Page 232 - Beyond Decommissioning

Experience and lessons learned 213

The redeveloped bunker now has exhibition spaces and lecture halls intermixed with
open-air courtyards. New units added to one side of the structure host offices, artist
studios and a restaurant. There is also a rooftop garden. A 20-m-tall observation tower
was constructed in front of the building to provide visitors with a vista of the adjacent
park (Dezeen, 2018b).
During the 40+-year communist rule Albania, over 700,000 bunkers were built in
2
the country—an average of 24 bunkers per km . The bunkers were abandoned follow-
ing the collapse of the regime in 1990, but they are still seen everywhere in Albania.
Most are still abandoned, but some have been reused for a range of functions such as
residential dwellings, caf es, storehouses, and shelters for animals or the homeless
(Atlas Obscura, 2013).
The "Diefenbunker" structure in Canada (Fig. 6.26) was designed and built during
the Cold War to shelter key political and military personnel. The bunker was used as
the hub of a communications network and civil defence system until its closure in
1994. It is now Canada’s Cold War Museum. The bunker appears in one scene in
the 2002 film Sum of all Fears.
A number of former military bunkers are used as museums. A selection of sites
includes:
Dienststelle Marienthal (Government bunker), Ahrweiler near Bonn, Germany, was con-
l
structed in the 1960s to house the West German federal government in case of nuclear
war. It was installed inside two railway tunnels beneath 110m of slate rock. When the Cold
War ended, the bunker was dismantled: today only 203m of the original bunker remain,
which were converted into the Government Bunker Documentation Site Museum.
l Atombunker Harnekop (Nuclear governmental shelter), 65km from Berlin, is one of the East
German relics of the Cold War. The bunker was ready for a war as the underground

Fig. 6.26 The "Diefenbunker" structure, Canada.
Credit to Dennis Jarvis.