Editorial Note: Lissa Tyler Renaud
Here is a stand-alone piece, for a change of pace.
From 1922, Kandinsky was a part of the Bauhaus’s 1919-1925 chapter in Weimar; he remained into its post-Dessau period—the school’s final period in Berlin, 1932 to 1933, when it was closed by the Nazis. Both Weimar and Berlin have been featured in countless film and television productions for their historical and visual interest. This article gives us an unusual look into how the locations are professionally pieced together for these media through a range of advanced manual, digital and AI approaches. The results offer a real and expanded sense of when and where Kandinsky lived and worked.
The Agatha Christie sections treat us to more of what was surely on the Bauhaus design radar, and vice versa, note the famous Bauhaus lamps below. Peruse the bibliography. Something new from “Kandinsky Anew” for September.

Introduction by the Author:

"I wrote this song with ChatGPT.

But not the press-a-button, "type and done" kind.

This was hours. Days. A stubborn kind of digging.

Wrestling words until they bled a little.

Trying to make a machine spit out something

that sounds like it's lived through the slow collapse of a dream."

— LisaB., Love Letter to the Tired Souls, (music video introduction on escape.ai, Jul 12,2025)

*

I saw Babylon Berlin and Poirot a few years ago, so I have a somewhat impressionistic recollection of them. I had to revisit their worlds, and the first thing that came to mind was to start by writing encyclopedic lists of the props and set pieces used in the two shows. I achieved this by navigating three different large language models, similar to invoking a spell and bringing the shows to life throug­­­h exotic 1930s brands. This way, what I present is more of a metatext, a composite of human-written paragraphs and collaboratively engineered AI lists and hypertlinks. The speed with which I was able to cross-reference a dense bibliography took me by surprise. Also, the fact that it was reliable in most parts on the first try. The density of this information and references can throw the reader directly into the deep end of the extensive worlds created by 40 Babylon Berlin episodes and 70 Poirot ones.

*   *  *

Film (and prestige television) has texture—and not just the grain you see or the velvet you long to touch. Texture is the subliminal weave of light, framing, dialogue rhythms, architecture, finish work, and the lived in patina of props that convinces you a fictional world breathes the same air you do. Few contemporary shows deploy this multisensory mesh as completely as the four seasons of Babylon Berlin (2017-2022) and the long-running thirteen seasons of Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989-2013). Each is steeped in interwar style and Art Deco inflection, yet they use design to opposite narrative ends: Berlin's restless sprawl versus Poirot's sealed, jewel-box of order. We will briefly tour both worlds—bolting down some prop IDs and material culture as we go.

The German series

Based on a series of novels by Volker Kutscher, Babylon Berlin, a collaboration between X Filme Creative Pool, ARD Degeto, Sky, and Beta Film, recreates the political and social turmoil of the late Weimar Republic. Conceived by directors Tom Tykwer, Henk Handloegten, and Achim von Borries, the show follows a police inspector through Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The British series

By contrast, the long-running British ITV production Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989-2013), starring David Suchet, presents a highly stylized version of the 1930s, centered on the fastidious Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Both series use the Art Deco design of the interwar period as their primary visual language, but their production designs employ this style for divergent narrative and thematic purposes.

Moka Efti vs. Whitehaven Mansions: Deco Heartlands in Two Keys

The throbbing Art Deco core of Babylon Berlin is the Moka Efti nightclub—reimagined by production designer Uli Hanisch inside a former silent era cinema, with a fabricated façade at Studio Babelsberg's Metropolitan Backlot.[1][2][3] Hanisch's version riffs on the historical café/pleasure complex founded by Giovanni Eftimiades on Leipziger Straße; contemporary accounts bragged of Moorish arches, an Egyptian salon, and 25,000 cups of coffee on a good day.[1] On screen, towering geometric light pylons, stepped ziggurat backbars, tiered sconces, metallic palm sculptures, and velvet channel-tuft banquettes soak in a brass and chrome glow—an international Deco fever dream deliberately hovering between period and proto -modern minimalism.[1][2]

By contrast, Poirot's London flat—located at Whitehaven Mansions (filmed at Florin Court, Charterhouse Square)—is a fastidiously symmetrical shrine to interwar urbanity.[8][10][4] Its Macassar-veneer casework, circular over -mantel mirror, lacquered built-ins, and perfectly paired objets render the detective's psyche in furniture plan. Deco isn't nightlife spectacle here; it's personal geometry—every vase mirrored, every chair aligned to Poirot's "little grey cells." Title designer Pat Gavin's opening credits double down, launching stylized trains, liners, and biplanes across Deco poster graphics that cue viewers to a world ordered by design and timetables.[10]
The iconic, pristine Art Deco look of the early and most celebrated seasons of Agatha Christie's Poirot was conceived by Production Designer Rob Hinds. His vision for Poirot's world, particularly the Whitehaven Mansions set, defined the series' aesthetic for years. Because the series had a very long run (1989-2013), other talented designers contributed to later episodes, especially as the show's tone became darker and less stylized. These include Peter Wenham, Michael Pickwoad, and Jeff Tessler.

