Luis Fernández-Galiano   The 20th century ended on November 9, 1989. The fall of the Berlin wall abruptly closed a historical period, and the Cold War was followed by several hot wars and an icy peace. The melting of conflicts frozen by the battle of the blocs has given rise

An important hub of traffic and activities, Alexanderplatz was the nerve center and engine of the city during the first decades of this century and until World War II. Its reduction to rubble during the war offered it the opportunity for a second bir

Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm   Berlin's city center has suffered irreparable damage. There is no comparison with any other European metropolis. This urban agglomeration of some 50 kilometers in diameter, inhabited by just over 3.5 million people, has a kind of crater in the center

Mary Pepchinski   As Berlin embarks on a building boom of approximately 13 million square meters, the city seems unable to clearly establish how it will - or should - be affected by this activity. On the one hand, Berliners are struggling to define who they are and wh

Justo Isasi  

One of the first decisions taken by the new Federal Republic of Germany on June 20, 1991, after reunification, was the re-establishment of Berlin as the capital of the entire nation, which implied the relocation of all central government offices from

The eventful history of the Reichstag building, built in 1894 according to a design by Paul Wallot (see Arquitectura Viva 30), is closely linked to the vicissitudes of the Spreebogen area where it is located. The latest episode in this story is the c

The Spreeinsel, or 'Spree Island', became the representative seat of power of the German Empire on its southern side, and throughout the 19th century its northern end was transformed into a privileged cultural site: the Altes Museum by Karl Friedrich

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

Once the competition for Potsdamer Platz had been decided and Hilmer & Sattler's solution had been ratified, the investing companies called for tenders for the development of their respective areas based on the solution presented by the winners.

Renzo Piano Building Workshop   Germany   As the winner of the Daimler Benz competition and author of the development plan, it is Renzo Piano (with Christoph Kohlbecker) who has received the largest number of projects for the development of the blocks in the area. The first of these projects

Arata Isozaki   Germany   The two projects assigned to Arata Isozaki, the C2 and C3 buildings, are located at the southeast end of the Daimler Benz complex, in a block formed by three blocks, of which the third is one of those developed by Renzo Piano. The outer boundaries of

Kollhoff & Timmermann   Germany   The A1 office tower, developed by Hans Kollhoff, corresponds to the northern corner of the Daimler Benz area, bounded by the main axis and the southern axis of the Potsdamer Platz trident, facing the square itself, and forms, together with the corres

lauber + wöhr   Germany   The first of the three residential blocks developed by Ulrike Lauber and Wolfram Wöhr is the extension, on the other side of Eichhomstrasse, of those designed by Isozaki. Almost triangular in plan, this block B9 is developed around a courtyard open t

Rafael Moneo   Germany   The plot assigned to Rafael Moneo is located at the northwest end of the Daimler Benz area, behind that of Lauber & Wohr and next to the Kulturforum, from whose Staatsbibliothek it is separated only by the end of the casino designed by Renzo Piano. A

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP)   Germany   Both Hilmer & Sattler's initial proposal and Piano's proposal for blocks B4, B6 and B8 expressed the clear desire to offer a continuous facade plane to the new Linkstrasse, converted into a linear park. In his proposal, however, Richard Rogers breaks

Situada al noroeste del conjunto, el área destinada a la promoción por parte de la empresa Sony corresponde a la manzana triangular comprendida entre la vía norte y el eje principal del tridente de Potsdamer Platz, simétrica a la manzana triangular c

The third of the major competitions promoted by private initiative is the one organized by the Asea Brown Boveri consortium for the 16,500-square-meter strip of land it owns, between Linkstrasse and Kothenerstrasse, where the Potsdamer Banhof stood b

Giorgio Grassi   Germany   As first prize winner of the Asea Brown Boveri competition, Giorgio Grassi has been assigned the development of two of the five blocks conceived by him for the whole area, precisely two of the three intermediate H-shaped volumes that characterize his

Peter P. Schweger   Germany   Although in Giorgio Grassi's winning proposal the head building of the Asea Brown Boveri area evoked in part Hilmer & Sattler's original conception - in which it formed a single body with the immediately adjacent one -, when it came to assigning the

Diener & Diener Architekten   Germany   Diener & Diener's project, winner of the second prize in the Asea Brown Boveri competition, was the one that most deviated from Hilmer & Sattler's original proposal, replacing the semi-enclosed block typology with a series of blocks of varying volume

Josef Paul Kleihues   Germany   As can be seen in the plans of eighteenth-century Berlin, the block that is the subject of Kleihues's intervention is located at a singular point of change of urban fabric within the street grid of the Friedrichstadt, in the area where the Friedrichs

Josef Paul Kleihues, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Marlene Dörrie, Klaus Theo Brenner, Walther Stepp   Germany   The block called Kontorhaus Mitte represents one of the forms of action implemented for the reconstruction of the northern Friedrichstadt, consisting of commissioning different architects for the various fragments of the complex, under the coordinati

Oswald Mathias Ungers   Germany   Located on the diagonally opposite corner of the Kontorhaus, the Friedrichstadt Passagen block, bounded by Mohrenstrasse and Taubenstrasse and open to the Gendarmenmarkt, responds to the other form of intervention in the area, consisting of assigning

Ateliers Jean Nouvel   Germany   As in the case of Kleihues in Zimmerstrasse, Jean Nouvel's intervention on this site bounded to the north by Franzosischestrasse and to the south by Jagerstrasse, consisted here in the reconstruction of a partially destroyed block, although located i

Hans Kollhoff, Josef Paul Kleihues, Jürgen Sawade, Max Dudler   Germany   Developed by several architects according to the method used at the IBA, the block called Hofgarten am Gendarmenmarkt is located between Franzosischestrasse and Behrenstrasse, next to Nouvel's building. As in the Kontorhaus Mitte, the work was coordi

Due to its highly central strategic location and the symbolic significance of its history, the area around Friedrichstrasse station, one of Berlin's most important public transport hubs, has been the object of speculative appetite of developers since

Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani   Towards the end of the 19th century, the architectural world witnessed a parade in which virtually every known style followed one another at an ever-increasing speed. It was a festival of architectural eclecticism in which elements from all eras were

Daniel Libeskind   In Germany today, one hears a particularly depressing remark about architecture and planning: ≪It's over≫. What is it that is over? There are those who will have you believe that the time when visions and dreams mattered is over, that the time when t

Fritz Neumeyer   Even before it is built, the new Berlin architecture is already making headlines. Philip Johnson - the venerable old man who has brought to life and reburied the great currents of the last 60 years, from the International Style to Deconstructivism an

Kollhoff & Timmermann   Germany   The process of public exhibition and open discussion of the proposals submitted in the first phase of the Alexanderplatz competition led to important modifications in the surface area, program and planning criteria, which were incorporated into the b

Daniel Libeskind   Germany   The awarding of the second prize to Daniel Libeskind in the second phase of the Alexanderplatz competition represents in a way the recognition of the other pole of the controversy in which the Berlin architectural community is currently immersed arou