Berlin as Collage City

BERLIN A Collection of Essays by Daniel Kempski, Patrick Lyth, Kris James and Jack Hughes

Group Introduction Historically a city of prosperity and turmoil, Berlin has been continually plagued with divide – both politically, and socio-economically. Founded during the 13th century, and a late developer in contrast to Europe’s other great capitals, the city remained non-unified until the reign of King Frederick 1 (1657-1713). Then early forms of master-planning were introduced in an attempt to establish order to the west side of the city. Intense grid patterns were soon established in the main urbanized zone, with some light relief in the form of open space and monuments – drawing their inspiration from the enviable developments of Louis XIV’s Paris. Frederick, the first King of Prussia, was a patron of the arts and Berlin was soon perceived as the local rival of Vienna.

Frederick was succeeded by his son Frederick William 1, the ‘soldier king’ and it was war which shaped Berlin and Europe during the 17th-19th centuries; with notable disputes including the ’30 year war’ (1618-48) and ‘7 year war’ (1757-64), and later the Napoleonic wars (1806-08). The city emerged from that period as both strong and economically powerful with many fine buildings and a reputation for religious tolerance.

During the 20th Century however, Berlin was laid waste to by famine, war and civil unrest. Home to a thriving artistic community and a booming film industry, while simultaneously torn apart by the internal fighting of political movements against a government focused on war. The distinct districts of Berlin are a product of both war and ideology, reflecting their occupation by many different movements and incumbents. With every new ruling body has come a major impact on the built form of Berlin . Alexanderplatz for example, stands as a stark example of the legacy of the GDR. So too the grand vision of the Under den Linden, the towering Berliner Fernsehturm, and its rival, the technological listening post of Teufelsberg. All built to impact, either through physical or psychological domination.

Everywhere in the city is evidence of its past. You can imagine controlling Freikorps soldiers fighting against Spartacists in squares across the capital, trams shutting down mid-journey through power cuts, strikes in response to war and mass starvation in the streets in 1918. But nowhere in the built environment of Berlin is this crossroads of the past more evident than on the Schlossplatz, site of the old Imperial Palace. The square was chosen during the GDR as the site of the Palast der Republik, home of the Volkskammer parliament. At the foot of the Under Den Linden, it forms the ideal

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counterpoint to the Brandenburgh Gate and a powerful link with the fabric of the city. In the tradition of grand visions for Berlin, the Palast was post-war statement of the dismantlement of old Berlin’s monarchistic past and a move toward the “proper” ideals of government. Then in 2006, under orders from the German Parliament, work was started to dismantle the Palast, and now the square stands empty with plans in place to recreate the Imperial Palace. Yet still opinion remains divided as to what this space at the heart of Berlin should represent, a perfect example of the crossroads of ideals present in the very fabric of the city.

Much of contemporary Berlin derives from the commercial and industrial growth which accelerated with the introduction of the railways in the mid-19th century, enabling ease of travel and transportation of resources across Germany.

The first railway access to central Berlin was built in 1838, entering Potsdammer Platz from the north of the city. In addition, the number of new factories being built integrated rural workers within the context of the City Centre, adding a sense of diversity to the demographics and the city’s urban fabric. As Balfour (1990, p.47) notes about apartment complexes, “Above the shops in the main old homes, the owners are content to co-exist with commerce. There is nothing to be lost in trade. Their incomes are all connected to the activities of the street below and the public face of their apartments is worn like a good coat.”

Berlin acquired capital status in 1871, thus initiating rapid growth and expansion within the city and the local area surrounding it. The increase in trade brought about a different system – tradesmen were able to start having their own, self-perceived ‘utopias’ within their apartment buildings. Social and political unrest arrived after World War 1, with three new parties attempting to establish a new governing body in their own particular way: the communist ‘Spartacus’ party, conservation ‘Dutsch’ party and the socialist party. Despite or perhaps partly because of the economic crisis in the 1920’s, Berlin continued to develop culturally, becoming a powerhouse in art and design, with various movements such as the renowned Bauhaus school being founded in Weimar, a city nearby Berlin.