Materials & Motifs: What the Surfaces Tell Us

 – Moka Efti palette. Expect polished brass, nickel, black piano lacquer, and deep jewel velvets set against painted chevron parquet and mirrored wall panels that fracture and surveil the crowd. Egyptian Revival palm standards and sunburst grillwork nod to 1920s exotica—documented in period press about the real club's themed rooms and gadget show elevator spectacle.[1] The modular backlot build at Babelsberg enabled Hanisch to re-dress street elevations to represent the Friedrichstraße, Charlottenburg, and Kreuzberg/Neukölln districts in one shoot block, swapping signage, awnings, and poster wraps to track story chronology efficiently.[2][3]

Apartment grammar. Florin Court's Streamline Moderne exterior features a ready sweep of cream faience curves; its interiors are studio builds, where finishes frequently quote Vitrolite-style pigmented structural glass in kitchens/baths (a 1920s sanitary modern darling), reflective of the material's real interwar marketing boom.[15] Upholstered club seating often echoes Eileen Gray's Bibendum chair—stacked pneumatic rolls in leather inspired by the Michelin Man—paired with tubular steel accent pieces in the Marcel Breuer "Wassily" idiom.[14][16] You'll spot frosted spherical desk lamps in the lineage of the Wagenfeld Bauhaus table lamp and pendant fixtures recalling Marianne Brandt's metal and glass workshop pieces (Brandt DMB26 / HMB25).[17][18]

Prop IDs: Smoking, Drinking, Dialing, Typing

Berlin bars & bureaus. Bottles of Mampe Halb & Halb—a bitter orange/130 herb Berlin Kräuterlikör dating to the 19th century and booming in the 1920s—turn up behind Moka Efti's bar and in backroom deals; the brand ran city "Gute Stuben" drinking rooms, making it period plausible signage gold.[18] Cigarette packets modeled on Reemtsma R6, Muratti, and Manoli lines pepper tabletops and coat pockets, mirroring the consolidation of Germany's tobacco industry in the 1920s.[19][5]

Desk sets in the Rote Burg skew to black Bakelite pyramids in the Siemens family—visually akin to the British GPO Type 162/"200" Bakelite case introduced in 1929 and widely copied on the Continent.[11] Typewriters, dressing police, and administrative offices lean on German brands Adler, Triumph, and Continental—all heavyweights in interwar office machinery; Adler alone had produced hundreds of thousands of machines by 1931, Triumph ramped up mass production in the late '20s, and Continental standards dominated German sales charts.[5][7]

Small props carry massive atmospheric weight. Service weapons and underworld firepower follow suit: the Dreyse Model 1907 .32 ACP—favored by some police forces in the period—fits Rath's sidearm profile; paramilitary factions brandish the Bergmann MP18, the WWI era German design widely credited as the first true submachine gun.[20][21]

On the mantel: the Jaeger LeCoultre Atmos—perfected 1928, marketed 1930, the near perpetual motion torsion pendulum clock that later became a Swiss diplomatic gift—an on the nose metaphor for Poirot's sealed microclimate of order.[12] On desks and hall tables: GPO "200 Type" Bakelite pyramids and later 232 variants with drawer cards—iconic late-'20s/early -'30s British phones whose silhouette production leans into even non-UK settings.[11]

Miss Lemon (Poirot's assistant) hammers away on shiny manual typewriters; Remington and Royal portables appear, but the show often sets-dresses with Euro-market standards—again, Adler/Triumph/Continental are plausible swaps when a prop reset is required.[7] In drawing rooms and tearooms, you'll catch Clarice Cliff "Bizarre Ware"-style ceramics—riotous Sunray and Crocus patterns mass marketed in Britain from 1928 and precisely the sort of cheerful modernity that brightened otherwise traditional households.[13]

Public Power vs. Private Survival

Hanisch's interiors rely on contrast. The Rote Burg police headquarters (a Babelsberg building extended digitally characterized by dark oak, steel file bays, reeded privacy glass, and a stomach-churning Paternoster lift—industrial modernity that chews through paper and people alike).[2][4] Meanwhile, a 1920s working-class tenement compresses half a dozen bodies under peeling wallpaper, coal dust, and a single iron stove; the richness-poorness gap is literal inches of floor space. Block-shooting enabled the crew to redress the same footprint across story time—shifting wallpaper age, prop wear, and wardrobe continuity without relocating the entire crew—a necessity on a production that logged 150 Berlin-area locations, growing upward to 300 across seasons.[2][7]

