We will be presenting the architectural competition designs and discuss the Great Pyramid project at the Bauhaus Dessau at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 12, 2008.

The panel:
Prof. Omar Akbar, Executive Director Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Thomas Busch, Member of the Dessau-Rosslau City Council
Ingo Niermann, Friends of the Great Pyramid e.V.
Jens Thiel, Friends of the Great Pyramid e.V.

Moderation: Dr. Walter Prigge, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

Image: mhobl (off for a time) at flickr

Sorry, we´re to tired to write a decent Gala post after Stefan, Alex and I relaunched the website. Thanks to everybody who was there, promise to do a bunch of things much better next time and also promise to fix several voids and aesthetically challenging features of the new site very, very soon.

Please check the post in Momus blog where you´ll find a video clip of his fascinating performance, a couple of images from the Gala and some background on where the Great Pyramid project originally started. It´s been a long way out of ironic hell..

Feel free to download and forward our flyer for the March 10 Great Pyramid Gala in Berlin here. The full lineup is on the back.

Link (377 kB)

Rem Koolhaas, Momus, Jens Friebe at a festive night in Berlin.

We would like to warmly invite everybody to join us at

The Great Pyramid Gala
Monday, March 10, 2008
7:30 p.m.

HAU 1 (Hebbel am Ufer)
Stresemannstr. 29
10963 Berlin

Link to the theater´s website
Google Maps directions

As the name says, the event will certainly be less rock festival-like then the September Dessau-Rosslau Pyramid Festival but nevertheless not less exciting. A lineup of musicians will present their pieces, most composed especially for the Great Pyramid (A-Z):

Christoph de Babalon (MySpace)
Jens Friebe (Website)
Juli Holz (MySpace)
Momus (Website)
Phillip Sollmann (MySpace)
Katrin Vellrath
David Woodard & The Los Angeles Chamber Group (Website)

Plus perhaps some surprise appearances we´re still working on.

Jury president Rem Koolhas will introduce the designs submitted by prominent architects for our Great Pyramid Park urban planning competition. We will also be screening a trailer from a feature-length documentary movie about last year´s exciting events. The new Great Pyramid team will announce what will happen next.

Tickets are priced at a friendly 11/7 Euro each and can be ordered directly from the HAU online or at +49 30 25 90 04 27. We strongly recommend advance ticket reservations.

Brush your tuxedo, grab a cocktail dress or just a plain dark suit and join us on March 10 in Berlin!

Back in the early days when the reservation list was mereley about a hundred names long, we´ve asked you early adopters to provide portraits for a story in Italian architecture and design magazine ABITARE. For all of you who mailed photos (Thanks!) here´s a PDF-file of the piece.

Download Link

The Great Pyramid is on Facebook now. Please feel free to become a „fan“ of the project – that´s how FB likes to call becoming friends with non-people entities. Your commitment and visible support is greatly appreciated.

Link to TGP at Facebook.com

You might be wondering what we do and how the Great Pyramid fares. So: We´re doing quite well actually. Over the last couple of weeks new colleagues have joined the Great Pyramid team who bring in more than twenty years experience in the real estate and internet industry. Together we have fixed a few shortcomings of the original concept concerning location, product portfolio and distribution of pyramid stones. Now we feel rather well prepared to launch stage II of the project in spring 2008.

Coming up next is the Great Pyramid Gala in a beautiful theater in Berlin on March 5, 2008. The results of the Architectural Competition will be announced by the jury and we will bring the whole project on a new level. Ticket sales will start in January 2008.

Meanwhile, the Great Pyramid has been covered by more media. Qvest, Monopol and German Vanity Fair ran short stories (all in German). An extensive reportage has appeared in Magdeburg based „Volksstimme“ and Anhalt-Dessau´s regional magLEO put the Great Pyramid on its October cover. It almost seems, all Saxony-Anhalt slowly realizes the chance..

Today, the relaunch issue of ABITARE arrived from Milan. In there the opening story about the Great Pyramid comes as a text by Ingo Niermann in which he reflects on the project looking back from the year 2047. Also included a series of wonderful illustrations by Madelon Vriesendorp, one of the original founders of OMA back in 1975, plus loads of images of the very first stone bookers from the reservation list, that has tripled since the piece had been written.

Permanent original layout links (German):Volksstimme, LEO

„We are Pharao“ – with „we“ as in „for all of us“ – is the front-page story in today´s FTD weekend supplement written by Benjamin Pruefer. It´s quite nice so you might want to read it. Not online yet – but we will post a link if the piece turns up in the internet.

EDIT: Here´s the link .

Some of the Friends of the Great Pyramid will go on a two-days field trip on Monday. We will inspect a region our first analysis has identified as appropriate to and also in need of the Great Pyramid. Photos and report from the trip by mid-week.

Image: Conceptual vizualisation of the Great Pyramid without Great Pyramid Area
Height: 800 meters – Capacity: 100 m burial places

Ingo Niermann, whose short essay “Deutsches Weltwunder” (”German Wonder of the World”) in his book “Umbauland” triggered our project, provided information in an interview with German daily “Die Welt” in November last year.