Berlin Urban Spaces as Social Surfaces: Machine Aesthetics and Surface Texture

Abstract

In the Berlin of the Weimar Republic, conflict raged not only over a new architecture corresponding to the optical culture but also over new forms of urban space. This essay, through a broad overview of the social spaces of Berlin, explores the tension between "artisanal" and "industrial" production and between collective and individual labor. It shows how different sociopolitical environments mobilized artisanal and industrial tropes and analyzes the ways in which they were construed iconographically.