"Spazieren in Berlin"Author(s): Dagmar RichterSource: Assemblage, No. 29 (Apr., 1996), pp. 72-85Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171395Accessed: 06/05/2010 04:55

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Dagmar Richter, site plan for the Spreebogen

Dagmar Richter

Spazieren in Berlin

Dagmar Richter is an associate professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an architect with studios in Berlin and Los Angeles.

Assemblage 29: 72-85 ? 1996 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

It has been nearly a year and a half since I relocated temporarily to Berlin, in order, in part, to watch the events surrounding the reconstruction of the German capital. My expectations for the city were compa- rable to those for Madrid and Barcelona after Franco. The prospect of being a

"flaneuse" in Berlin intrigued me. The more so as Walter Benjamin had noted in 1929 that the flaneur, strangely enough, had finally arrived in that city after Ben-

jamin had deemed him to have disap- peared everywhere else: "One has to know that the Berliners have changed slowly," he wrote, "their problematic pride to have founded a capital has made space for an

attempt to redefine Berlin as a place."'

Today, the city is again busy being proud - problematically enough - to have once more claimed the title of the capital of Germany. A new Griinderzeit has been declared by the building and construction senate. Benjamin, in discussing Franz Hessel's book Spazieren in Berlin (Stroll- ing in Berlin), proclaimed, "How he celebrates the old culture of domestic- ity!"; but he added: "the last ones - as it is in the spirit of our time that this type of domestic culture in the old sense, where coziness [Geborgenheit] is the dominant concept, is doomed to die. Giedion,

Mendelsohn, Corbusier have transformed the place of residence foremost into a transitional space of all thinkable forces and waves of light and air. What will be from now on stands in the spirit of trans- parency."2 Since Berlin East and West

merged in 1989 and the city was opened up to a sudden cultural storm from all sides, its space has rapidly become fore- most the "transitional space of all think- able forces" predicted by Benjamin. The local outspoken (mostly former Western) intellectuals, planners, and architects who had survived so snugly in the old culture of domesticity were not pleased by this spirit of transparency, too accustomed as they were to sailing in West Germany's ship of fools.

"Building for Democracy!" proclaimed Peter Rumpf in 1993 in the architectural

magazine Bauwelt, reviewing the Interna- tional Berlin Spreebogen Competition, in which the newly reconstituted German capital was to be spatially formulated: "This awfully overly stressed dictum is as easy as it is misunderstandable. Openness, popularity, transparency, cheerfulness, relaxedness, call it 'democracy,' is so easily and readily equated with dispersed urban space, a dislike of symmetry and axes, with a lot of glass and light construc-

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tions, just like a Behnisch in Bonn or a Scharoun in Berlin. This change, by mistake, of an inner political ethical

posture with a certain outer form has

already produced a failure of many dis- cussions about this in endless, resultless, aimless talks."3 Rumpf seemed rather at ease in declaring, without further expla- nation, this wish of democratic represen- tation to be a total "illusion."

The urban design idea competition for the German government compound produced an overwhelming number of

eight hundred seventeen proposals that were deemed complete by the invited

jury. The statistics are astounding: projects were submitted from all over the

globe, with vast numbers from the United States, Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa; the first-prize winner came from Berlin itself; of the first four prizes, three went to Germans and one to a Swiss; all rewarded and cited projects were Euro-

pean aside from one mention that was

given to Morphosis from the United States. These projects were extensively published in the European press.

A few of the ninety American projects made it into the magazines, such as

Asymptote's project in Assemblage, or ARX's project, which represented Portugal but included Americans and Japanese on the team, in ANY. Many of these tried to

investigate the possibility of taking a criti- cal view toward Germany's recent history with the help of "this overly stressed dic- tum" of representing their idea of democ-

racy formally. These projects represent a

group of architectural designers who were unable to disconnect the orders of the future parliament from their interpretation of ideological content in form. Indeed, this "illusion" has also been regarded as a dictum with moral content by quite a number of designers, architects, and critics in Berlin lately. The formal outcome

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By first collecting different maps of the Spreebogen site, we have initiated an investiga- tion rooted in a political interpretation of Berlin's spatial representations, where these maps mirror political power. This process of collection, discrimination, and modification has critically interpreted the site's history, mapped by distinct prevalent, successive, and simultaneous political and cultural concepts of order throughout recent history. Our process of formal transformation of the signs latent in these maps seeks to find a space that represents democracy as a layered, diverse, and flexible system.