With the Nazis came the idea of a transformed city. Hitler envisioned a triumphal arch, with dreams of ‘symbolic constructions to compel unity among the people’ – with the arch acting as ‘the symbol for the redemption of the West’ (Balfour, 1990, p.56), wanting to harness it as a demonstration of power. The architect, Albert Speer, was commissioned to prepare plans for a ‘new’ Berlin, envisioning power-war society; “a day will come when battles will be forgotten. But the monuments we shall have built will defy the challenge of time” – Hitler, 21st October 1941. Speer produced the Nordsud Achse (North-South Axis) – at one end of which was the Reichstag, and at the other, Hitler’s arch, attempting to bridge the divide between architecture and its representation of political power.

Much was destroyed when the city was bombed by the Allies, and yet more destruction followed the Soviet invasion and occupancy. Berlin was now split, with the Soviets based in East Berlin, and a mixture of British, American and French occupying the remainder of the city. The Soviets immediately established socialist control within their area – with Ernst Hoffman the chief architect following a manifesto to build a new Soviet influenced city, imposing a strong sense of classicism to emphasize ‘order’ and attempting to place aesthetics on a truly scientific bases. The East Berlin authorities ultimately demolished all buildings on the peninsula of land projecting into West Berlin (Balfour, 1990:147). “The deconstruction removes not only memories, but ancient and comforting symbols who’s accumulation in texture of a city had given meaning to life. The loss of the past means the loss of the future.” – (Balfour, 1990, p.152) What followed was that West Berlin become non-existent in comparison to the East – as the Soviet Union’s vested interest developed the area significantly. The city became the epicentre of the Cold War – with the USSR wanting all Western

Sketch 1: In the grounds of the Sanssouci, the Imperial Palace of Friedrich the Great 2

forces out of Berlin. In an attempt to minimise the growing divide between the two sides, Le Corbusier strove to aid the West through influence from the Athens Charter – with one fundamental underlying thesis: the project of scientific Marxism. There were still many opinions as to how Berlin should be developed however. “The critical opposition was between Le Corbusier and Gropius on one side and Der Ring, the Berlin group led by Scharoun and the architect Hugo Haring, on the other. The issue was simple; Scharoun and Haring believed that form should grow in response to circumstance rather than be a product of the imposed geometrical order advocated by Le Corbusier.” - (Balfour, 1990, p.176) Then the Berlin Wall was built (1961); “Itself a boundary, it knows no boundaries, crossing cobbles, trolley rails, sidewalks and foundations.” - (Balfour, 1990, p.194). The East Berlin Planning Office presented a final programme reconstruction plan of ‘Berlin Mitte’ (Berlin Centre) – filling the gaps that were left by previous projects based on modernism – which were a constant reminder of the unresolved order of the future and past. Eventually the vision of architecture used to control moral order had dimmed.

Reunification of the sides began in 1989, when restrictions regarding East Berliners commuting West were lifted and soon came the collapse of the Wall following that of Honecker’s GDR regime – with Germany and Berlin ultimately uniting as an individual entity in October 1990, ‘The Wall was the culmination of two-hundred years of German culture… The deconstruction of the wall reforms all past landscapes.’ – (Balfour, 1990, p.253)

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Berlin As Collage City How has the attachment of memory to the buildings of Berlin affected the image of the city?

by Jack Hughes

Ground Plan: The footprint of Berlin, split into its distinctive districts and groupings.

Spread around the city we see sites of memory and symbols of past regimes

“As first socialist, then Nazi and today communist rulers have been purged from the political scene, Berlin planners have had to address the question of whether buildings and monuments can be imbued with the ethos of their creators that they too must be ‘purged’ in order to assure the new regime with a fresh start … Can buildings also be politically and morally burdened?”

(Strom, 2001, p.32)

Introduction The concept of Townscape has been championed by architectural theorists such as Jacobs and Lynch for creating flowing, organic growth in a city. They say a city should not be an unchanging, static construct but rather a constantly evolving and additive process. In their book “Collage City”, Rowe and Koetter (1983) explore the importance of these processes and the bricolage and resultant points of convergence and significance that it creates.

Their analysis of the city as a collision of unexpected and contradictory ideas should be immediately applicable to Berlin, a city seemingly founded on the acceptance and inclusion of those rejected by other countries.

