Aldo Rossi, Quartier Schützenstrasse

I wouldn’t want anyone to think that my recent post on the 87 IBA was a full-blown defence of postmodernism; it was more about the merits of careful urban planning.  I only mention this because I was walking around Aldo Rossi’s Quartier Schützenstrasse in central Berlin the other day, and was having fairly negative views on po-mo as a style.

It was built in the mid 90s, following the ideas of critical reconstruction developed from the IBA, and is instantly recognisable by its multicoloured facades; it seems at first glance to be a series of different buildings on the same block, each a different (mostly primary) colour.

Despite the interesting layout of its internal courtyards, and the inclusion of one pre-existing building, its basically one big speculative development with the potential to remove internal partitions for continuous office space.

The splitting of the facades into apparently separate buildings is therefore entirely false, and deliberately underlined by the inclusion of a copy of the Renaissance Palazzo Farnese (to the left of the first image).  This is architectural humour, apparently.

 

It’s admittedly a good antidote to some of the frankly horrible featureless corporate blocks which dominate the area, but the real problem, as ever in architecture, is in the detail.

It’s just all too plastic looking, especially the ‘renaissance’ stone detailing, which, although it is actual stone, looks like plastic panels with visible gaps between; the stonework doesn’t meet the floor.

Anyway, enough already with the moaning.  This was the last dying gasp of PoMo as a style in Berlin, and on the whole gave way to a mixture of straight pastiche and  corporate modernism that frankly isn’t much better.

Location: bounded by Schützenstrasse, Charlottenstrasse, Zimmerstrasse and Markgrafenstrasse.

By way of technical accuracy, the design is jointly by Rossi, with M. Kocher, M. Scheurer, Götz Bellmann and Walter Böhm. I’ve the latter two listed as ‘planning partners’ in various guidebooks. I assume this means that they were involved in the overall planning of the scheme but not the detailed design. This would make sense, as Bellmann and Böhm were the designers of ‘New Hackescher Markt’ - a series of buildings and courtyards to the northeast of Museum Insel.

 

The Berlin IBA 1987

“… the greatest creations of architecture are not so much the product of individual labour, rather the product of social endeavour, they are things simply cobbled together by working people, rather than inspired inventions of the creative genius, they are the traces a nation leaves behind, the strata desposited by the centuries, the lees of successive evaporations of human society, in short they are a kind of geological formation’.

Victor Hugo

In the UK, the term postmodernism is still a dirty word; it refers to that clunky jokey-neoclassical architecture used to design speculative, planning-restriction-free office developments in the Thatcherite years of the 1980s.

But in Berlin at that time, postmodernism was the style of a different kind of development - carefully planned urban housing and infrastructure projects. In the UK, architects had withdrawn from designing mass housing after the disastrous social experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s. In Germany, they just went back to the drawing board.

In 1979, West Berlin commenced an international competition for reconstructing parts of the city, respecting (or reintroducing) the city’s original urban street plans - the foundation of Critical Reconstruction which was to become the basic principle for rebuilding post-wall Berlin.

Initially, the idea was to have a building exhibition much like the 1957 Interbau (the ‘Hansaviertel‘; a one-off presentation of the latest in design at a single site. But the plan was the expanded into an ongoing 10 year research programme of new construction and refurbishment across the city, focussing on areas still completely empty since the war, and Kreuzberg SO36, which was fast decaying into an urban slum area of squats and low rent, poor quality housing.  The original idea of a ‘building show’ survived, primarily in southern Tiergarten, but for me the integrated refurbishment and rebuilding of the existing grain of Berlin’s Kreuzberg quarter is by far the more interesting part.

IBA stands for Internationale Bauaustellung, by the way.  Initially known as ‘the IBA 1984′, delays led to a renaming as the IBA 1987, although to declare it as any single year belies the underlying principle that it was a long term project, founding a company, S.T.E.R.N. to continue its work.

The programme was divided into ‘IBA Neubau’, under Josef Paul Kleihues, and ‘IBA Altbau’, under Hardt-Waltherr Hämer. Neubau was across Tegel, Prager Platz, southern Tiergarten and southern Friedrichstadt, Altbau in Kreuzberg only.

I’ve had trouble finding comprehensive online information, so have decided to start my own projects list.  At present not complete (there are hundreds of individual sites and projects) but here’s what I’ve come across so far. More images, links, and projects to be added as time goes on.  Note: have started adding and regrouping these under two other pages - see IBA Neubau and IBA Altbau.

One other thing. It’s quite easy to judge these buildings superficially, by the style of their facades, which often have not suffered well at the hands of the architectural fashion-makers. But what strikes you most as you walk around them is the thought that’s gone into the integration of the buildings, especially the communal spaces in the ‘hofs’ behind. Photos don’t really do these justice.

Hinrich & Inken Baller - Apartment Blocks on Fraenkelufer, 1982-1984

I’ve set up a separate page for this, here.

