Berlin - Time heals all wounds

[mphillips]

Originally Posted by habsgul

Yes, I am. (LOL!)

The DomAquarée is nothing more than a big box and the facade is - apart from the roof - a boring grid you nowadays see EVERYWHERE in Berlin. It was also built much closer to the street. The Palast Hotel gave the pavement more room.

Yes, the old picture looks brown and dirty, but try to respect the fact that it's an OLD picture.

You and I have VERY different taste.

[habsgul]

Just to clarify:

I haven't said that the Palast Hotel was a beauty, just that the new building is, in comparison, a very boring and uninspired run-of-the-mill design, which is far too common in the city nowadays. And on top of that they squeezed it unnecessarily close to the road.

Look at almost any building of the past 20 years in Berlin. You'll see either pure glass facades or said grids (with a few exceptions). It seems as if architects have run out of ideas.

The Friedrichstraße was hit especially hard by this.

(pictures from quick google search)
image hosted on flickr


The proposed backside of the new Schloss is an example, too.

[Tiaren]

Still all of those examples are far, faaaaaaar better than the butt ugly Palast Hotel.

Only the backside of the castle is very disappointing... Considering it's only one giant staircase, they should really scrap that and save the money for the reconstruction.

[Discu]

@habsgul
Many thanks for the pictures of Friedrichstraße.
Contrary to you I like those new buildings as much as the old ones.
Especially the Berlin-typical mixture does it for my taste.

I could tell dozens of towns that would be glad to have a street like Friedrichstraße.

[christos-greece]

Yes, indeed those photos are very nice; of course Berlin it's a great city

btw in above photos, the old with the new photo (Palast Hotel): today is more great

[Chadoh25]

Originally Posted by Tiaren

Still all of those examples are far, faaaaaaar better than the butt ugly Palast Hotel.

Only the backside of the castle is very disappointing... Considering it's only one giant staircase, they should really scrap that and save the money for the reconstruction.

I completely agree!

[miau]

I think the new buildings integrate much better into the city than the Palast Hotel. The planning during cold-war era led to many big solitary building as seen in this picture:

.

Btw, I don't remember the big white building in the central left. It must have been demolished very soon after the reunion.

[Embrace57]

Originally Posted by miau

Btw, I don't remember the big white building in the central left. It must have been demolished very soon after the reunion.

I think it was still there in the summer of 1994 when I visited Berlin for the first time.
(Exactly 15 years ago actually!)
But probably not for long after that though.

[Dr.Seltsam]

Thank God!

[habsgul]

It's the GDR foreign ministry (Außenministerium). It was built to "close" the Marx-Engels-Platz (renamed Schlossplatz) towards the west.

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...20081204173327



It was torn down in 1996 to make room for the reconstruction of the Alte Kommandantur (no original plans remained, so it was rebuild from photos)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alte_Kommandantur



(modern backside)


the Bauakademie (still just a dummy, I'm not up to date as to why the reconstruction is not progressing)

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...20070601165653



and the Schinkelplatz

(I found no current photograph from this angle, the green area in the center is now a plaza)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schinkelplatz



close-up

[Tiaren]

Nice information and pics habsgul!
Berlins central district Mitte had a quite awesome makeover since the Wall came down. With the Bauakademie and Castle most will be completed in a few years

[habsgul]

I do understand that most of the post-war buildings in the center of Berlin (i.e. GDR-built) are considered ugly by most and that there are calls to change this by replacing them.
The problem is that, while I personally hate most modern (post-1990) architecture with a passion, I believe it's not progressive (I lack a better word) for a city of Berlin's status and history to simply rebuild its past (as already done with: Kommandantur, Adlon Hotel, Bauakademie).

The current plans to reconstruct most of the historic center of Berlin (Stadtschloss, Fischerinsel, Molkenmarkt, Spittelmarkt, Marx-Engels-Platz) according to pre-war building footprints(!) is in my eyes a huge move backward for a city of today.
No one would think about rebuilding the pre-Haussmann Paris, either! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Haussmann)


By the way, anyone interested in photos of the reconstruction of Berlin (and it's past in general) might want to browse though these images recently donated to Wikimedia Germany by the German Federal Archives (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv).

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...ocation_Berlin

They're not sorted very user-friendly, though. Clicking through the categories at the bottom of the individual picture's pages helps.

