Berlin

BERLIN

In the 20th century the conventions and experiments of Berlin’s architecture and urbanism have had a guiding influence on construction all over Germany. Whether Kaiserreich, capital of the German Reich, centerpoint of the cold war or political stage for the reunification strategies, public planning and its results were visionary for its time but ideologically surpassed some years later.

Still visible is however the tabula rasa executed on the city through different political systems: from the razing for the “Welthauptstadt Germania”, the bombings of world war two, the postwar execution of the Charta of Athens with western super-highways and communist neo-klassizist magistrals to the new towns of the sixties and seventies and the critical reconstruction of the eighties.
Urbanism in Berlin is “a mindless pendulum movement where the acceptance of one particular doctrine leads - as surely as day follows night- to the adoption of its exact opposite a few years later: a negative sequence in which every generation ridicules the previous one only to be annulled by the next…it condemns the discourse of architecture to become an incomprehensible chain of disconnected sentences.” Following this analysis of Koolhaas,Berlin’s approach to heal any mistakes done from the fifties to the seventies with a renewed historical consciousness; the 18th century grid and its street and plotlines are once more the new paradigm of German urbanism.
Already in the mid eighties, set under pressure for reasons of political party ideology and demographic statistics, Berlin started to invest in large urban planning projects known as the IBA, focusing on the city center with new housing experiments. The texture of the old city started to be the base plan for any new planning subordinated under the now fashionable doctrine of “critical reconstruction” understood as a critic of the modernist ideas and the Charta of Athens.
Against the backdrop of two political systems and their ambitious urban planning and architectural competition, the reunification challenged the new ruling power. Huge prefabricated housing slabs in the communist part of the city were still under construction and the outdated city infrastructures, until now separated and neglected, needed to be joined again. While any planning coordination by the municipality for rushed international Investor-projects and additionally urgent necessary competitions were still unorganized, 300 milliards of DM have already been invested in major constructions. The historic Friedrichstadt, Potsdamer Platz and the Spreebogen and its major representative projects were under construction when in 1996 the “Planwerk Innenstadt” was presented to the public as an overall planning strategy for the center of the city. As an effort to get at least some influence onto the already investor-generated city development in Berlin, out of control since the early 90’s, the municipalities and the planning authorities set up in a working process of three years the new zoning regulations as a kind of historic beautification program. Already heavily criticized during its inception, the proposal is a historic interpretation of the “urban city” according to Habitat II, with densification and mixed use at the level of the 19th century Berlin “quarter” and block structure. With short distances between living and working, compared to the suburbs, the public infrastructure and amenities would be used more efficiently and it seemed the simplest solution.

However, since 1990, just after the reunification of the two German states and due to the reclaimed freedom, Berlin is characterized from an enormous mobility. The historic center is loosing inhabitants mostly to the suburbs but also to the other surrounding city areas. The exodus from the center triples the amount of other city areas, mostly for lack of housing in good condition. A big problem is that especially the middle class, the economically most secured group, is leaving for the suburbs because the existing aged housing does not satisfy their requirements of size and amenities. As a result the typically heterogeneous quarters change into ghettos of the economical poor social classes. During the nineties, the public housing policy was regarded as secondary to the prestigious national projects, but is becoming now an acute problem for the city, following demographic scenarios of an increase of the city population to five million inhabitants by 2010. The 90’s solution of a quick and fast production meant that 46% of all planning was directed to developer areas and new towns in the rural suburbs. Still, out of 130.000 new apartments, only 8.000 were built in the center, compared to massive new central office space for over 200.000 workers. Berlin’s new building law regulations were investor friendly and reversed the dwelling/office mix of 90/10 to 15/85, while the FAR (Floor Area Ratio) increased from 2.0 to 6.6 in developing areas. The low obligatory percentage of 20% for dwelling that had to be included with new construction during the nineties, resulted typically in standard penthouse floors or boarding houses. Dwelling was pushed to the seams of the city by other more profitable uses.

With focus on housing in the new rural areas, Berlin is now paying not only additional service and maintenance but also cost intensive public post-infrastructure such as schools, kindergardens while the same institutions maintained in the center are gradually emptied.
Berlin is still today characterized through car-oriented mono-functional low-density habitations according to post war modernistic urban strategies and vast open areas in large parts of the inner city. The city is not only suffering from the derelicted city center but also vast swathes of redundant industrial land- brownfield sites- that illustrate our industrial legacy and the break-down of the inefficient communist state industry or the globalization of the western market economy. These areas in itself are a task for re-use, recycle, and regeneration before even touching the country-side.
The fast pace of development in Berlin needs to involve the citizens in a more immediate and direct manner in order for the administration and public policy to have continuous feedback and address the “real problems” of the city. The Infobox at Potsdamerplatz was a small but successful step forward to keep not only residents, but also international visitors “up to date” on one of the biggest building projects in city history.