Alvaro Siza - Apartment block, known as ‘Bonjour Tristesse’, Schlesische Strasse 1-8, Kreuzberg, 1982-1983

Also a page for this one, here.

Peter Eisenmann and Thomas Leeser - ‘Haus Am Checkpoint Charlie’, Kochstrasse 62-63, Kreuzberg, 1982-1984

This block must have been bizarrely close to the wall when completed; its lower floors now house the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. Eisenmann’s best known work in Berlin is of course the Holocaust Memorial.

Confusingly, across the road, is a second building often published as ‘Haus am Checkpoint Charlie’ (House at Checkpoint Charlie), but this one is by OMA (Rem Koolhaus, Elia Zenghalis, and a certain Matthias Sauerbruch, now of Sauerbruch Hutton), 1981-1989

Separate page on it here.

Ritterstrasse North and South Sites, Kreuzberg

Rob Krier - Masterplanning of Ritterstrasse North (1982-1989) and Ritterstrasse South site (1978-1980).

Loads on this, on a separate page here.

Krier also designed individual buildings on the site, including the Feilnerhaus on Schinkelplatz (a reconstruction of the facade of a Karl Friedrich Schinkel building?). There’s a list of architects who designed buildings within Ritterstr north on his own site.

Wohnpark Am Berlin Museum (Residential Park by Berlin Museum)

This is immediately to the south of the Ritterstrasse sites, so I’ve wrapped it all up in a single separate page, which is here. But in summary:

• Hans Kollhoff and Arthur Ovaska did the (much developer-altered) masterplan for the huge site, incorporating two old buildings; the Berlin Museum and the former Victoria Insurance building. Individual designs by:
• Arata Isozaki - Lindenstrasse 15-19, 1982-1986
• Werner Kreis, Ulrich & Peter Schaad - Entrance block on Lindenstrasse
• Stavoprojekt Liberec - long block on Alte Jakobstrasse
• Kollhoff & Ovaska - block behind the Victoria Insurance building
• Dieter Frowein & Gerhard Spangenberg - block on northeast edge

Rauchstrasse, Tiergarten

Link to a fuller page here, summary as follows:

• Rob Krier - Masterplanning of whole site, 1980-1985, individual buildings generally 1983-1985
• Krier also designed the arched gateway building into the site (Rauchstrasse 4-10); other architects are again listed on his site, but are hopefully covered here:
• Aldo Rossi - Townhouse
• Bangert, Jansen, Scholz, Schultes - Four Townhouses, Rauchstrasse 19-20
• Nicola Battista, Giorgio Grassi, Edoardo Guazzoni, Guido Zanella - Townhouse at Rauchstrasse 3
• Hans Hollein, with H Strenner, W Fritsch, U Liebl, K Matuschek, F Madl, D Nehnig, E Pedevialla - Rauchstrasse 4 - 10
• Klaus Theo Brenner & Benedict Tonon - Townhouse

Rob Krier - Site on Lindenufer, 1978-1982 (listed on his website, not sure if part of the IBA).

Gustav Peichl - Mehrfamilienhaus on Schlossstrasse, Reinickendorf, 1984-1989

Gustav Peichl - Phosphat-Eliminationsanlage PEA (A phosphate removal plant?), Waidmannsluster Damm, Reinickendorf, 1979-1985

Since the fall of the Wall, Peichl has also designed the Children’s Daycare Centre (across the river from the Reichstag, next to Santiago Calatrava’s Kronprinzenbrücke) and, strangely enough, some housing for elderly people (next door to Michael Wilford’s wonderfully subversive British Embassy, Wilhelmstrasse).

Aldo Rossi, with Jay Johnson, Gianni Braghieri, Christopher Stead - South Friedrichstadt Block 10, Wilhelmstrasse 36-38; Kochstrasse 1-4, Kreuzberg, 1981-1988

A separate post on Aldo Rossi’s later Berlin housing work here.

Gino Valle, Mario Groggi, Michael Burckhardft, Marcella Rossin, Andrea Nulli - South Friedrichstadt Blck 606, Wilhelmstrasse?, Kreuzberg, 1983

Charles Moore, John Ruble, Buzz Yudell and others (have seen listed as ‘Urban Innovations Group) - Apartments ‘Am Tegeler Hafen’, Reinickendorf, 1987

The US firm ‘Moore Ruble Yudell’ is currently completing the new US Embassy here in Berlin.

O M Ungers - Flats on Köthener Strasse 35-37; Bernburger Str, Kreuzberg, 1987

Jurgen Sawade - Apartments, Am Karlsbad 1-2, Tiergarten, 1984-1987

Georg Heinrichs - Apartments, Am Karlsbad 6-7, Tiergarten, 1986-1987

Hilmer & Sattler - Apartments, Am Karlsbad 8, Tiergarten, 1986-1987

Steidle & Partner (Roland Sommer, Otto Steidle, Siegwart Geiger, Peter Böhm) - Housing for Elderly, Köpenicker Strasse 190-193, Kreuzberg, 1985-1987

See separate page here.

