HeinZ Hilmer & Christoph Sattler

The area known as Potsdamer Platz, between the southern edge of the Tiergarten, where the Kulturforum is located, and the western end of the Friedrichstadt, where the baroque Leipziger Platz was located, exemplifies the process undergone by the city since the fall of the Wall. This strategic area, which was the gateway between the old and the new Berlin and an important traffic and activity hub, has been the focus of the debate on the city model from the point of view of management, urban planning and architecture.

The first ideas competition for the development of the strip of land left by the wall, organized in 1991 by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt under the title 'Berlin Tomorrow', already laid the foundations for the debate, but it was in the second, limited to the Potsdamer Platz area, that the controversy became open. Also in 1991, the competition was organized by the administrations of Bonn and Berlin and was awarded on September 11 of that year. This competition established the concept of 'critical reconstruction' advocated by Senatbaudirektor Hans Stimmann. However, the choice of the jury, chaired by Stimmann himself, in favor of the traditional urban fabric and the closed block configuration typical of pre-war Berlin, expressed in the awarding of first prize to Heinz Hilmer and Christoph Sattler's planning project, reveals nothing but the difficult compatibility between a fabric and typology conceived for medium density and the needs imposed by market dynamics...[+]