A few examples:

Emperor Wilhelm's Memorial Church after the war and today:




Karl-Marx-Allee




Construction of the Fernsehturm:


Much of Alexanderplatz is still in ruins:





They pre-built the whole globe on ground-level first, then deconstructed it and again reconstructed it on the tower. I have no idea why. Maybe they wanted to check if they had all the parts




Brandenburg Gate after the Cold War.

Roughly the same view today:
image hosted on flickr



The Palast der Republik and the Fernsehturm



And a view of the ensemble around the Marx-Engels-Forum
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...r_Republik.jpg

[Tiaren]

Originally Posted by habsgul

The current plans to reconstruct most of the historic center of Berlin (Stadtschloss, Fischerinsel, Molkenmarkt, Spittelmarkt, Marx-Engels-Platz) according to pre-war building footprints(!) is in my eyes a huge move backward for a city of today.

Let me say this, while mentioning the name of this thread :
Up to now only reconstruction seems to be the way to heal all wounds without disfiguring the city with ugly scars.
Modern architecture just wasn't able to heal anything yet.

[miau]

Originally Posted by Tiaren

Let me say this, while mentioning the name of this thread :
Up to now only reconstruction seems to be the way to heal all wounds without disfiguring the city with ugly scars.
Modern architecture just wasn't able to heal anything yet.

I have to disagree here. What we need is a modern interpretation of urban living, not an imitation of the over-idealized past. I dont want another pseudo-medieval city quarter in Berlin like the Nikolaiviertel. I do not oppose reconstructions in general, but I think that we should be able to create architecture that has is functional and liveable.

[christos-greece]

Some awesome old photos of Berlin, especially photos of u/c tower

[Germanicus]

I agree, that it is not an option to rebuild all pre-war buildings and pull down everything of the post-war period. But nobody wants to go that far. In allmost all parts of Berlin there is no question about building modern.
But in the very historic center it should be allowed to reconstruct some of the buildings which were distinctive and unique and determined the cityscape.
I further think it is a good idea to reurbanise some parts of central East Berlin. It just not an good idea to have motorway-like streets with 10-lanes and stand-alone blocks with no structure and a lot of green around it in the city centre. However, that's rather a question of urban development than architecture.

[Bavarian Angelshark]

Originally Posted by Germanicus

I agree, that it is not an option to rebuild all pre-war buildings and pull down everything of the post-war period. But nobody wants to go that far. In allmost all parts of Berlin there is no question about building modern.
But in the very historic center it should be allowed to reconstruct some of the buildings which were distinctive and unique and determined the cityscape.
I further think it is a good idea to reurbanise some parts of central East Berlin. It just not an good idea to have motorway-like streets with 10-lanes and stand-alone blocks with no structure and a lot of green around it in the city centre. However, that's rather a question of urban development than architecture.

yep, I second that.

btw: interesting photos @ habsgul

[Tiaren]

Originally Posted by miau

I have to disagree here. What we need is a modern interpretation of urban living, not an imitation of the over-idealized past. I dont want another pseudo-medieval city quarter in Berlin like the Nikolaiviertel...

When I say reconstruction, I mean faithful reconstruction. I think the Nikolaiviertel looks in many parts almost ugly. Because it's so obviously fake and cheap (those Platten surrounding the Saint George statue for example). If there's no chance at all to recontruct faitfully, but just cheap and fake like here, I actually prefer modern architecture too. But then please ultra, hyper modern. And not that generic boxes, you find anywhere.

[Discu]

Originally Posted by miau

I have to disagree here. What we need is a modern interpretation of urban living, not an imitation of the over-idealized past. I dont want another pseudo-medieval city quarter in Berlin like the Nikolaiviertel. I do not oppose reconstructions in general, but I think that we should be able to create architecture that has is functional and liveable.

That's very well spoken, miau! The main purpose for any building is to use it/to live in it and not to watch it from the outside.
Public spaces - especially in the inner city - however need to offer some quality of stay. Alexanderplatz does not provide this yet.
This is not a fault of modern architecture but a lack in large-scale town planning. The ideological gap between socialistic and capitalistic town planning is just too obvious here. That makes Alexanderplatz so interesting.
Not beautiful, just interesting!

[Chadoh25]

Seeing the leveling of what remained of old central Berlin is so depressing! So sad!