Hans Kollhoff - Flats on Luisenplatz, Eosanderstrasse, Charlottenburg, 1983-1987

John Hedjuk - Apartments, Charlottenstrasse, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, 1988

See separate page here.

Zaha Hadid - ‘IBA Block B’, Stesemannstrasse, 1987-1994. It’s next door to an office building by Will Alsop; both are early works, and are not recognisably the fluid deconstructivism of Hadid or the blobby fun of Alsop. I’ve done a separate page here.

I’ve also come across mention of an Office building she did in Charlottenberg, 1986. Will track this down, but not known if part of the IBA.

Thomas Herzog, with Michael Bunge, Regina Streckebach, Manfred Elsner, Farahbod Nakhaei - Städtbauliches Gutachten & Vorentwürfe, Karolinenstrasse, Reinickendorf, 1983-1985.

Victims, Perpetrators, and the Myth of Germania

Is the building of memorials the best way to remember either the victims or the perpetrators of Third Reich?

I’m asking this, not because I want to turn this into a blog about war guilt (I’d be out of my depth) but because it still remains a critical issue relating to what has been built, what hasn’t been built, and what might be built, at two sites in central Berlin.

The first site, a stone’s throw from the Brandenburg Gate, is the Holocaust Memorial, which occupies a large open site on the edge of the area formerly occupied by the Reich Chancellery. Currently, an adjoining building on the same site is hosting an exhibition called ‘Mythos Germania’, focusing on Hitler and Albert Speer’s megalomaniac plans for rebuilding Berlin. More on all of this later.

If you walk a few blocks south of the Holocaust Memorial, to the junction of Wilhelmstrasse and Niederkirchnerstrasse, and look west, you’ll see this:

The most obvious thing is a remaining section of the Berlin Wall. This remnant formed part of the western side of the boundary, and it’s this western boundary which is now marked as a continuous line of cobbles across streets and pavements where it ran through the city.

On the right is a corner of the vast Reich Aviation Ministry (now the Finance Ministry), built in 1935-36 by Ernst Sagebiel.

After the fall of the Wall, it housed the Treuhand-Anstalt, the government agency whose job was to privatise East Germany’s state-owned economy, and whose director, Detlev Rohwedder, was assasinated here.

The Topography of Terror

But immediately to the left of the wall is an excavated trench, housing a small, semi-enclosed exhibition known as the Topography of Terror. It’s appropriately named. In 1986, excavations on this apparently empty site exposed parts of the cellars of the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8 – the Gestapo headquarters. The ruins uncovered included several cells of the Gestapo jail.

This led to the Topography of Terror exhibition being founded on the site, initially intended to be temporary, but still currently in place, and receiving huge visitor numbers every year (it was busy when I went, on a rainy April tuesday).

Prior to the discoveries, a huge memorial had already been planned on the site, designed by Jürgen Wenzel and Nikolaus Lang, intended to cover the entire site with iron plates, punctuated only by rows of chestnut trees. But the plan failed to meet the initial brief (it should have included a recreational park) and had been abandoned by 1984.

Following the fall of the Wall, it was decided that there should be a competition for a more permanent memorial and visitor building on the site; architect Peter Zumthor submitted the winning design. But from its proposed start in 1996, the project started to exceed its budget, and was beset by the technical difficulties of achieving the ambitious design.

Staggeringly, the building was partly built, including the foundations and staircores, before being abandoned in 2000, later to be demolished. As far as I know this is without precedent in the recent history of major building projects.

Since then, there’s been a new competition, with a new winner – Ursula Wilms – a much lower key proposal for a simple pavilion and landscaping of the site. The Zumthor design would have been much larger, and the visitor building being far more dominant.

The Tagesspiel editorial in January 2006 gave its approval to the new Ursula Wilms design.  However, it also commented that “Compared to the special architecture of the Holocaust Memorial and the Jewish Museum, there will be no special site where the perpetrators are remembered.”  In other words, not everyone was a victim; someone carried out these crimes, and this should be remembered in the form of structures given equal prominence to the existing memorials.

The only problem with big iconic structures built to remember the victims or the crimes, is that they reduce complex issues to simple aesthetic gestures.

The existing Topography of Terror exhibition has no iconic buildings or Starchitect involvement. There is no cafe. And yet hundreds of thousands of visitors come and read the information boards, set out under a simple, open wooden structure.

The Holocaust Memorial

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, colloquially known as the Holocaust Memorial, is perhaps what the Topography of Terror seeks to avoid. It’s an extraordinary undulating field of giant concrete rectangular blocks, occupying a truly enormous site in the heart of Berlin, and was designed by American architect Peter Eisenmann. I won’t attempt to describe the memorial further, as it’s been better described and photographed far better elsewhere.

