Hotel Esplanade: The Cultural History of a Berlin Location

Abstract

In the middle of the cranescape around Potsdamer Platz, one of the most questionable building projects of the reunified Berlin can currently be viewed. If one walks in an easterly direction along Potsdamer Strasse, on the left, just behind the Kammermusiksaal and the Philharmonie, one sees the scaffolding of Helmut Jahn’s eleven-storey Sony Center, which, in its triangular form, extends to the Potsdamer Platz. As can be gathered from the models and computer simulations found in the scarlet Info Box on the adjoining Leipziger Platz, the Chicago architect is planning to construct a complex consisting of a forum, the Sony Europa Center, an office tower, and two office blocks. In conjunction with the Center and the tower as the tallest element, these two office blocks—one pointing east towards Bellevuestrasse and the other pointing west towards the Philharmonie—form a triangle that circumscribes an oval forum. The office blocks, as well as the Center and the tower, are steel and glass constructions whose posterior rooms will offer a view of the forum from the floor to the ceiling. The approximately 320-feet-tall office tower will assume dynamism and elegance by virtue of a glass facade that is to extend sideways above and beyond the semicircular building.