Lauterbach, Tack, Looks and colleagues had to add it up, each one would have accompanied several thousand visitors around the place by now. “Every piece of feedback is unique”, says Looks, who is always pleasantly surprised by her visitors’ applause.
And the guides still have “secret places” too, things that they still really want to see in Adlershof: the studio of the East German chief of propaganda Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler and his “Schwarzer Kanal” (Black Channel), the Foucault pendulum and a space camera at the German aeronautics and space research centre DLR. “The longer I spend here”, added Johannes Bense, “the clearer everything I have not yet seen becomes”. Of course, he can go on a tour.
By Rico Bigelmann for Adlershof Special