The Idea of Cultural Heritage in Border Neighbourhoods of West-Berlin in 1976–1978

Abstract

The celebration of the European Year of Architectural Heritage in 1975 in Amsterdam had a great impact on architectural debate in West Berlin, which held a similar event one year later entitled A future for our past. There was a climate of great tension in the city between the precursors of the urban development plans and the social movements in the affected neighborhoods. The article discusses the extent to which a methodological change was possible, from an approach that obliterated the existing new proposals in order to readjust the role of heritage in the urban reconstruction. The idea of declaring existing urban fabric as patrimony became the central debate of this period, in which the idea of demolition and replacement became an expression of social inequality. This article comparatively analyzes the celebration of two proposals promoted by Berlin’s architectural senator Hans C. Müller in 1976: The pilot project for Block 118 in Charlottenburg and the Symposium on Urban Structure and Urban Form in Tiergarten Süd. Two innovative and methodologically distinct approaches were to establish the principles that would regulate the internationally known reconstruction of the IBA, both the Old and the New, two years later.