Poirot, by contrast, lives in a state of curated stillness. Producer Brian Eastman has described the series' early mandate: create a coherent, heightened Deco world that felt of the 1930s yet purified—chintz banished, geometry exalted—to mirror Poirot's fastidious mind.[9][8] Public excursions—to the De La Warr Pavilion, the Midland Hotel, Eltham Palace, and other Deco landmarks—extend that logic: suspects move through impeccably designed modernity, every angle legible to a detective who solves crimes by aligning patterns.[8]

Digital Berlin: When the Backlot Ends

The sheer scale of Weimar Berlin could never be built to full height, so Babylon Berlin relies on digital set extensions by RISE | Visual Effects Studios (VFX supervisors Robert Pinnow, later Erik Schneider) to stitch together practical stages, Berlin locations, and a historical skyline into one seamless metropolis.[4][5][6]

Workflow in brief. Production captured plates on the Metropolitan Backlot's Neue Berliner Straße—a 15,000 m² modular street complex with green/bluescreen tie-ins explicitly engineered for digital augmentation.[3][4] RISE ingested LIDAR scans and photogrammetry, referenced archival maps/photos, and built CG upper stories, rooftops, church spires, and vanished landmarks (notably Anhalter Bahnhof) destroyed in WWII.[4][6] Traffic layers—animated 3D trams and period autos—extend beyond the handful of hero vehicles wrangled physically; crowd sims multiply background extras into May Day surges and boulevard bustle using digital pipelines showcased in studio breakdown reels.[6][14]

Invisible refinements. Modern street clutter shot on location in present-day Berlin was digitally removed; signage, posters, and enamel street plates were period-matched and composited; atmospheric particulates (coal smoke, night fog) were added to stitch lighting rigs together. RISE delivered 800+ VFX shots across the first production block alone, scaling further in later seasons.[5][16] The goal is that you don't notice. Instead, you feel the city's political mass bearing down on individual stories.[4][6]

Both series prove that historical drama lives or dies in its micro evidence—Hanisch's Berlin sweats; Hinds' (and colleagues') Poirot glints. One pushes you through crowds where Mampe bottles and R6 cigarette stubs accumulate like political data; the other lets you triangulate guilt from the misplacement of a single Bibendum chair cushion. Yet the design philosophies align: start with research, exaggerate selectively to express character, and maintain internal rules so that viewers trust what they see—even when half the skyline is composed of pixels. If you ever needed proof that props, finishes, and lighting grammar are narrative, spend a night at the Moka Efti, then go home, straighten every object on your mantel, and wait for Poirot to ring.

Bibliography:

[1] Philip Oltermann, "Sex, Seafood and 25,000 Coffees a Day: The Wild 1920s Superclub That Inspired Babylon Berlin," The Guardian, Nov 24, 2017 .https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/24/babylon-berlin-real-1920s -superclub-behind-weimar-era-thriller. Details historical Moka Efti; quotes production designer Uli Hanisch on recreating the club in a former silent cinema; discusses stripped back Deco towers of
light.

[2] "Building Babylon," Drama Quarterly, 2018 htps://dramaquarterly .com/building-babylon/interview/feature on series showrunners and Uli Hanisch; covers block shooting, redressing streets to show Berlin's class contrasts, and scale of set coordination.

[3] Studio Babelsberg, "Metropolitan Backlot / Neue Berliner Straße ."https://www.metropolitanbacklot.com/en/. Facility specs: Modular 15,000 m² street complex used for Babylon Berlin; green/blue screen provision for digital extensions.

[4] RISE | Visual Effects Studios, "Babylon Berlin – Season 3 "https://risefx .com/rise-visual-effects-studios-work-project-detail.php?id=16. Project page; VFX supervisors Robert Pinnow & Erik Schneider; discusses historic set extensions,
CG trams/cars, digi crowds.

[5] RISE | Visual Effects Studios, "Babylon Berlin – Seasons 1 + 2 " https://risefx.com/rise-visual-effects-studios-work-project-detail.php?id=1. Early production VFX; 800+ shots, including environment builds, underwater scenes, and crowd simulations; notes the impossibility of building a full-scale Berlin.

[6] Vincent Frei, "Babylon Berlin – Season 3: VFX Breakdown by RISE," The Art of VFX, Dec 6, 2020. https://www.artofvfx.com/babylon-berlin-season-3 -vfx-breakdown-by-rise/. Breakdown reel; before/after plates (Anhalter Bahnhof, street extensions, crowds).

[7] "The Gathering Storm: Behind the Scenes with Babylon Berlin," Location Managers Guild International, Spring 2025 https://locationmanagers.org/the -gathering-storm-behind-the-scenes-with-babylon-berlin/. Covers 150 shooting locations, logistics, and redressing challenges; quotes line producer Marcus Loges.