At the dawn of the 20th Century Berlin’s colony of artists and free-thinkers as well as a surge of technological invention, made it a place of frenetic activity, inspiring poems, paintings and musical works. The Swiss writer Robert Walser (1910, p.62) described the capital as being “buffeted by fresh storm-winds of inspiration.” As that tumultuous and war torn century continued, Berlin remained at its’ very centre, witnessing the rise of nationalism and Nazism before defeat, division and Communism.

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After German reunification in 1990, the city planners of the newly re-instated capital were left to deal with its astonishing past, unlike that which almost any other city has ever experienced. This has led to some difficult decisions and for two notable critics, Ledanff and Koepnick, questionable results. Hans Stimmann, Senate Director of Building Affairs, said as part of the “planwerk” initiative of the 1990s that “Berlin must look like Berlin”. According to Ledanff (2003) and Koepnick (2001) that attempt to make Berlin a recognisable “brand” has led to a dramatic surge in the production of memory space, of buildings engineered around the idea of the preservation of memorial. Gone are the political extensions of past regimes such as Albert Spear’s visions of Utopia through Greek principles of strength and grandeur, to be replaced by a search for “appropriateness” of form, an architecture to not just reflect the past but encode it into the city.

Photograph 1: Historical symbols of the past overlap and create dominant lines through the city

This raises a number of questions. Is the Berlin of 2013 no longer a Collage City? Have the city’s planners somehow arrested organic change? In the twenty or so years since the fall of the Wall, the city skyline has become a forest of cranes, but what so far, has been the result?

Palace Square The site I will to be discussing is the Schlossplatz at the centre of Berlin’s Museum Island. It carries great significance for Berlin as it moves forward as a city, but also forms a vital link with its past. Collage City places great importance on the overlapping and layering of history within a city, of differing and contradictory traces, and in Berlin there is no clearer paradigm than the Schlossplatz. Berlin has been the focus of many regimes, each of which has left a physical impression, and most have found a focal point in this 225m x 175m square. The culmination of the Unter Den Linden east-west thoroughfare and the far point of the Tiergarten / Brandenburg Gate / TV Tower line of site is the traditional centrepiece of the city, where the 15th century Prussian Berlinerschloss once stood, until the war damaged building was finally demolished in 1950. The German Democratic Republic then built on the site but now their structures too have been swept away. The Schlossplatz holds a political, cultural and societal pull over Berlin’s residents and it is now vacant, awaiting a new direction.

(above) Sketch 2: The line running East to West through the heart of Berlin, showing the theoretical importance of the site

Formerly Marx-Engels Platz In Collage City, Rowe and Koetter discuss the ideas surrounding iconoclasm or the deliberate destruction of religious icons. The 2002 decision by the German Bundestag to rebuild Andreas Schluter’s Berliner Stadtschloss Palace supplies an example of this. The post-war period of Berlin’s turbulent his-

(below) Urban Plan 1: Site of the Schlossplatz on “museum island”, with cathedral and National Gallery to the North

Sketch 3: Of the site and the proposed reconstructed Berlinerschloss

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tory saw the city evolve through addition, with both East and Western governments seeking to stamp their own impact upon the city’s fabric but also through the expulsion of echoes from previous regimes. The GDR’s Palast Der Republik represented an environment in which heritage and tradition were dangerous ideas, seen as primary influences for the surge in Nationalism in the 1930s. Its design, therefore, sought to move away from tradition and towards an architecture aimed at edification, to draw a line under the past.

It’s eventual removal in 2008 came as part of a prolonged and much covered disassembly of East Berlin, with streets renamed and public buildings such as the Palast torn down by degrees with claims of asbestos being discovered in the structure.