 

As with the issues at the Topography mentioned earlier, there have long been questions asked about whether a site so close to the ‘ground zero’ of the Nazi crimes (Hitler’s Chancellery, and the bunker where he met his end) should be a structure drawing attention to the perpetrators, not the victims. I can’t answer this, but instead would note that either way, a positive statement has been made by the federal government in giving over such a substantial piece of Berlin real estate to such a memorial.

For me personally the design is effective, in part de to its sheer size and visual repetition.  One niggle; the information centre beneath the site is accessed via stairs and a lift whose detailing seems incongruous against the perfection and simplicity of the concrete blocks. It’s of course necessary to have a disability-accessible lift, railings, security cameras, post boxes and other paraphernalia, but couldn’t this all have been next to, rather than in amongst, the blocks themselves?

There is, at least, no cafe.

 

Mythos Germania

… is the title of a current exhibition in the nearby Exhibition Pavilion, running until December. It centres around a scale model of Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer’s plans to rebuild Berlin as ‘Germania’, a new capital for the Reich, intended for completion around 1950.

No cameras allowed, unfortunately, so no photos.

I had been slightly worried that it would be filled with the ‘wrong sort’ of visitor – people with an unhealthy obsession with Nazis. But actually it wasn’t, and also isn’t ‘that sort’ of exhibition.

The model is fascinating (and ludicrous in the scale of its ambition – plans for the Volkshalle included a dome the height of today’s TV Tower), but it’s the surrounding information on the workings of Speer’s Germany that ultimately draws your attention.

Two things struck me:

1.The extent to which the plan was carried out, with large parts of central Berlin cleared (helped in part by the RAF, presumably).

2.The absolute complicity of Speer, and his vast building and military supply organisations, in the Holocaust. Labour for Speer’s plans was increasingly provided from concentration camps as labour ran short for the war effort.

Anyway, enough with the war and Nazis. A return to properly modern architecture for the next post, I promise.

Kurstrasse. How to oppose the Third Reich?

Cycling into the city centre the other day I thought I’d take a new route, down Kurstrasse. It’s still something of a backstreet, despite being a block away from the site of the still-being-demolished DDR Palast Der Republik, but it seems major things are afoot.

One side of the street is entirely filled with the imposing neoclassical bulk of the Foreign Office. It was built as the Reichsbank, one of the first major buildings to be constructed by the Third Reich, to designs by Heinrich Wolff. In between 1945 and now, it’s been the DDR’s Finance Ministry, then the HQ of the ruling SED communist party (and at the same time the seat of the Politburo). The building was extended in the 1990s (Berlin’s main info website understandably downplays the presence of the older, National Socialist, part of the building).

Anyway, everything on the other side of the street is brand new, or still under construction. The new work appears at first glance to be a terrace of tall narrow townhouses, in a range of styles and materials, with generally modernist or half-hearted postmodern frontages.

I’m guessing that the city planners decided that the unforgiving facade of the Foreign Office couldn’t be met by an equivalent monolithic modernist facade across the street - i.e. the type of design which dominates so much of Berlin’s new government district. It might lead to uncomfortable comparisons. I’m also guessing that they then had two choices:

a) A single huge design for the street, but employing a less ’severe’ architectural approach, which broke it down into more humanely scaled elements. Takes a very good architect to pull it off.

b) Breaking the facade up into what appears to be a whole series of separate buildings, each one different, where the quality of architecture in itself is not so prominent - i.e. the option that’s being built.

I’m not convinced therefore that these are all separate buildings (but prove me wrong if you’re designing/building one/some/all of them - easy to leave a comment here on the site), although some are more successful than others.

Anyway, enough chat, here’s the photos of the street. For safety reasons, I got off the bike before taking them.

The Foreign Office/Finance Ministry, built 1933-40. It’s no shrinking violet, is it?

The new extension, by Thomas Müller and Ivan Reimann (the entrance is on Werderscher Markt, round the corner).

And then the other side of the road:

Note the strange stonework, enlarged below:

Treptow Crematorium

A rather photo-heavy post, but excused by the fact that Axel Schultes’ crematorium is such a very photogenic building, particularly the interior.

Schultes is best known for his masterplan of Berlin’s government district around the Reichstag, and his practice’s designs for the Chancellory (Angela Merkel’s formal residence).  Pictures of the Chancelllory are at the end - nothing wrong with the design, which uses some of the same themes and detailing, but somehow the whole building seems vastly overscaled;  the Treptow crematorium is by far the more impressive piece of work.

Anyway, more images of the crematorium…

The columns are arranged apparently randomly around a large central space, off which are four chapels.  In fact, the columns are carefully placed around a small circular fountain/pool in the centre, and subtly aligned with the features of the walls.  The light from the head of each column is daylight - a clever structural arrangement allows for the column to be attached into the side of a circular hole.  I could have spent the whole day just wandering around the place.