A swarm of short parallel lines, broken off the axes implemented by Speer and the Prus- sian nobility, orders our proposal. Additionally, these lines are augmented by stitchings that take the form of the long, stretched curves that appear on maps depicting the varied routes of the river. These elements negotiate among the Parliament, the different events, and the movements in the city. Formal breaks defined as "unreasonable oases" - in this project appearing as voids that create open membranes and unpredictable moments - have been taken from former maps, where cartographers tried to reflect the found condi- tions of the site. A technique of folding and overlapping these found and transformed or- ders results in a new abstract urban landscape where each government structure closely relates to specific views and events in the city.

The different spatial orders overlap and exist simultaneously, but do not search for a re- ductive and highly edited answer with artificial clarity, cultural simplicity, or a reflection of stasis, timelessness, and authoritarian comfort. Instead, the new structure encom- passes simultaneous realities at all times.

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between the different moral representa- tives could not have been more opposite. On the one side of the spectrum, it seemed necessary for a number of Ameri- can entrants in the Spreebogen competi- tion to distance themselves from the

expectation that the architect's role was to affirm the existing political power uncritically. The outcome was to be ex-

pected: none of these projects came close to being seriously considered. Yet most of these offices seemed content for their contribution to serve more as a text thrown into the fierce debate unfolding within this architectural megaevent at the end of the

century. The winner was, of course, a local

representative of the other side of this moral debate, who advocated the develop- ment of Berlin in traditional terms. His

design was considered the representation of "orderly and proper craftsmanship ... not conceptual castles in the air" and described as local, clear, strong as Wash-

ington or Chandigarh without forgetting that it was "typical Berlin."4

"'Berlin must look like Berlin' - But what does that mean?" wrote Paul

Goldberger in February 1995 in the New York Times Magazine.5 The winning project represented the new German

spirit of "ethical architecture." This new movement is put in direct context for-

mally with an orthogonal minimalist

expression using traditional materials and construction methods typical of Berlin and Zurich. The building senate of Ber- lin, localized on the Left of the political spectrum, with the help of critic Vittorio

Lampugnani and Berlin architects Jiurgen Sawade, Josef Paul Kleihues, and Hans Kollhoff, on the Right of the spectrum, have dominated the public market with a

very loud insistence on the "illusion" of a direct relation of minimalist form to moral content. The senate has made certain that this new party line is the only

acceptable expression for central Berlin.

Interestingly enough, the two extremely oppositional political groups could posi- tion themselves together to ensure the cultural hegemony of the upper class

representing state power. The critical American voices who thought to have the ethics on their side have been branded, in the meantime, as cultural enemies. These numerous critical voices, which were still heard in the Spreebogen competition, have since been widely silenced.

A very few have been deemed cooperative enough to serve as the publicly sanctioned

opposition: Daniel Libeskind, who not

only functions as the official American but also as the official Jew, has through this status, reached a place untroubled by any serious criticism in Germany. This sanctu-

ary has allowed his office finally to build, but the work is now confronted with an

intellectually deadly lack of debate com- bined with a personality cult of nearly unseen dimension. Statements like "Libeskind is an intellectual, but the city is a social system, and every house has to work as part of society. I have no problem with Libeskind. Libeskind has a problem with me" by senate building director Hans Stimmann show not only how the dictate of Berlin's style has been themed for easy populist consumption, but also how the architectural debate has started to suffer the same malaise.6 Catch phrases on or by the celebrated few occupy the press in much the same way as the icon of Philip Johnson - in the form of a forty-foot self- portrait hung in front of his construction site - occupies the public space. Berlin learned from Las Vegas without knowing it, or at least without admitting it. After my experiences in Los Angeles before I left for Berlin, I would dare to suggest that Berlin will become the first state-organized media city of surface. It will surpass our expecta- tions of Las Vegas, Disney, and City Walk.