Sketch 4: The site of the Schlossplatz is currently used as an information point for the coming project, and a mapping of the split opinions across Berlin

Photograph 2: The hectic overlapping of new technology and architecture here demonstrates the impertinent and ever-evolving city of Walser’s Berlin

Sketch 5: Walser became a great peoplewatcher, descibing every face and the way they moved through a place 6

Designed to discredit the previous regime, the act of seeking a new building to replace it suggests what Rowe and Koetter (1983, p.120) refer to as “the overt expulsion of all deleterious cultural fantasy and the simultaneous proliferation of fantasy not yet conceived to be such.” What is more, the decision of the Bundestag to replicate the past, Rechtien (2010, p.173) argues, “displays a strange insecurity about the present and a desire to return to a nostalgic past in order to erase the more recent socialist past.” This is not evolution through addition, neither is it a true vision of utopia from some governing hand of design: it straddles an awkward line of almost vindictive abandonment of past regimes and an ill-conceived notion of historicism visible in many aspects of Berlin’s recent development.

Robert Walser’s Berlin Stories Many have written of Berlin’s fascination with invention and contradiction, but Robert Walser’s fiction especially echoes the sentiments expressed in Collage City, seeking to capture every individual element that makes the city such a cultural, artistic and political melting pot. He also goes some way to discovering the people that make up the city, identifying the common man labelled “the noble savage” in Rowe and Koetter’s work (whom they describe as being stripped of culture and society). Indeed in 1905, when Walser first arrived in Berlin from Switzerland, many may have compared him to that figure - marooned and uncultured amongst the “gleaming intoxication, the graceful, sense beguiling tumultuousness” that was Berlin at that time (Walser, 2006, p.99). His brother, Karl, once received a dinner invitation that instructed him to bring his brother along “only if he isn’t too hungry”. Walser’s prose (2006, p.61) offer insight into the turmoil that the city was in, constantly adapting and reinventing itself: “A city like Berlin is an ill-mannered, impertinent, intellectual scoundrel, constantly affirming the things that suit him and tossing aside everything he tires of.” Worries that this flurry of newness will result in an unrecognisable Berlin have continued to this day, and after the fall of the Wall, those issues of re-invention were thrown into even sharper focus. Ledanff and Koepnick claim that initiatives to discover an almost universal style for Berlin have resulted in exactly the same sort of grandiose and monumental centrepieces that were created during Walser’s time.

But Walser also explores the extreme air of tolerance that surrounds the city, with it’s capacity to let others exist which allowed Berlin to become the multicultural mix that it became. Why this should be followed by the nationalism of the 1930s and the closed and secretive nature of the Cold War, has therefore become a constant self-obsessing question within Gemany. This, combined with the endless search to represent the past - to create, what Ledanff (2003, p.42) describes as, “a city of monuments and unintentional memorializations” - can easily be linked with this seemingly drastic change from the city that for so any centuries welcomed the Jewish populations of Vienna and Eastern Europe.

Modernism and The Architect as Social Engineer With the post-war era came a time of great change in urban theory, along with the birth of Postmodernism and its idea of the architect as social engineer. Rowe and Koetter discuss the concept of the urban planner as a oijaboard or planchette, sensitive to social change and a facilitator in his own right, and of logical progression to a future of objectivity, order and innovation. Rowe and Koetter discuss, for example, Le Corbusier’s belief that only architecture and city planning could cure the “sick” contemporary society, and the Modernist movement brought with it a stripping of ornamentation and the belief that this reflection of simplicity and order would be absorbed though osmosis by the occupants of a space.

Ledanff argues that the impact of the Norman Foster addition to the Reichstag is an extension of this belief in architect as agent of social change. The placement of clear walls in an obvious attempt to increase the transparency of government practices has been utilised by many before, but Ledanff (2003, p.35) states that this “highly ambivalent post-modern architecture” has become a issue of city-wide and national image, as Berlin seeks to find an appropriate architectural form.

Sketch 6: David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum is another example of a marriage of history and Modern architecture creating “modern buildings in old proportions”

At the Schlossplatz, this issue of appropriateness has become especially important, as the centrepiece of a city seeking a brand or image to reflect the shared national identity of unified Germany. The Bundestag had to choose one of three options, from a remade Imperial Palace, a modern building such as the Norman Foster’s addition to the Reichstag or a series of smaller buildings from various German designers forming a consulate of buildings. Public opinion on the matter was split, with a Forsa Survey (2000) finding that 30% were in favour of the Palace’s reconstruction (of which interestingly 22% of voters were from East and 35% from West Berlin), 23% voted for a combination of old and new and 10% voted for a completely modern build. Ledanff argues that the eventual choice of rebuilding the Berliner Schloss reflected the lack of conceptual rigour in Berlin’s recent city-planning. Such solutions he believes have led to a bland historicism and a fragmentation of history and context into zones of clearly defined and self-enclosed spaces. Indeed the very design of the new palace will replicate Berlin’s zoning issues as a whole - three faces of the building will seek to emulate the tradition and heritage of imperial Germany and the Prussian influences therein, while the fourth (facing East) will be Modernist and without ornament, in an attempt to be all things to all men.

