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That realism of course was always there. It made possible the superb creation
of the Jewish Museum, completed last year, and finally full of exhibits (see
capsules September). This remarkable building, designed by Daniel Libeskind,
commemorates the long contribution of the historic community to the city, as
well as the victims of the holocaust, What, in contrast, does the newly restored
Potsdamerplatz commemorate? Festooned with signature-architect designed towers,
we might today say it is a memorial to, late 20th capitalism, and its crazy
optimism. A seemingly well intended concept of recreating the former commercial
pre-war centre, it grew greedy with concessions. Developers were allowed, by
dispensation, to build up to 300 ft, or say 27 storeys. Twenty-nine individual
blocks have been built in fact. Respected international stars, such as Arato
Isozaki, Rafael Moneo, Helmut Jahn and Richard Rogers, were assigned ‘pitches’
to do their utmost. These results, now evident, are less than impressive. It
is a bit like being on the London Wall, twenty years later. In Berlin, whatever
the concession, you are still building in a planning straitjacket. The only
successes, as in other areas, occur when an isolated building breaks through.
Frank Gehry’s DG Bank building is a recent example. What is needed in Berlin
is panache, with a dash of irony, like a Prussian cavalryman. Gehry’s building,
at the Western end of Unter den Linden, demonstrates such qualities. A uniformly
controlled exterior in well detailed glazing and stone cladding is conservative
except for the fact that the glazing to the 3rd floor level is suddenly canted
outwards, like a knight’s visor. Once inside the lobby, the rooflighting
is dramatic to the inner court, revealing Gehry’s inimitable fish-like,
vaulted roof structure. But a further surprise is in store: the tour de force
is a large conference centre, sculpted in the form of a loose representation
of a horse’s head. This creates a dramatic even surreal ambience in the
interior space provided.
A similar, dramatic inner court occurs in the new British Embassy
(on its old site), by Michael Wilford. Inside the darkly conventional
exterior of the embassy one finds a different world of colour and
excitement – cool Britannia for export. A masterly atrium roof
allows the maximum possible internal light factor to bring the colour
out. Wilford was well in the running here for this year’s Stirling
Prize in London with this building.
All this exists against the precedent of Norman Foster’s masterly
and all-embracing historical, high-technology representation of
the Reichstag – a project that no German architect was allowable
to be let loose on by the authorities for complex reasons. (There
were enough local contenders of high talent). Foster won the competition
against other foreigners – Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava,
and Pi de Bruijin of the Netherlands.
Foster’s great parliament building is Berlin’s crowning triumph today.
In the new century a different Berlin will gradually it is hoped emerge, more
concerned with improving the stock of residential apartment. There is enough
modernist precedent to build on. It is now a question of just getting on with
it, without rhetoric, as the Smithsons used to say.
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