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Morphosis The nature of government itself is being reexamined and redefined globally. No longer does a monolithic, static, unchangeable image suffice to provide architectural meaning. Government is now seen as dispersed and integrated into the urban fabric. It is a living entity and as such it is fluid, open, transformable, and symbolic of the diverse culture it leads. At the same time, it must be coherent and rational in order for its constituents to comprehend it.

Our project addresses the varied edge conditions of the Spreebogen site. The river is symbolic of life, commerce, movement, flux, beauty, and, as a place that marks the birth of the city, it plays an important part in the development of our formal language. A second edge condition is apparent in the location of the site between the Tiergarten and the larger urban fabric of Berlin. This circumstance further reinforces the importance of a language that allows for fluidity, for a weaving together of disparate topographies. And, finally, there is the memory of the Wall, that edge which will be part of Berlin's collective memory forever.

Thus the architectural language developed here is one of a lyrical weaving or braiding of long, sensually shaped building types that are evocative of a system of walls. In stark contrast to the Wall of memory, however, these new walls are a connective tissue. They are osmotic; in most cases, they are lifted off the ground, making any reference to a barrier impossible. By virtue of their porosity, these wall-like buildings invite transgression of their boundaries, defying notions of stasis, closure, and fixity. As a result, the scheme is conceived as a dynamic entity, one that conceptually grows and could adapt to future changes and additions.

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Contemporary Berlin has a residual tripartite structure - the two, divided cities of its recent past and the current unified metropolis. Acknowledging this tripartite structure, our proposal engages the historical, cultural, architectural, and programmatic aspects of the Spreebogen site. It does so by initiating new development and by accommodating and registering existing or planned buildings, surrounding site conditions, and earlier formations through two strategic devices that are architecturally inflected: mirroring and mediating. Aspects of the existing or preceding built fabric are mirrored through specific new elements, and in each case, the two components are mediated by a third, which serves to diversify and activate the site.

As an example of these devices, the Platz der Republik mediates the existing Reichstag and the planned Bundesrat, the site of which is designated by a reflective plane visible from a distance and physically traversed. Similarly, a Media Garden acts as a connective device between the Chancellery and the Press Club, establishing a relationship between the private aspects of press activity and the public sphere at the site of media distribution and reception. The Open Space Park expands throughout the site in contrast to the dense and mature growth of the Tiergarten. This park is then mediated by paths and routes of movement that interconnect as well as occupy the site as a whole, articulating a relation- ship between the site and the Tiergarten. The map of the proposal, then, comprises three layers: the field of open, green, and pedestrian spaces that interconnect with the city be- yond the periphery of the site; paths and encampments creating movement and events within the site as well as links to the existing transportation systems; and, finally, event spaces, mirroring spaces, and mediating spaces that house program and become the sites of overlap for various activities.

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1. Section of three typical Berlin blocks from the end of the nineteenth century

2. Section of the three buildings of Friedrichstadt Passagen, from left to right, Jean Nouvel, Pei, Cobb and Freed, and 0. M. Ungers

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Since the German reunification, Berlin has experienced an onslaught of specula- tive interventions into its real estate mar- ket. In this framework, the question of size has certainly become more important than the question of architectural culture. "The fall of the Wall has triggered a construc- tion investment worth billions of dollars, expressing the fundamental structural transformation of Berlin," Stimmann wrote in his introduction for the book Downtown Berlin: Building the Metropoli- tan Mix.' The city block - once a regula- tory element used by and for the entire city to control the individual investor - has become, in the new speculative cli- mate of state-owned and largely state- organized real estate, a singular building. Only on the surface does this new building type commit itself to a city block structure of a consistent height of twenty-two meters. It simulates structure through shape by regulating the height of the street edge as a superficial visual order, but neglects it as a regulatory structural and environmental control instrument. After the fall of the Wall the building authorities quickly defined the above-street height as a consistent rule for the former eastern

central area, but failed to provide clear guidelines for density, parcel size, parking requirements, and number of under- ground floors. As a consequence, the new block buildings in the recently proposed projects for central Berlin consist of nearly as many floors above the street as there will be below, as one can see in the Friedrichstadt Passagen projects. The different blocks will often be connected under the street through the lower floors. Housing has been erased, with a few ex- ceptions of the twenty-percent city require- ments for the speculative office projects that occupy entirely the new construction of central Berlin.