(above) sketch 7: The Palace at the Sansousci, residence of one of Berlin’s founding fathers proved precedent for the grandiouse structures of Albert Spear

(left) Photograph 3: Norman Foster’s addition to the war-torn Reichstag

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Section 4: Through popular restaurant “12 Apostels” - showing the common utilisation of unused space common within the Spandauer Vorstadt

Photograph 4: A square in the Spandauer Vorstadt given over to public art installations

Koepnick argues that by this creation of ‘zones’ (as seen in section B) Berlin has authored itself as an exhibition of the past, rather than a cohesive ensemble of past and present. This area of the city is the Nikolaivierte, a district razed to the ground overnight in the Second World War, and rebuilt by the German Democratic Republik in the 1980s in an attempt to recreate the city’s medieval core. This, he points out, is an early example of the wider problem that Berlin is now facing as it compartmentalises history for ease of reference.

Koepnick compares this process to that of hyperlinks in a web browser, a series of designed and enclosed spaces, disparate from the overall image of the city. In contrast, section A examines the Spandauer Vorstadt, the old Jewish Quarter of the city. This area is well known for its pre-war history but it has also emerged as a burgeoning centre of artistic and restorative activities. The utilisation of previously unused space has been key to this, adapting railway arches in the case of the 12 Apostels restaurant or the creation of temporary gallery spaces or work spaces in shipping containers in small courtyards throughout the area (as seen in photograph 4 and urban plan 2).

“Instead of reading urban space as a neatly integrated totality, we should trace memories and counter-memories that crisscross dominant territorializations of culture and history and thereby articulate difference, temporariness and non-identity” (Koepnick, 2001, p.352)

Sketch 8: An opening to a secluded courtyard in the Spandauer Vorstadt

Section B: Through a square in the Nikolaivierte, a replica of a site bombed in WWII and rebuilt in under GDR rule 8

Disneyfication Ledanff (2003, p.42) argues that there is a “hypnotic fascination with questions of identity and the commemoration of traumatic history in Germany in Berlin’s new buildings” which many of its critics believe has had detrimental effects on the city as an organic entity. Koepnick refers to it as the “Disneyfication” of Berlin: an inauthentic, dim-witted and consumerist thrill-ride

Urban Plan 2: A courtyard in the Spandauer Vorstadt in which temporary structures and shipping containers (not hatched in plan) give workspaces to transient businesses

through history. Koepnick draws comparisons to the “city as museum” concept that Rowe and Koetter explore in “Collage City”, in his examination of this collective nostalgia in Berlin’s public space. The selection of “interesting” and detached objects left over from the East-West divide and the one-upmanship that entailed, has remained a facet of Berlin’s growth. However, the need for this latest series of national monuments, especially the reconstructed Palace, is less obvious than during the Cold War or the era of Prussian imperialism. These buildings hold no political motivation and he argues that engineering a city of objects rather than a solid, continuous growth (as in the traditional city model) creates a city full of voids, a city as museum.

Can a building hold political or cultural meaning?

In Lutz Koepnick’s “Forget Berlin” (2001, p.345) he states that seeking to associate political meaning to a symbol is futile, as “no product of cultural production can be seen as having certain political values once and for all.” Similarly to the concept of iconoclasm in “Collage City”, Koepnick argues that there is an impermanence of any meaning when the object itself is a reflection merely of its context. At the Schlossplatz, opinions on the Palaast Der Rebublik reflect only the political environment in which it was constructed, since the site itself has no inherent qualities and formal features to define it as a political and cultural cross-roads for Berlin.

