The International Congress Centre was intended to be West Berlin’s answer to East Berlin’s futuristic television tower. And no expense was spared when the capitalist Western power wanted to demonstrate its superiority in the late 1970s.

The ICC Berlin cost around 924 million German marks, which corresponds to more than 1.2 billion euros today.

In return, West Berliners also got Europe’s largest convention center to date, featuring an interior design that is a futuristic vision filled with neon, chrome… and asbestos.

There are still rumors that asbestos was the reason for the closure of the ICC Berlin in 2014, but the asbestos was removed long ago.

The real reason why the ICC Berlin is now abandoned is that the gigantic and unusual convention center has been difficult to rent out since the end of the Cold War.

The convention center is gigantic. It is 320 meters long, 80 meters wide, and 40 meters high, built of reinforced concrete.

The entrance hall to the congress hall is the so-called brain, symbolized by the red and blue neon tubes. The meeting point is the center of the brain. The guests are the brain cells, which spread out along the escalators to the conference room, cinema, or lounge.

Or they take the large escalator at the end of the “brain” up to the large congress hall.

The architects behind ICC Berlin are Ursulina Schüler-Witte and Ralf Schüler.

They were clearly inspired by sci-fi films and TV series of the time, such as Star Trek. Once you reach the top of the main staircase, it’s like standing on the set of a space movie.

The Berliners have also nicknamed the building the Spaceship.

The architects probably also found inspiration in Berlin’s U-Bahn stations. Outside the toilets on the ground floor, the walls are decorated with tiles used in the U-Bahn stations, in the modern orange color of the time.

These are the same orange tiles that architect Rainer G. Rümmler used for the tunnel under Messedamm, which was designed to help the many guests under the street and into the convention center.

However, time caught up with ICC Berlin. Neon and chrome are meant to impress at a time when the Eastern and Western blocs are flexing their muscles.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, demand for the grandiose convention center declined, and the landlord had a hard time marketing ICC Berlin.

The last congress was in 2014. Since then, ICC Berlin briefly opened twice, as a refugee center and a COVID-19 vaccination site.

Now time has stopped here.

Today, it is occasionally open to enthusiasts and Star Trek fans who want a glimpse of its former glory.

The long corridors and halls echo empty most of the time, like a final sigh from the Cold War, which was also fought with displays of wealth and resources.