Most of the land of the former East Berlin was owned by the state, who took owner- ship through political means. The new Germany has thus become the biggest land owner in the eastern part of the city. Through state regulations the remaining individual owners, who have often left Germany, are reimbursed for their lots. with a set and usually undervalued price. The state then resells the superblocks to large investment firms mostly located in Berlin with minimal formal and proce-

dural requirements. The well-known case of Daimler-Benz at Potsdamer Platz, which triggered an accusation at the European Court that the German state was illegally trying to subsidize its own industry, is but one example. The winning design for the develop- ment of the future city center around Alexanderplatz proposes an architecturally monochrome megastructure that visually resembles a historic block structure. Through the erasure of the entire social and building fabric of the former East German state, Hans Kollhoff promises an uncomplicated land and investment profit. The proposed architectural model is inevitably suitable for this new form of fast profit regulated and organized by the government. It comes as no surprise that the new building type promoted by the winner in the Alexanderplatz competition not only fills the entire block including the former courtyard, but it additionally uses the only visually individual block as a base for a skyscraper positioned on top of it. The project was named by some "De- lirious Alexanderplatz," reflecting the famous painting by Madelon Vriesendorp for Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York.' The definition of the block, once a rule for flexible strategies for smaller individual investment activities, was further trans- formed by Kollhoff into a concept of a strongly regulated, totally monochrome office superstructure of thirteen blocks, which he now declared to be "the large cozy city living room" of Berlin. If this description fits Walter Benjamin's reading of a Berlin finally trying to define itself as a modern place beyond the idealization of domesticity of a small town, it is a rather interesting choice of reference. The much too complex structure of reality that con- sists of mass housing built by the former GDR at Alexanderplatz has been ideal- ized into a tabula rasa condition where a

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Traditionally, architecture has defined the social sphere and given it its vital sense, but today this political dimension of architecture has been almost completely lost to other fields. Architecture is no longer the primary arena for shaping the public's engagement with the world. It finds itself in the cultural and social margins because it has been un- able to confront and transform its outdated spatial premise, characterized by the defi- nition of object boundaries, a durability in time, and regular projective geometries.

Our proposal for the Berlin Spreebogen applies this criticism to a large scale. It con- fronts a series of complex issues arising from the four scales of the context, addressing each simultaneously both in form and function: the immediate site and its local inter- face; the city of Berlin, its urban form, and physical history; the capital complex reflect- ing a national identity, the nation of Germany; and, finally, the preeminent nation within the global sphere. Given these conditions, our project challenges conventional representations of power by creating a structure that is at once one thing and many things. A series of formal and programmatic components are interwoven to perform a complex urban, national, and international role and to produce a field of relationships that is neither hierarchical nor random. This field symbolizes the dynamics of a modern democracy and its vital lines of communication, in which spheres of power no longer coincide with geopolitical boundaries. It resonates with a global dissolution of clearly delineated entities of commerce, ethnicity, communication, politics, and science.

Our project makes an opening in the city by creating a topological exception to the urban fabric. It is a permeable and convoluted entity, appearing in many forms and eluding clear outline. Although the project consists of four distinct components, they act in mutual interference, where one alters the other, and are interwoven to create a differentiated whole.

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new monumental and prestigious com- mercial center is to be formulated.

Berlin has shown lately that architects and architectural style can be employed in a most direct sense as a vehicle to silence resistance through staged cultural debates. One example is a very loud insistence on architectural style as a democratic means of city planning. The motto used can be described as a nation- alist model of an anti-American, pro- Prussian European city, understood only by a few selected, mostly German and sometimes Central European firms. "Catch phrases such as 'anything goes' or, in the context of American cities, theories such as 'Learning from Las Vegas,' are not only out of place but destructive in a

city such as Berlin, which is so firmly rooted in the European architectural tradition," concludes Stimmann in de- fense of his rigorous formal dictate.9 The

request for a more democratic develop- ment, participation, and diversity is per- manently quenched as an "American model" leading to an "American city." America, and this includes certain En-

glish trends, is said to have too great a cultural hegemony as an old occupying power from the Second World War.