The pool has an egg almost invisibly suspended just above it.  Permanent, or an Easter connection?  Not sure.  Am guessing the former, as it must be quite an operation to set up such an apparently simple thing.

One of the four chapels.

 

Curiously, gaps in the floor along the outer walls are filled with fine white sand, lit from beneath the floor level.  Any overt meaning is lost on me.

The obligatory ‘angled arty image’.

Another oddity.  Scattered around the perimeter of the building are hundreds of funerary urns and stones, presumably predating the new crematorium building.  It’s as if the whole structure had just landed on its site, scattering everything that was there.  But quite a deliberate detail, I’m guessing.

Finally, as noted at the top, some images of Schultes’ Bundeskanzleramt, taken on an open day last August (many of the government district’s buildings are open to the public once a year).  In retrospect, I have to say that it all looks more effective in the photos than I remember it on the day.  Maybe it’s the ivy?  Anyway, interesting to note (interesting to me at least) that the same blue anodized metal is used for detailing (railings, vent panels etc) throughout, as in the crematorium.  External columns also follow the same design as the crematorium’s internal space.  Although you can’t really make out the heads of these in the image - it’s that ivy.

Schultes’ master plan creates a ‘long thin’ government district which crosses the Spree twice;  the Chancellery gardens are reached across the pedestrian bridge on the left.

They need to keep that trimmed back…  (you can make out Hugh Stubbins’ Haus der Kulturen der Welt in the background). 

Note the blue metal detailing - not 100% sure that I like the effect.  But the ivy looks good.

A Journey to the End of the Strasse

After my rant the other day about how I didn’t think much of Berlin’s big ’set piece’ post-wall architectural planning, I thought I’d try for something a bit more positive.

It’s occurred to me that a lot of the stuff that I really like is in the city’s neighbourhoods, and generally smaller residential projects. The sun made a special guest appearance a few days ago (Berliners stared at it for a while, confused, then continued with their lives) so I took the opportunity to take a few snaps of what’s within a few hundred metres of me, here in Kreuzberg.

Other than the first two, I wouldn’t describe many of these buildings as ‘great’ architecture, just surprisingly good buildings considering that they don’t ‘need’ to be; there are no grand gestures making statements about a reunited Germany, nothing done with postcards in mind. In Britain, there would be much less chance of this kind of thig being done well.

On the opposite corner next to us on the canalside is HH Müller’s Abspannwerk, a huge dark brick building which doesn’t look much at a glance, but is all in the detail. Built in 1924-26 as an electrical transformer station, it’s one of two still surviving which Müller designed; confusingly, part of the building is now occupied by an upmarket restaurant which takes his name.

It’s not ‘all that’, you’re thinking, but ooh the detailing…

A few hundred metres further down the canal, but six decades later, is a whole terrace of buildings on Fraenkelufer, built for the 1987 IBA (International Bauausstellung). Thinking had moved on from the Hansa quarter of the ‘57 Interbau (see previous blog on this) - the new blocks are carefully inserted between retained facades of 19th century apartments, with a large landscaped courtyard behind. It’s all unfashionably postmodern - hardline modernists shouldn’t scroll any further - you won’t like it. But at the same time it’s quite genuine architecture. The wonky columns really are supporting the buildings, and it’s a patchwork, quirky development that I can imagine living in.

I’ve read, but not sure if geographically precisely true, that this particular site had already been cleared for a proposed motorway route in the 1970s. The motorway was never built, which was just as well, as it’s inexplicable to me why the hermetically sealed island of West Berlin, as it was at the time, needed a huge orbital motorway at all. Maybe it was so west Germans could drive round and round next to the Wall in their new cars, to create some Ossi envy.

View on the canal bank

Interior courtyard

For the record, it’s by Hinrich and Inken Baller, 1982-84, as part of the IBA exhibition that culminated in 1987.

Not sure who designed the next few, and of various styles (and qualities) but the point perhaps is their proximity in such a small locality.

Church school and apartments on Lausitzer/Paul-Lincke-Ufer

…and its bell.

129-130 Reichenberger Strasse - an exercise in bright colour

A church on Plan Ufer

Finally, and you probably won’t like this, a huge concrete hospital which overlooks a quite pretty stretch of the canal where it widens, with grassy banks and pleasure boats. Not a beautiful building perhaps, but its detailed design is very thorough. For some reason it feels Canadian to me - the sort of building featured in early Cronenberg movies, and evoked by Boards of Canada. You’ll have to take my word for this.

Note the Rogers-like vent pipes - about the only detail which breaks from the austere concrete

Am Kupfergraben 10, David Chipperfield

Just a quickie, to post a photo of David Chipperfield’s gorgeous new ’townhouse for the arts’ in central Berlin.  It’s actually much bigger in person than it may appear here, as the storey heights are very tall.  (Obviously, it’s hard to do a full scale photo of a building in a blog, unless you’re reading this on a screen the size of a building.  You’re probably not.)

