Westkreuz is an ancient urban infrastructural knot. Due to the crisscrossing of roads, highways, rail and metro tracks the area is shredded into small, sometimes hardly accessible places that each have their own particular milieu. Westkreuz includes one of the oldest and at the same time most trafficked highway interchanges in Germany and has quite a peculiar genesis (keywords: AVUS, NS zeit, Reichsbahn, DDR, S-bahn). This is the origin of car traffic. Here was the Automobil- Verkehrs- und Übungsstraße (‘Automobile traffic and training road’) also known as AVUS), the first road in the world only acessible for cars.

Soundtrackcity has been studying this area since 2013 through sound walks and other listening practices. The overarching question is how (fast) traffic and large scale infrastructural constructions determine an urban environment sonically in different ways. 

The isolated areas of Westkreuz are only accessible by tunnels or bridges or not at all. Each area has its own sonic character and use (or non-use). You can find woodlands, parking lots for lorries, derelict buildings, a grandstand from a former race track, a cemetry, refugee camps, shunting yards, unruly nature and beautiful well-tended alottments.