Architecture of Berlin

Abstract

Berlin grew together out of two walled cites that formed a joint government in 1307; it was re-divided after the end of World War II, and reunified with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From the 1700s onwards, it has continuously been the center of major architectural developments in Germany and Europe. As a bearer of Enlightenment thought and Prussian nationalism, the Unter den Linden boulevard and its canonic neoclassical buildings took shape. With the establishment of the German Empire and Berlin as the imperial capital in 1870–1871, architecture and urbanism were put in the service of nationalism and imperialism while the German nation was usually defined as a superior race. During this time, Berlin was also an industrializing city, engendering not only the construction of urban and infrastructure projects, factory buildings, and the growth of industrial design, but also the uncontrolled urban expansion, overcongested tenement buildings, and housing shortages, which the Garden City movement was seen fit to resolve. Berlin blossomed during the Weimar Republic between 1919 and 1933, becoming the muse of authors theorizing modernity, mass culture, and metropolitan experience. The city also became a platform for European avant-garde movements and proponents of “New Building,” associated with functionalist concerns, rationalization, social responsibility, and integration of new technologies, as well as large transparent surfaces and flat roofs. With the Weimar Constitution endowing every citizen the right to housing and tax revenues, the Garden City movement transformed into the Berlin Siedlungen (housing estates). Following the National Socialist takeover in 1933, Berlin served as Hitler’s governing center as well as the target of his megalomaniac ambitions. The destruction during WWII and the subsequent severe housing shortage necessitated the immediate construction of apartment units in massive numbers, to which architects responded with new and polarized housing models. The Berlin Wall, constructed in 1961, soon became the iconic symbol of the Cold-War, while architecture shaped East and West Berlin’s distinct identities. In the 1970s and 1980s, the growing interest in the historical fabric of European cities made Berlin a microcosm of international debates again, giving way to ideas such as social housing as urban renewal and “critical reconstruction,” while exposing the racialization of guest workers. After the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, an unprecedented planning and construction boom followed for the reunification of divided Berlin and the building of its new architectural symbols. Memory debates called for the reckoning with Nazi violence or the reconstruction of the Prussian Empire’s buildings as symbols of Germany’s past, while racialized Muslim, Asian, and Black populations continued to face discrimination.