City Building and the Rhetoric of “Readability”: Architectural Debates in the New Berlin

Abstract

Berlin represents an unusual case vis–à–vis the international architectural debate about rebuilding cities. The debate generally takes place between neotraditionalists on the one hand and various avant–gardists on the other. But in Berlin, the main representatives of the first camp are not, for once, members of the New Urbanism movement, nor are they neotraditionalists tout court; they are, at least on their own self–understanding, pioneers of a kind of ‘Third Way’ between the two extremes of neotraditionalism and avant–gardism. Nevertheless, a closer look at their rhetoric reveals deeper–lying affinities with the cultural conservatism characteristic of New Urbanism: the image of the city that they favor for Berlin is one of clarity, order, permanence, weightiness, etc.—a surprising image, given the city's troubled past. I examine the Architektenstreit (“Architects’ Debate”) that arose among planners, architects, critics, and others concerning the rebuilding of the central city in Berlin after reunification, and I discuss, in particular, the doctrine of critical reconstruction that has come to dominate this debate. I locate the origins of critical reconstruction's peculiar rhetoric in a longing for stability amidst the perceived flux of modernity. More generally, I argue (contra many commentators on the Architektenstreit) that a debate on the representations and images of the city is not merely a distraction from, but rather an essential element in, the politics of the city.In Berlin today the substitution of culture for politics is particularly manifest. One sometimes has the impression that architectural form is the most important form of political expression ( Lepenies, 2003 , p. 322).1