Kleihues, the jury chairman of the

Alexanderplatz competition, stated some time ago in an attempt to discredit Richard

Rogers, who has worked on an alternative for the Potsdamer Platz development for the investor group: "We should ask our- selves what 'flexible systems' by Richard

Rogers actually has to do with Berlin: 'Flexible systems' is empirical - but Berlin is a city of idealism. Certain people will never understand this. Something is

being inserted into Berlin that reflects another philosophical framework and

concept."" Under these circumstances, it seems surprising to see Kollhoff win the

Alexanderplatz competition with a very typical American model in mind. The architect claimed to have copied directly New York's Rockefeller Center. It be- comes quickly obvious that anti-American- ism is used mainly when needed to defend

building commissions by Berlin offices. In the cultural debate of Germany, xenopho- bia has had the upper hand lately, which

provides a useful tool.

"In philosophy over the last decades

rationality and logic, the bone structure of our Western culture, has been melted

through cloudy irrationality," wrote Vittorio Lampugnani, one of the conser- vative architects and architectural critics. "Until the 1920s architecture was defined in the old German Reich through ex-

tremely high quality .... The same can be said about the architecture of the national socialist era .... This tradition

ruptures abruptly after 1945. Together with the Nazi dictate, the architecture that represented this power was entirely eliminated; and with that unfortunately also traditional properness [Gediegenheit]. S.. Now architecture has rigorously to mirror the seriousness of the historical situation." Lampugnani wrote this text, entitled "The Provocation of the Banal,"

in the popular magazine Der Spiegel to advocate for his kind of architecture. The text is littered with adjectives that belittle the architectural style he disapproves of: "easy pictures ... superficial sensation ... tormented lightness . .. wild growth ... nosy new interpretation." The terrible

theory behind it: "cryptic philosophy of

uncertainty.""

In this article, moreover, which started a fierce, polemical discussion on architec- tural style in the public, Lampugnani glorifies the period before and during the Nazi government by depicting the archi- tecture that developed then as orderly, aesthetic, well detailed, of high quality, clarity, and solidity. Newer architecture, by contrast, is showered with the type of adjectives imported to describe the femi- nine in the 1960s: chattery, exuberant, irrational, lovely, domesticated, uncourageous, talentless, nosy, wild, prud- ish, exhibiting innovation that is only attitude. What is astounding is the total self-confidence with which a pile of de-

rogatory descriptions and assessments has been thrown toward the supposed user as well as the enemy architect. Modern, theory-influenced architecture is deemed

by the author as too complex and difficult for the common citizen to understand. What the people need, writes Lam-

pugnani, is simple geometrical forms and

repetition, an easily readable, conven- tional, monotone, economical building - in short, a proper and decent building. Lampugnani's arguments are structurally interesting, as he argues against consum- able pictures and novelty for novelty's sake as well as against unreasonable waste. What seems difficult to follow is in what sense these points are specifically bound and defined by certain architectural ex-

pressions and geometries. No studies have

proven any of these quasi-economic argu-

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Architecture is a form of knowledge - culturally determined as well as culturally determining - and a form of writing in which traces can be read pertaining to the program, the urban context, philosophical assumptions, general concepts, poetic contents, and production methods. These allow multiple forms of interpretation intimating the simultaneous occurrence of several ideas. Architecture is not pure; it is contaminated by a multiplicity of forces and accepts unfinished moments within the work, ruptures, discontinuities, disorder, contradictions.

Architecture might be considered an open field operating within open systems. It is inherently political, but its role within the context of politics must be rethought. In this sense, architecture should not support one specific ideology, but should offer readings about the mechanisms of power and allow a place for the uncovering of ideological structures. This proposal is, therefore, conceived not for the representation of the government, but as a factory for politics, a place for production. It is a place for work - not only for the ruling party, but also for the opposition, the minority, for groups and lobbies supporting their specific interests, for committee members and their enormous task forces, and, most specifically for the twentieth century, a place for a new power - a state within the State - the press.

No longer in the chambers of assembly, in speeches for the media cameras, at official party meetings, contemporary politics is instead made in the corridors, at secret meetings, on the telephone. It is made in places in-between. Architecture, in other words, does not offer a center for political action: rather, it defines the margins in which politics might occur. Changes in the political arena, often abrupt and unexpected, necessitate changes in architectural understanding. The potential for developments (incorporating the factor of time) needs to determine a new approach to architecture, architecture that exists in a state of flux.