“Places are articulations … their meanings are constituted at the intersection of multiple memories, desires, narratives, inscriptions and physical uses” says Koepnick (2001, p.346). In this way, although particular buildings might index the past through stylistic idioms or symbolic reference, ultimately the space will be defined by the narratives that have run through it. Thus, seeking to encode memory or meaning into a space as in Libeskind’s Jewish Museum results in allegory, and though not unsuccessful in producing a theatrical exploration of memory, the building itself could be said to become the centre of the issue and not its context. In much the same way, according to Alice Kaplan (1997, p.184), plans to rebuild the Imperial Palace when put into the context of the Disneyfication of the capital, could be viewed as an insincere and frenzied attachment of memory which, in turn, may result in the recession of real memory “once it ceases to be testimony”.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that many Berliners, though divided over the issue, no longer view it as a political choice, as no explicitly political activity will take place on the site. The pre- war and early post-war periods were characterised by the ideas of modern urbanism as a principle of political emancipation, the extension of political power through the built environment. Rowe and Koetter argue that art is an expression of society,

Photograph 5: Libeskind’s Jewish Museum seeks to encode memory and experience into architecture, however symbolic reference and atmospheric experience result in allegory that endangers genuine memory

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acting in much the same way as the architect, as a forerunner and revealer of hidden tropes. They argue that the townscape, popularized and given social and economic credibility by Jane Jacobs and Kevin Lynch, should be preferable to the blueprints set by Albert Spear of Berlin or Le Corbusier’s visions of Paris.

Conclusion Amongst the many instruments identified by Rowe and Koetter in Collage City’s closing chapter are memorable streets, stabilizers, interminable set pieces, public terraces, composite buildings, nostalgia producing instruments and “the garden”. The new Schlossplatz apparently represents the culmination of many of these subcategories and becomes the centre piece of the collage forming around it. The movement away from political space and toward communal nostalgia allows a debate that is, unlike the other sites of memorial around the city, purely aesthetic. Ledanf and Koepnick claim that it’s the product of a society trying to identify itself in a global market of tourism with a brand of bland historicism that has overwhelmed the city’s development in the last decade.

So is the “ill-mannered and impertinent city” of Walser (2006, p.61) being socially engineered out of contemporary Berlin? Architectural theorists champion the way in which cities are not static, unchanging constructs and while it is true that Berlin is changing (with examples such as activities in the Spandaur Vor proving that Berlin can still be a spontaneous city of unexpected moments), the trend for seeking an appropriate form to deal with its past, is unwittingly creating a series of spaces than can never evolve. As memory through testimony becomes memory through icon, will these spaces ever be changeable, ever be anything other than static? The example of the Schlossplatz indicates that while these spaces of reverence are being created, the confluences of the unexpected, much admired by Rowe and Koetter, becomes less prolific. In an effort to make “Berlin look like Berlin” the air of tolerance and ingenuity that the capital was based on, could become a thing of the past, as indeed the city aspires to be.

“It would be foolish to dismiss Berlin’s search for representing the past qua architecture per se as hopeless or ideological. At the same time, however, we should now forget that memory should not reside in certain buildings themselves, but in how given groups of people at given moments in time perceive and make use of them.”

(Koepnick, 2001, p.347)

sketch 9: sketch section facing North through site as it stands currently 10

“With great regret I see that I have now bumped against the frame delimiting my essay, leaving me with the tragic conviction that many things I most definitely wished to point out have gone unsaid�

(Walser, 2006, p.19)

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Group Conclusion Three investigative theories were applied to the city of Berlin, each targeting the various typologies discovered within a regional context: Schlossplatz, Tempelhof, Hansaviertel, and the Mietskasernen. The conclusions drawn from this had both contrasting and similar outcomes.

The investigations into Jane Jacobs (1994) and R. Koolhaas (1978) brought different interpretations of Berlin’s functionality and its development, concentrating mainly on the IBA [International Building Exhibition]. The major influx of tenement blocks came during the IBA scheme [begun 1957]. The blocks, and courtyards found within them, are a catalyst for urbanism within Greater Berlin. Magda Silbey’s research illustrated how small clusters can create ‘small neighbourhood units’ (Silbey, 2005, p.49). These units cause more social interaction and more development within communities, hence urban catalysts.