The surrounding area is a building site at the moment (an unavoidable side effect of making buildings, I guess) so the pictures lack that archi-pornographic quality of the absence of people, cars and the general mess of urbanity.

Chipperfield is rather big with the Germans - he just won Britain’s Stirling Prize for his Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar, and his massive project for the re-ordering of Berlin’s Museum Island is currently under construction (across the road from the gallery shown here).

Needless to say, although he’s a British architect, he’s built very little in Britain.  In part this is because

a) he’s not Norman Foster

b) the British have no time for architects who talk about anything but lettable floor area.

The BBC dumped him from the detailed design of their new Glasgow centre, which he claims he won’t step foot in until he gets an apology from the DG.  His most notable UK building prior to this was Henley’s very low-key River & Rowing Museum.

Not that Berlin’s recent architecture is beyond criticism. The designs by various starchitects* which have filled in great swathes of post-wall wilderness in the 1990s (Potsdamerplatz in particular) are, shall we say, not their best work.  And since then Berlin seems to be sliding dangerously into a non-critical reconstruction of its past, the most notable current project being the reconstruction of the Royal Palace on the site of the old GDR Palas Der Republik.  Presumably the fact that the Germans have no royal family, and nothing much to put in the new building, are issues that can be addressed, well, some other time.

So it’s good to an occasional new building which isn’t in thrall to corporate glazing or historicist pastiche. 

*I hate this term but it seems increasingly apt these days.

Critical (of) Reconstruction

‘Critical Reconstruction’. A term used to describe the policy for rebuilding post-wall Berlin. The vast areas of waste ground left by the wall zones were to be infilled, by reverting to older street patterns, and by following a set of conservative building codes which limited the height, and (in places) the style of new buildings.

In Pariser Platz, next to the Brandenburg Gate, the building rules seem to have been at their most restrictive, with every new building complying with the required style of horizontal stone banding. Frank Gehry’s Deutsche Bank HQ has had to hide his signature shiny-curvy building behind a singularly uninteresting façade. The rebuilt Hotel Adlon is just an overscaled version of the original, and the nearly-completed American Embassy, which has the prime spot overlooking the Tiergarten and the Holocaust Memorial, sets new standards for blandness. The only building that subverts the rules slightly is Michael Wilford’s British Embassy (not saying this just as I’m a Brit) – angular structures in purple and blue appear to explode from a ‘missing’ section of the plain stone façade.

The vast new buildings of Potsdamer Platz, by a string of ‘big name’ architects, are curiously underwhelming, and the whole layout of the site was something of a compromise with the major site owners – a rant about for another day.

But the greatest loss of nerve is the Reichstag. “Surely” you’re thinking, “this is a triumphant rebirth of Germany’s parliament building in an assured high tech intervention by Norman Foster?” Or words to that effect.

Well yes it’s not bad. It’s still one of his best works, with his signature ‘techno bits inserted in an old building’ look, done well. But it could have been something altogether more radical.

I’ve not been able to find a good link or non-copyright-breaching image, so instead, here’s an artist’s impression (the ‘artist’ being me).

The competition to transform the Reichstag into a new parliament building had three joint winners: Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava and Pi de Bruijn. But all three were subsequently asked to start over based on a much reduced brief, essentially requiring less floor space, contained entirely within the existing structure.

Foster won this ‘second’ competition with the design which was carried through – the familiar spiral ramps in a glass dome.

But his original design proposed a colossal independent roof structure, enclosing not only the Reichstag but a large space around it, even spanning across part of the river Spree. A raised podium would have covered the same area, cutting off the lower parts of the original building’s façades. The Reichstag would thus have been only a part, albeit the key element, of a larger whole; a literal representation that the new parliament should stand as something which accepted and incorporated the nation’s past, but at the same time be something new and open.

It was a strong idea, particularly as the original 19^th century building is considered by many to be a bit of a dog’s dinner. It was a not entirely successful attempt to merge a number of disparate styles, and couldn’t better represent the dead end that neoclassicism had reached in the years preceding the birth of modernism. Even its architect, Paul Wallot, admitted that he struggled with an ‘impossible’ task.

There was also the fact that the building was not in its original ‘intact’ state: it had been burned out in the 1930s, shelled by the Russians, and already refurbished in the 1960s.

So as architecture, it didn’t really bear comparison with the government seats of some other nations - Barry and Pugin’s Palace of Westminster, for instance. But in the end, conservatism prevailed, the competition requirements were rewritten to ensure that the building wasn’t radically changed. So that’s what’s now on the postcards.

Erich Mendelsohn and the Einsteinturm

See also post on two other Mendelsohn buildings in Berlin - the Mossehaus and the Metalworkers Union building, here.