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I have termed this project the "Traces of the Unborn" to describe the need to resist the selective erasure of history, the need to respond to history, the need to open the future: that is, to delineate the invisible on the basis of the visible. This proposal developed cer- tain planning and architectural concepts that reflect my commitment to the memory of the city, to the time in which it dwells, and to the freedom it represents.

Alexanderplatz is positioned as a center point of the united Berlin. The proposal opens the area and emphatically rejects the idea that public space needs to be closed in an urban room. My design relies on the history of Alexanderplatz to resist such willfully imposed planning concepts. It calls for immediate interaction with the existing by supplementing and subverting, stabilizing and destabilizing, the network of traffic, street patterns, and building.

In advocating the acceptance of the existence of the DDR, which represents almost fifty years of building, even the prefabricated and ill-conceived buildings should not be singled out for demolition, but rather incorporated in an ecologically responsive man- ner. The contradictions inherent in bringing together the mass housing of the former DDR with high density commercial development are mediated by a major urban park that would act as a field thematizing the ruin of time.

In this competition, I have rejected the option of erasing the history of the city; instead, my proposal gradually improves the public space, traffic, and organization of Alexanderplatz without relying on some hypothetical "time-in-the-future" when Alexanderplatz would be perfect. The given is not treated as an obstacle or seen as a form of pathology, but rather viewed as an opportunity pregnant with new relations and new urban experiences. In refuting the past and the future alike, the eternal present of transformation and metamorphosis are used as strategies for the creation of unpredictable, flexible, and hybrid architecture. From this structure emerge forms whose individual expression and representation are indistinguishable from the political space they occupy, treating the city as an evolving and poetic event.

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ments. The architecture of the new era looks expensive, uses exuberant materials, is still defined by the same type of master architect's signature, and has not been shown to achieve a cheaper per-square- foot cost or a longer duration of life. The

argument has until now been reduced to the "look" not the overall content.

The city structure itself is never discussed in Berlin. The debate over style and how the city is to be themed overshadow real

opposition against a structural brutaliza- tion of Berlin. Through rigorous dictates, Stimmann prescribed the veneers of the

faqades of central Berlin. He defined a so- called Berlinische Architektur by selectively declaring a certain architecture from the 1920s as the Berlin model. The prescrip- tion is made very clear: "At the beginning of this work stands the call to resume and continue the tradition of metropolitan Berlin commercial architecture that was

interrupted in the 1930s.... These office and commercial buildings, erected in the context of existing blocks, stand as ex-

amples of the current demand for a 'stone architecture.' This demand is based on the conviction that an urban atmosphere derives from the emphasized materiality of the city. High-tech buildings consisting solely of glass or displaying all their struc- tural elements cannot allow the creation of a city in a traditional sense. A European city needs walls and openings that mark the transition between building and

city.""2 Stimmann started an outcry of

protest for individuality in the most super- ficial way. No one seemed to have realized that the loss of individuality has already happened within a much more central structural system of real estate speculation aided by the government.

This reflects a new transformed system of state and corporate capitalism that Daniel

Libeskind was unwilling to follow in his

proposal for the Alexanderplatz develop- ment, for which he was awarded second

prize. Libeskind's project reflects an

attempt to open up a system inherited from the East to the possibility of indi- vidual and smaller investments in the

city, using the existing structures and

transforming the physical reality with the

help of time and direct engagement. Time is essential, as the opportunity to

position oneself economically and politi- cally as an old and new user has barely been given. Berliners have not yet created a "place" in the Benjaminian sense. The inner city is overwhelmed with fast and

easy pictures of total progress combined with aggressive fights about the image Berlin should create. Meanwhile, rents for offices are already falling dramatically as many individual investors have moved to the city edge in order to build less

expensively. The individual investor, the owner of the individual lot, and the present user of the center have had no chance to engage in building, for the state has indeed so dominated the debate over

style as to make it impossible for small

groups to endure the prolonged construc- tion time that has ensued.

