Tropical Islands, Krausnick

In the tropical village with houses typical of Thailand, Borneo, Polynesia and Bali, bars, restaurants and restaurants and stage shows attract visitors. Over an area of around 10,000 square meters, a gigantic sauna area invites people to relax and there are also a wealth of attractions for children at the “Brandenburg tropics” – from the children's play area spanning 4,000 sqm, to the go-kart track. Some time ago, the new “Royal Harbour” hotel opened in the heart of the topics – a premium hotel offering high-end accommodation with 48 rooms alongside the rain forest camp, the lodges, simple rooms and the campsite. The highest demands were placed on the design of the little port town. Atelier Thilo Krause from Halle an der Saale was commissioned to carry out the painting and modeling work, which was extremely different from the standard everyday painting and sculpting work. Around 15 employees were working here for a period of around six months. “All building sites are different”, remembers the studio partner of Thilo Krause, Daniel Ehlers, thinking back over the sometimes extremely sweaty work in the hall. “It can get really warm when working at heights”, he explains, adding with a smile: “But it was a very pleasant building site to work on in winter!” Narrow alleyways all around the port, little pubs with the skull and crossbones on their signs, crumbling facades and old half-timbered houses – visitors may well find it hard to believe that this little “port town” was built recently under the enormous roof of the former airship hangar in the heart of Brandenburg. “Royal Harbour” is a fantastic illusion – perfectly executed by Atelier Krause, a company that has some experience with developing and executing this form of “art in construction”: The team have already created fantastic worlds for film productions, numerous zoos and the chamber of horrors in the Berlin “Dungeon”. In addition to creative ideas, this requires a mixture of artistic skills and lots of experience, reports Daniel Ehlers, who, in his own words, constantly walks around with his eyes open, committing motifs, images and scenes to memory. “If I see a tree trunk covered in moss, I immediately try to work out how I could recreate it”, he explains. Daniel Ehlers loves challenges like the ones he faced with Tropical Islands: “We aim to replicate things so realistically that people believe they are the real thing. So that people can be carried away by the illusion that they are actually in another world while they are there – in this case, a Caribbean fortress.” The team at Atelier Krause almost always uses Brillux products – and business partner Daniel Ehlers also appreciates the high quality of the paints and emulsions. He sometimes enhances them with pigment pastes, deep penetrating primer or other “ingredients” to create specific effects. But exactly what he adds is a closely guarded trade secret that the artist is unwilling to share.