Planned high-­rise / high-­density tower blocks were created within numerous areas of Berlin as a response to the post-­ war housing crisis, and they do so in a literal, no frills manner. According to the findings of the essays responding to both Jane Jacobs and Rem Koolhaas, the idea of self-­contained communities found within tower blocks, (generally accompanied by interior courtyards) establishes an individualism for each build. Jacobs disputes the level of success that can be achieved within more self-­sufficient areas – stating that high-­rise housing leads to reclusive tendencies implored by the residents of the zones. The scale of each build can be investigated in terms of interpretable success.

As for micro scale, Tempelhof encompasses a more individualist nature; with residents generally remaining within the complex as opposed to forming a sense of community with other neighbouring builds. In contrast, the Hansaviertel development has a sense of a greater community, working as a whole – through aspects such as the expected amenities, in order to attain this.

Using Koolhaas’s methodology, Patrick found that the tenement block was fundamental to creating districts and sub-­ communities within them. Not only does it house residents and boosts local economies, but they are the essential factor in creating a society, communities and segregating districts.

Groups such as CIAM published documents like The Charter of Athens, which considered how the overall approach of the redevelopment of Berlin should progress. The IBA it said, brought about some contrasting conceptually idyllic building projects. These were not all deemed successful, but it was these attempts at stepping into unknown conceptual ideologies that, in a sense, was one of the positive attributes to the IBA. It was able to experiment and test such things as new building technologies, modern construction techniques and new socially infused schemes. Successful or not, these have set a precedent for other schemes.

Patrick’s the investigations into the successes and demises into the IBA, led to questioning whether Berlin was still a politically driven society. The conclusions that were drawn from Patrick’s investigation were that the city’s structure and urban fabric is still, to some extent, a controlled society.

In two contrasting readings of Collage City (1983), two images of Berlin have emerged. In one, Berlin’s taste for adventurous, contemporary architecture has become the driving force of the city. In the other, Berlin’s fixation on the past and its uncertainty about its own image and future has become a powerful hinderance to the city’s development. Those two diverging visions of Berlin perfectly identify Rowe and Koetter’s thoughts on how a city should evolve, discussing ideas of objectivity and humanity in the forming of a city and the importance of the dichotomy between utopian visions of architecture as societal edification and the organic formation of complex,disordered cityscapes. The coupling of historical reverance and innovation has always been Berlin’s defining feature and the key to its success throughout the centuries.

Examples such as Chipperfield’s Neue Gallerie perfectly express a combination of traditional proportions and modern construction methods. Berlin has been treated and seen as an ‘international laboratory of contemporary architecture’. Although it can be said it is by experimentation through architectural form that has led Berlin to deliver a substantial repertoire of contemporary architecture throughout the city (Englert, 2008). Jane Jacobs establishes four main points, the requirement for centre community in district as well as the presence of grassroots activism while alleviating the need for function zoned cities and a post modernistic drive.

Without the destruction to the infrastructure and buildings during the war, there would have been limited drive for innovation in architectural design, construction, variety and diversity in urban form. It’s those circumstances that have led to Berlin successfully combining old and new to form a city rich in history, innovation and continuing development.

Rowe and Koetter, however, argue for the importance of proper integration of these adventurous elements. Much like 12

Jane Jacobs and other advocates of townscape they warn of a future city in which a selection of interesting and detached objects (inspired by the one-upmanship of the old East West divide) in which the interstitial spaces are left unnoticed and undeveloped. Rowe also criticises the utopian ideals of creating spaces through ‘total design’ or ‘total architecture’ (Rowe and Koetter, 1978, p.87). Berlin has been unable to develop an urban form as an ideal of total architecture because the space for development is small and distributed across the city. As a result of this, Berlin has developed as a collage rather than the more monotonous form prescribed by utopian ideals.

In conclusion, Berlin is a multi-faceted city both architecturally and in urban fabric. All three texts aim to explore differing contributing factors in the city’s evolution: Jane Jacobs idealises the concept of townscape and the handing over of development to the city’s occupants; Koolhaas champions the self -contained communities of close- knit courtyards and urban spaces; Rowe and Koetter critique modernist planning ideals by representing how the issues caused by that movement, have been addressed by subsequent theorists, planners, architects and urban designers. Rowe states when describing a collage city, that cities develop their collages through historic fragments and epochs.