[8] Stephen Smith, "Thoroughly Modern Murder: How Poirot Came to Personify Art Deco," Apollo Magazine, n.d.https://src.apollo-magazine .com/david-suchet-poirot-art-deco/.
Explores how production embraced Deco modernity to mirror Poirot's personality; references key UK Deco locations.

[9] Brian Eastman, "Poirot and Me," The Guardian, Nov 10, 2013 https://www .theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/nov/10/brian-eastman-producer-poirot-tv. The producer reflects on creating the series' distinctive look and its long run.

[10] "Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989)," Art of the Title. https://www .artofthetitle.com/title/agatha-christies-poirot/
Pat Gavin's title design; Deco transport iconography establishing series tone.

[11] "200 Type Telephone Information," BritishTelephones.com https://www .britishtelephones.com/t200info.htm. History of GPO Type 162/200 Bakelite pyramids (1929 intro) and
successors.

[12] Jaeger LeCoultre, "The History of Atmos Luxury Clocks "https://www .jaeger-lecoultre.com/us-en/jaeger-lecoultre-atmos-history.  Official chronology: Atmos perfected 1928; marketed 1930; Art Deco associations.

[13] Victoria and Albert Museum, "Art Deco: Clarice Cliff." https://www.vam.ac .uk/articles/art-deco-clarice-cliff. Overview of Cliff's Bizarre Ware, Crocus, Sunray motifs; mass market Deco ceramics from 1928 onward.

[14] Double Stone Steel, "The Amazing Eileen Gray Bibendum Chair." https://www.doublestonesteel.com/blog/design/the-amazing-eileen-gray -bibendum-chair/. History, Michelin inspiration, dates (mid-1920s); material description.

[15] Howard Decker, "The Vitrolite Story," Decopix. https://www.decopix .com/the-vitrolite-story/ Structural glass history: 1920s–30s Sanitary modern surfaces used in Deco interiors.

[16] Knoll, "Wassily™ Chair."https://www.knoll.com/product/wassily-chair.  Product page detailing Marcel Breuer's 1925 tubular-steel design, a modernist icon.

[17] Bauhaus Movement Shop, "Wilhelm Wagenfeld Table Lamp WA 24." https://shop.bauhaus-movement.com/wilhelm-wagenfeld-table-lamp-wa-24/. Specs and 1924 Bauhaus origin; enduring modernist lighting archetype.

[18] Meininger Hotels Blog, "Mampe 'Halb & Halb' – The Berlin Cult Drink ."https://www.meininger-hotels.com/blog/en/mampe-the-berlin-cult-drink/.  Brand history: 130 herb liqueur; Berlin drinking rooms; interwar popularity.

[19] "Reemtsma," Wikipedia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reemtsma. Corporate history; R6 trademark 1921; 1920s German tobacco consolidation.

[20] "Dreyse M1907," Wikipedia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyse_M1907.
 Semi-auto pistol design; service history; police use.

[21] “MP18,” Encyclopedia Britannica.https://www.britannica .com/technology/MP18.  First accurate submachine gun, of German WWI origin, with influence extending into the interwar period.

Vlad Bina, Guest Writer Vlad has participated in supervisory and design roles within Art and VFX Departments in the production of 25 studio feature films, such as "Man of Steel," "Guardians of the Galaxy 2", the "Matrix" trilogy, and "Tomorrowland." His art direction work uses an extensive 3D computer graphics experience built on an architectural, design, and art history background. Recently, as a Supervising Art Director and Virtual Art Department Supervisor on "The Lion King," "The Call of the Wild," and "The Mandalorian, Season 2," Vlad started including VR and game engines in the production workflow.   Curator, writer and editor, Kandinsky Anew Series Lissa Tyler Renaud  MA/MFA Directing, PhD Dramatic Art with Art History (thesis on Kandinsky's theatre work), summa cum laude, UC Berkeley, 1987. Lifelong actress, director. Founder, the influential Oakland-based InterArts Training/Actors' Training Project for her signature actor-scholar training inspired by Kandinsky's teachings. She has taught, lectured, edited, founded, published much-translated works on Kandinsky, acting, dramatic theory and the early European avant-garde, throughout the U.S. and, since 2004, in England, Mexico, Sweden, Brazil, Russia, and on the faculties of the National University of the Arts of Korea and Taipei (Taiwan), at Shanghai Theatre Academy (China), Lokadharmi Theatre Center (India), and other major theatre institutions of Asia. Her well-known recitals feature Kandinsky’s poetry. For her other articles, check the Archives. ©2025 Lissa Tyler Renaud ©2025 Publication Scene4 Magazine Share This Page View readers’ comments in Letters to the Editor Kandinsky Anew Index of the series by Lissa Tyler Renaud