In Libeskind's proposal, at least, the city is

given a flexible regulatory system that is

structurally, not just visually, based on the historic block structure. The proposed structure reflects a modern society with- out having to express this idea of the modern through a style. The former East Germans living in the central city are treated as members of society that deserve serious consideration - something with which the West Germans have so far failed to come to terms. Existing com-

plexities are used for a strategy of flexible localized city making void of nationalist idealist and utopian undertones. It is full

of possibilities to invite a diverse and

heterogeneous society. This is an archi- tecture that reflects the new Germany that has for years developed through immigration and individual initiative, a

Germany that has already become mod- ern in a sociological sense, even if this

point has been entirely silenced in the discussion up to now.

My time as a meanderer in Berlin was up last summer. The experience left me in

expectation of the arrival of a new theme

park, a city themed in the image of Eu-

rope and America of the nineteenth and

very early twentieth centuries where the

opportunities that arose from the eco- nomic transformation were aimed, with the help of the state, at eliminating cul- tural and economic diversity in order for the upper class to secure its taste as the sole representative of all. Benjamin's search for transparency and the ability to move beyond the problematic pride in having attracted the title of capital toward the making of a vital place has once more failed to materialize.'3

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Richter

Notes 1. Walter Benjamin, "Die Widerkehr des Flaneurs": Zu Franz Hessels 'Spazieren in Berlin,"' in

Angelus Novus, Ausgewiihlte Schriften 2 (Frankfurt am Main:

Suhrkamp, 1966), 417 (my trans.).

2. Benjamin, "Die Widerkehr des

Flaneurs," 419

3. Peter Rumpf, "Klarheit im

Spreebogen und Lehrgeld beim

Reichstag," Bauwelt 14-15 (April 1993): 84 (my trans.).

4. Paul Zlonicky, "Leitbild ftor das Parlaments und Regierungsviertel," Foyer Berlin: Magazin der

Senatsverwaltung fiir Bau und

Wohnungswesen 5 (December 1992): 12 (my trans.). The maga- zine Foyer Berlin is edited and or-

ganized by the Berlin Senate for

Building and Housing and is re-

garded as the official government publication.

5. Paul Goldberger, "'Berlin Must Look Like Berlin' - But What Does That Mean?: Rebuilding the

Capital of Europe," New York Times Magazine, 5 February 1995, sec. 6, 45.

6. Hans Stimmann; quoted in

Goldberger, 'Berlin Must Look Like Berlin,' 48.

7. Hans Stimmann, "New Berlin Office and Commercial Buildings," in Annegret Burg, Downtown Ber- lin: Building the Metropolitan Mix / Berlin Mitte: Die Entstehung einer urbanen Architektur (Berlin and Boston: Birkhiuser, 1995), 7.

8. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

9. Hans Stimmann, "Conclusion: From Building Boom to Building Type," in Downtown Berlin, 211.

10. Josef Paul Kleihues, "Der Potsdamer Platz hitte einen Elitiren Prozess Verdient!" an interview with Werner Oechslin on the development of Berlin, Archithese 2 (1992): 29.

11. Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, "Die Provokation des Alltiglichen: Ftir eine neue Konvention des Bauens," Der

Spiegel 51 (1993): 142-47 (my trans.).

12. Stimmann, "New Berlin Office and Commercial Buildings," 17.

13. During the final editing of this

text, the party politics of Berlin

changed once more as the result of the recent elections. On 19 January 1996 a headline in the Berliner

Morgenpost announced "The End of the Stimmann Era." The accom-

panying article read: "The era of di- rector of the Building Senate Hans Stimmann is going to end. Through the change of the building resort to the Christian Democratic party, the

days of the member of the Social Democrats [Stimmann] are num- bered. This will take place soon, especially since Mayor of Berlin Eberhard Diepken has stated 'that it will be a blessing for Berlin if Stimmann couldn't make all that trouble.' Stimmann's last words to the paper were 'I'm cleaning my desk now.' The end of an era of this kind could spur some small hope that the attempt to redefine Berlin as a place would slowly begin." Ber- liner Morgenpost, 19 January 1996, 9 (my trans.).

Figure Credits 1-3. Drawings by Dagmar Richter assisted by Tomoharu Ono.

All other images courtesy of the ar- chitects.

Project texts have been edited from statements provided by the architects.

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