When you actually see them ‘in the flesh’ for the first time, most seminal modern buildings are a disappointment. Buildings hardly ever look like they do in photos, and the sun’s not always shining (especially here in Berlin).

Not so with the Einsteinturm (Einstein tower), probably the best known work by architect Erich Mendelsohn. The tower, actually a solar observatory, forms part of a cluster of other observatories and related research buildings on a wooded hill on the edge of Potsdam. The Mendelsohn building is the last one you reach, after passing the various much larger Victorian structures (Wilhelmisch, in Germany?). When you finally catch site of it, it seems tiny; an effect magnified by the fact that it’s lower down the hill, and that the lowest level is set into the ground. Small but perfectly formed though. It’s as if the rest of the site was built for the use of ‘great men of science’ and the Einsteinturm for tiny fairy folk.

The telescope itself has a vertical and a horizontal component; the vertical part is housed in the tower, with the horizontal part running the length of the whole building. This lower section of the building is partly buried, with its windows poking out of the turf, adding to its hobbit-like qualities. No need to describe its technical aspects further, as there’s an excellent simulation here (what did we all do before Youtube?).

The structure is actually brick with a cement render covering, rather than the solid concrete which Mendelsohn claims was his original intention. The overall effect though is quite unearthly, in an early sci-fi, Flash Gordon kind of way. It’s also a surprisingly pretty building, which is not something you’d say about most of our built environment.

The tower was completely refurbished in the late 1990s and is now once again in use as a solar observatory. Access to the interior is therefore limited – you can visit by appointment on certain Saturdays in winter only, but can walk up to and around it pretty much anytime during the day (staff at the gatehouse to the site were friendly and obviously used to archi-tourists).

Like Hans Poelzig, Mendelsohn’s career spanned from early expressionism to international modernism. As well as the Einsteinturm, his key surviving buildings in Berlin are the Kino Universum (now the Schaubühne), the alteration of the Mossehaus, and most notably the Metal Workers Union Building - see my other post for these last two.

The Hansaviertel vs Karl-Marx-Allee

In the east, Karl-Marx-Allee. A 2km long triumphal route of overbearing, neo-classical blocks that’s more Moscow than Mitte. On first sight, it has all the architectural subtlety of a wedding cake, with neoclassical features thrown uncomprehendingly onto the giant facades of soviet prefab-system blocks. Many of the buildings of Karl-Marx-Allee (previously Stalinalle, and originally Frankfurter Allee) seem hard to love. At Frankfurter Tor, the apogee of the street’s design, two huge towers top the nine storey blocks, forming a formidable eastern gateway to the city. Apparently inspired by Schinkel, they look awkward and oddly proportioned, like something stuck on top of a UK supermarket to obtain planning permission.

And meanwhile, over in the west, the Hansaviertel. A mix of blocks of flats and individual houses, designed by a virtual who’s-who of modernist architecture for the 1957 Interbau - an international housing exhibition. It includes designs by Arne Jacobsen, Walter Gropius, Max Taut, Alvar Aalto, Oscar Niemeyer. It would have even had a version of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation block (the first of which is in Marseilles), but this was located in nearby Charlottenburg as it was too large to fit on the Hansa site.

In the Hansaviertel (Hansa quarter, in translation), understatement rules, with clusters of assymetrical modernist buildings interspersed with green spaces. It’s a lovely location – the estate rises up out of the trees of the Tiergarten’s northern edge, with individual modernist houses giving way to taller blocks of flats, each set amongst trees and landscaping. There are no grand ceremonial routes here.

The Hansa ticks all the right design boxes; an impeccably dressed party guest, disdainfully eyeing the Allee’s vulgar Ossi gatecrasher.

So why is it Karl-Marx-Allee that I love? Why that impression of glamour I get as I cycle toward Alexanderplatz on a cold January night, the chandeliers of the Kino International twinkling through the freezing air?

It’s some of the later, individual buildings that really appeal to me; Cafe Moskau, the Kino International, and the Kosmos. A real sense of GDR glamour survives in them – they retain most of their original features, and the quality of the architecture prevents them becoming just kitsch.

Surprisingly (to me at least) these buildings form part of the later (1960s) stage of the Allee’s construction. My initial impression was that it was a microcosm of Soviet architectural history, with early modernist intentions giving way later to overscaled neoclassical monstrosity. Actually, the Allee’s history is complex, and its architecture often wrongly attributed. The International and the Kosmos were both designed by Josef Kaiser and Herbert Aust, and I assume that they also did Cafe Moskau on the other side of the street. (The architect/building list at the end of this isn’t necessarily complete, but it’s as far as I’ve got at the moment.)

There’s a good article in the International Herald Tribune, celebrating last year’s 50th anniversary of the Hansaviertel, describing how the area is once again becoming a hip place to be. Apartments there are sought after by a new generation of architects, designers and media folk, the angle being that this is no museum piece. Fair enough. But for me there’s something slightly too self-content about the Hansaviertel, confident in its coolly understated design (there’s nothing understated about the twin towers at Frankfurter Tor).

