Last stage of Berlin's new architecture unfolds


British architect Sir Norman Foster's slick glass-and-steel dome addition has helped to make the 1894 Reichstag building Berlin's most popular tourist attraction

In this story:

'Capital Dilemma'

Strict rules for new Berlin

More freedom on the Potsdamer Platz

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BERLIN (Reuters) -- A new Berlin is slowly emerging from the rubble and cranes that have dominated the skyline of Germany's new capital since reunification a decade ago.

As the scaffolding comes down, the city is tentatively unveiling the latest chapter in its architectural development to the world. Not everybody is impressed.

Berlin certainly knows how to reinvent itself. In the last century it went from being a hub of art and culture to the command center of the Holocaust; from a divided outpost behind the Iron Curtain to being capital of a united Germany once more.

"We have a pretty amazing century behind us. There is no other city in Europe that has had so many new beginnings as Berlin," said Josef Paul Kleihues, a top Berlin architect who has created a major new exhibition on the city's buildings.

But while Berlin is making a fresh start, it cannot escape from its past. It is still dotted by Hitler's fascist monuments. Bullet holes pock the facades of many public buildings from the Soviet invasion that ended World War II. Only the concrete Wall that split the city for nearly three decades is hard to find.


The new Potsdamer Platz has corporate office buildings, cinemas and shopping malls. "It is in Berlin, but it could be almost anywhere," lamented one critic.

How the city deals with its history as it rebuilds and reinvents itself is proving a major challenge for planners.

'Capital Dilemma'

This is Berlin's "Capital Dilemma" -- the title of a new book by author Michael Wise, who examines the quest to develop buildings which are fitting to united Germany's new status in Europe, while stressing a break with its turbulent history.

Critics say the dilemma has been most successfully resolved in the face-lift of the 1894 Reichstag building by world- renowned British architect Sir Norman Foster.

The main feature of what has become Berlin's most popular tourist attraction is the new glass-and-steel dome, from where visitors can look down on German politicians at work -- a perfect metaphor for transparent democracy in the new capital.

Dealing with Hitler's architectural legacy poses more problems. The Nazi dictator wanted to flatten much of Berlin to build Germania -- his idea of a fitting seat for a Thousand Year Reich. Many of his neoclassical monoliths are still in use.

There has been some international disquiet that Berlin's bombastic 1936 Olympic stadium will host the finals of the soccer World Cup in 2006 -- albeit after a major make-over.

But the Nazi Reichsbank, which stored gold and other valuables stolen from murdered concentration camp victims, has been put to good use housing the Foreign Ministry and has a new glass and sandstone extension that masks the original structure.

Berlin architect Paul Kahlfeldt argues that buildings with an unsavoury history should not be bulldozed.

"We must not forget the history of the city -- even the evil, terrible history of the city," he said.

City planners, who are keen to recreate Berlin's pre-war scale and mix of residential and commercial buildings, have tried to stop international architects who flocked here after the Wall fell from losing sight of the past.

"The Senate didn't want to reinvent Berlin, but wanted to use the old buildings as a resource for the new Berlin," said Hans Stimmann, the city's building director.

"Despite the dramatic transformation and modernisation of society, the new Berlin did not need a basically new model."

Strict rules for new Berlin

Stimmann, whose focus on retaining or reconstructing old buildings has been dubbed "critical reconstruction" by architects, created a strict blueprint for the new capital.

But critics have accused Stimmann of promoting historical pastiche and stifling innovation and creativity.

"It was about going back to a time that was nice and safe as if a history after 1934 wasn't there. It was simply a rush to forgetting," said Daniel Libeskind, the U.S. architect who designed Berlin's acclaimed new Jewish Museum -- a windowless post-modernist thunderbolt, clad in zinc.

Nowhere is Stimmann's influence more keenly felt than on Pariser Platz -- the square surrounding Berlin's landmark Brandenburg Gate where all the buildings were flattened during the war and where the gaps are now being filled in one by one.

Stimmann decreed that the new square should be fronted with sandstone and replicate pre-war dimensions.

While the renovation of the plush Hotel Adlon on the corner of the square has been roundly condemned as tacky and garish, other architects have succeeded in subverting Stimmann's rules.

Two of the buildings stand out, or rather they do once you get inside. Frank Gehry, who built the celebrated Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, created a boxy and minimalist facade for his bank building next to the Brandenburg Gate.

But he let his imagination run riot inside, sculpting a bulging filigree roof and a curved glass floor that are intended to bring to mind an enormous fish.

Michael Wilford, who designed the new British embassy, could not quite keep his creativity in check behind the prescribed sandstone front. Irregular blue and pink structures poke out of a gaping slit in its facade that reveals a large courtyard.

More freedom on the Potsdamer Platz

On Potsdamer Platz there was nothing left to build around and architects have had more freedom there, although not necessarily more success than those who worked on Pariser Platz.

Berlin's biggest construction site was once Europe's busiest square, but was completely destroyed in the war and then marooned in a booby-trapped no-man's land after the Wall went up in 1961.

Filling the void attracted some big names, including Italy's Renzo Piano and Giorgio Grassi and German-born Helmut Jahn. But the corporate high-rises, cinemas and shopping malls that have risen from the weeds have not met with universal approval.

"It is in Berlin, but it could be almost anywhere," wrote one European critic of the cluster of brand-new buildings that is still surrounded by cranes, open fields and rubble.

"It will take up to the next 10 years to be integrated. It is a bit like Disneyland. It lacks the harmony of a French or Italian city," said Kahlfeldt.

"Because lots of international architects all want to leave their mark it is a bit of a mix of international styles."

Hong Kong architect Rocco Yim agreed: "Despite the really high-ranking architects the identity of the space does not really hang together as a whole," he said. "But perhaps it is too early to judge."

The city is by no means finished yet. Clouds of plaster dust still blow through many central areas, roads are incomplete and paving stones are frequently ripped up for new plumbing.

The frenetic pace of building and renovation has slowed somewhat recently and Kleihues said it could take a generation before Berlin reclaims its position as a great European metropolis alongside Paris and London.

"A metropolis must have political and economic power, science and culture and be open internationally. Berlin is on the way, but it could take a generation," he said. "But I know of hardly another city where one can live so well as in Berlin."