With the introduction of the IBA soon after WWII, Berlin was in a unique position to develop, yet all four theorists argue for the importance of people building the city over an objective, ordered planning process. Whilst Berlin has been the subject to many utopian designs over the centuries, it has nevertheless, retained its image as the cultural melting pot of the early 20th Century. That, combined with its reputation for technological and artistic innovation, is what the city is now trying to return to, after the cataclysms of the intervening years. Berlin seeks a new identity by renovating a tradition of evolution and fragmentation, rebounding from those who sought to implement utopian master plans.

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Bibliography / Readings: Rowe, C. and Koetter, F., 1983. Collage City. Massachusetts: MIT Press Walser, R., 2006. Berlin Stories. Translated from German by S. Bernofsky, J. Greven ed. New York: New York Review of Books Balfour, A., 1990. Berlin: The Politics of Order, 1737-1989. New York: Rizzoli Jacobs, J., 1994. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Harmondsworth: Penguin in association with Jonathan Cape Koolhaas, R., 1978. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. London: Thames and Hudson Sibley, M., 2005. The Courtyard Houses of North African Medinas, Past, Present, and Future. In: B. Edwards, ed. 2006.

Courtyard Housing: Past, Present, and Future. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Englert, A., Englert K. and Visscher, J. ed., 2008. Berlin Modernism. Berlin: Jovis Strom, E. A., 2001. Building the New Berlin: The Politics of Urban Development in Germany’s Capital City. Lanham: Lexington Books Shane, D. G., 2005. Recombinant Urbanism - Conceptual Modelling in Architecture, Urban Design, and City Theory.

Chichester: Wiley-Academy Colin, B., 2008. The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite. London: John Murray Isherwood, C., 1939. Goodbye to Berlin. London: Vintage, 2003 Koepnick, L., 2001. Forget Berlin. The German Quarterly, 74(4), pp.343-354 Rechtien, R., 2010. Cityscapes of the German Democratic Republic - An Interdisciplinary Approach. German Life and Letters, 63(4), pp.369-374 Stella, F. and Mackler, C., 2009. Berlin: Even by the German capital’s standards, the competition to rebuild an eighteenth century ‘castle’ on the site of the former East German parliament has proved fiercely controversial. Chris Foges examines this context and the competition entries, including schemes. Architecture Today, 196, pp.12-19 Ledanff, S., 2003. The Palace of the Republic Versus The Stadtschloss: The Dilemmas of Planning in the Heart of Berlin.

German politics and society, 21(4), pp.30-73 Colomb, C., 2007. Requiem for a Lost Palast. ‘Revanchist urban planning’ and ‘burdened landscapes’ of the German Democratic Republic in the new Berlin. Planning perspectives: An International Journal of History, Planning and the Environment, 22(3), pp.283-323 Kaplan, A. Y., 1997. The “German-Jewish Symbiosis” Revisited. New German critique, 70, pp.183-190 Forsa Institute, 2000. A Survey of Proposals For Both The Uses and The Architecture of a New Building on the Palace Square. Berlin: Forsa Institute Ladd, B., 1997. The ghosts of Berlin: confronting German history in the urban landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Berlin: Written and Presented by Matt Frei, 2009. [TV programme] BBC, BBC2, 14 November 2009 – 28 November 2009 21:00. Available through: Box of Broadcasts database [Accessed 20 October 2012]

Bibliography / Images: All Sketches, Sections, Plans and Photographs are by the author 14

The Spandauer Vorstadt area

Appendices: Appendix 1 - Scale Drawings Ground Plan, 1:2500

The Nikolaivierte area, a series of buildings bombed in WWII and rebuilt in replica under GDR rule

Schlossplatz, Museum Island

Holocaust Memorial

Jewish Museum

The Wall

Appendices: Appendix 1 - Scale Drawings Urban Plan 1, 1:200

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Appendices: Appendix 1 - Scale Drawings Urban Plan 2, 1:100

Appendices: Appendix 1 - Scale Drawings Section A, 1:100

Appendix 1 - Scale Drawings Section B, 1:100

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