In Relief

The Architectural Consequences of the Berlin Wall

NEO-HISTORICAL EAST BERLIN Florian Urban (Technische Universitat Berlin)

"In all central areas of East Berlin one finds prefab blocks from the 1980s that show similarities to the adjacent late-nineteenth-century tenements and to other historical styles. They were erected on the block perimeter from precast concrete parts and adorned with loggias, gables, bay windows, tile ornaments, and mosaics. Neo-historical relics such as ornamented street signs, cast-iron lampposts, period gift shops, newly built “Old Berlin restaurants,” and a number of partially remodeled late-nineteenth-century neighborhoods bear witness to a new popularity of the old city in the last decades of the German Democratic Republic. How can this change be explained? Why has the East German regime, which for decades thought modernist architecture to be the only appropriate expression of a socialist system, all of a sudden represented itself with rebuilt gothic and baroque churches, remodeled nineteenth-century residences, and newly erected pseudo-historical department stores? Why did East Berlin architects design arbors and ornamented façades in the center, while at the same time the large tower block developments on the periphery were still under construction?"

This timely new book, the first in the Ashgate Studies in Architecture series I am editing, has just been published. Future books in the series include contributions from Frank Brown (University of Manchester), Jan Birksted (University College London) and Duanfang Lu (University of Sydney).

Postmodern Berlin

Josef Paul Kliehues


Aldo Rossi


James Stirling


Oswald Mathias Ungers


John Hejduk


Daniel Libeskind

Karl Friedrich Schinkel: Altes Museum, Berlin 1823-30

Alvaro Siza: 'Bonjour Tristesse' Apartment Building, Berlin 1987

The series of Alvaro Siza posts conclude with this film produced in 2007 for MSA Field Trip Films by Romulus Sim, David Reynolds and Katie Thomas
The film has been linked and commented on as follows.
Linked from the Greek Blog http://datascape.blogspot.com/
Linked from the video site http://www.videoronk.com/
Linked from the German blog http://referendare07.blogspot.com/
Linked from the Portuguese / Swiss Blog http://paginapreta.blogspot.com/
U.S. comment "nicely done, I think siza would love it!"
Spanish comment "it is what i would have liked to do about this magic building and its story."
Iberian comment "Genial!"
Linked from the blog http://architectureinberlin.wordpress.com

Karl Friedrich Schinkel: Friedrichswerder Kirche, Berlin 1824-31

BerlinBridegroomBridgeroom