Hansaplatz, containing a theatre, small shopping centre and U-bahn station, has become quite run-down, and I’m guessing is yet to catch up with the ‘rebirth’ of the area. It does however include a small visitor centre with a lot of information on the Interbau and related topics.

The block by Niemeyer is his only German building (under siege the day I saw it by a group of Brazilian architecture students who took turns photographing each other sitting in the crux of its huge V-shaped support columns).

For me the most successful of the towers is the one by Hans Schwippert, although oddly there’s no entrance vestibule at all – the separate entrance doors lead directly to the stairs and to the ground floor flats. For an Expo building I had expected something grander: glass, steel and a couple of Mies Barcelona chairs.

The nearby Akademie der Künste, designed by Werner Düttmann, was built later than the Interbau, and was originally intended for other housing (but not, I think, for the Le Corb block). Being the kind of person I am, I loved the detailing - to the right of the entrance, rainwater is directed off the building at roof level then falls freely to onto an enclosed square of uneven stones concealing the drain.

Maybe my views are tainted because the architectural style (if not the quality of ideas) of the Hansaviertel became the default style of the western world for the next fifty years. Location is a factor too; Karl-Marx-Allee runs right through Friedrichshain, a real centre of Berlin’s nightlife. As soon as you turn off into the side streets, away from the imposing Stalinist blocks, the true east Berlin urban fabric of late 19th century streets reasserts itself, with hundreds of cafes, bars etc. Perhaps this is all being a little unfair; no-one who chooses to live in the Hansaviertel is looking for the edginess and nightlife that you find in the city’s east. But it’s also ironic that Karl-Marx-Allee was the grand statement of formal, centralised planning, but now lies at the centre of Berlin’s more ‘chaotic’ side, its nightlife and culture. The Hansaviertel, a demonstration of the west’s less dictatorial planning and its liberal values, feels much more the museum piece.

Trainspotting: The Hansaviertel

Here’s the complete list of architects who designed buildings in the Hansaviertel, although if you’re wandering about, the information is clearly set out on some location signs, and you can get a guide leaflet at the office for a couple of euros.

Hans Ch. E. Müller, Berlin
Günther Gottwald, Berlin
Wassili Luckhardt+Hubert Hofmann, Berlin
Paul Schneider-Esleben, Düsseldorf
Bezirksamt Tiergarten Amt für Hochbau Berlin
Willy Kreuer, Berlin
Ernst Zinsser + Hansrudolf Plarre, Hannover, Berlin
Luciano Baldessari, Mailand
J.H. van den Broek + J.B. Bakema, Rotterdam
Gustav Hassenpflug, Munich
Raymond Lopez + Eugène
Hans Schwippert, Düsseldorf
Werner Düttmann, Berlin
Otto H. Senn, Basel
Kay Fisker, Kopenhagen
Max Taut, BerlinFranz Schuster, Wien
Egon Eiermann, Karlsruhe
Oscar Niemeyer, Rio de Janeiro
Fritz Jaenecke, Sten Samuelson, Malmö
Alvar Aalto, Helsinki
Pierre Vago, Paris
Walter Gropius + The Architects’ Collaborative, Cambridge Mass. + Ebert, Berlin
Klaus Müller-Rehm + Gerhard Siegmann, Berlin
Ludwig Lemmer, Berlin
Paul G.R. Baumgarten, Berlin
Eduard Ludwig, Berlin
Arne Jacobsen, Kopenhagen
Gerhard Weber, Frankfurt/M.
Alois Giefer + Hermann Mäckler, Frankfurt/M.
Johannes Krahn, Frankfurt/M.
Wolf von Möllendorff + Sergius Ruegenberg, Berlin
Sep Ruf, Munich
Günther Hönow
Bodamer + Berndt, Klaus Kirsten, Berlin
Johann Heinrich StrackThe Interbau also included the Hugh Stubbins’, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt to the east of the Hansaviertel, and the Corbusierhaus in Charlottenburg.

…and Karl-Marx-Allee: more trainspotting.

The earliest buildings, built 1949-50, are by Ludmilla Herzenstein, an associate of Scharoun.

The largest blocks, which include both pairs of towers, built 1951-52, are by architectural chameleon Hermann Henselman. And I use the term ‘chameleon’ advisedly; I was amazed to discover that the Karl-Marx-Allee blocks were by the same architect as the Haus des Lehrers and Berlin Congress Centre, just along the road at Alexanderplatz.

The remaining blocks are by various architectural ‘collectives’, individually headed by Egon Hartmann, Hanns Hopp, Kurt W. Leucht, Richard Paulick and Karl Souradny.

As previously noted, the Kino International, and the Kosmos (now a multi-screen) are by Josef Kaiser and Herbert Aust.