Early Research

Here is Brian Ladd speaking at MIT as part of a series hosted by the Department of Urban Studies and Planning about rebuilding New York after September 11th, "The Resilient City: Trauma, Recovery, and Remembrance." Ladd's lecture is titled "Double Restoration: Berlin after 1945." This video is compliments of Lauren. I just watched it and thought I'd add it to my blog as well. This video is compliments of Lauren. I just watched it and thought I'd add it to my blog as well.

Some of the most interesting points I would like to research further:

• Architectural impovershment in recent years - architects don't know how to go forward so they end up going backwards
• Selective remembering and forgetting inherent in any reconstruction of a city
• Historical views of supporters and critics of what Ladd calls Critical Reconstruction
  

Berlin For Sale

Actually just the Kaufhaus des Westens department store, continental Europe's largest. Better known as KaDeWe, this 102-year-old establishment stood through both World Wars, capitalized on the Cold War, and is accepting all offers foreign and domestic. It has become as much a representation of Berlin as any, so for many Berliners, the metaphor is fitting.

Here is a link to the LA Times article.

1900

1946

Present

These photos are from the University of Texas at Austin's Berlin Topographies website. Check it out if you have the time. They have an extensive photo archive of major locations in Berlin as well as information about Berlin literature, film, and art.

Berlin City Maps

While piddling about on Wikipedia, I ran across this awesome website, The Berlin City Map Archive. It has detailed maps of Berlin starting in 1738 and ending in 1989 before the Wall came down. Unfortunately, there is no map after '89 of the unified Berlin, and it's not the most user-friendly map site you've been to. Still, it's pretty damn cool.

Begin with 1738 here.

Or check out the English homepage with links to additional information about the project and author, as well as more Berlin sites.

Propositions

In class I discussed the idea of researching the multiple city centers of Berlin as a result of being two cities for 50 years. On this altar I would place objects traditionally associated with Western Europe's city centers:

• Feet
• Bicycles
• Classical facades
• Cobblestones
• Modern shopping
• A museum or two

Along the lines of researching these centers, I'd be interested in following these lines of inquiry:

• The demographics of each
• If there was a restructuring of the use between these centers after the Wall came down
• Whether they are currently competing for dominance
• Varying architecture between modern purposes and their relative location within the city
• Effects of the lack of a single city center
  
• Current plans for the historic city center, specifically the site of the Palace of the Republic
  

I am also interested in following a more specific architectural inquiry into the city as a whole. This would entail studying varying building forms and styles in the modern age, as well as tracing the history of architectural ages as the affected the feel of Berlin. There would be an obvious study of each side's reaction to post-war Berlin and what was done with historic buildings on either side as well as the varying forms buildings took between the two cities. I am most interested in how this affects a unified architectural feel of the city, or if there even is one. On this altar would go:

• Then and now pictures
• Blueprints
• Wrecking ball
• Cranes
• Asbestos
• Concrete
• Steel
• A book of zoning laws

Even more specifically, I think it would be worthwhile to study buildings that were historic or present cultural centers like concert/music halls, theaters (movie and stage), museums, parks, and monuments.

I also am interested in Michael's idea of fringe cultures in Berlin and their locations in relation to the Wall and their displacement after 1989. Read his blog for a more thorough write-up.

Ghosts of Berlin through Chapter 2

Considering we’ve already had the discussion on The Ghosts of Berlin, this post is a little dated. The nice part though, is that I can reflect on both my reading of the book as well as what the class had to say about it.

After thinking about the book for the past couple weeks, perhaps the most interesting aspect of it isn’t even located within its pages. The title, The Ghosts of Berlin, is clear, simple, though perhaps not entirely direct. What are the ghosts? Are we meant to take them to be the ruined buildings on the cover? Are they persons who once inhabited Berlin, or ruled Berlin? Are they friendly or menacing? These ghosts are both German history and the Berlin landscape. In Berlin, as in all places, the landscape is linked with the history. But in Berlin, unlike other cities, the landscape is linked with the troubles of German history that manifest themselves in Berlin. Other cities in Germany have their events, but only in Berlin do all of the events of German history converge and coagulate.

Even in most recent history, Berlin was symbolized by the Berlin Wall, and as Ladd points out in many ways still is. One of the most striking passages in the book is where he discusses semiotics, where the Wall has become the signifier of Berlin. The Wall was Berlin. A question I posed in class and still wonder about is: If the Wall was the signifier of Berlin, what happened when it ceased to exist? Part of this is historical, but a large part of the answer is psychological. When the signifier loses its power, or when it disappears altogether, what does that mean for the signified? And, when the signified is a city with a population, what does it mean for that population that has lost its signification? What is now the signifier of Berlin?

The class in general seemed to really latch on to the fact that the Wall was built in a day, separating the two halves of the city over night and ramparting it in the daylight of August 16, 1961. This fact could provide a descent counter to the popular maxim, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” “No, but the Berlin Wall was.” It altered the cityscape profoundly over that 24 hour period. it established the East-West divide that still exists as the “wall in the mind” phenomena. According to Ladd, the only thing the two sides could agree on was that “the Wall was a temporal barrier, dividing past from present, and that the other side harbored the unredeemed heirs of Hitler” (23). How is a people supposed to reconcile these feelings when that barrier comes down? Can they ever be erased as long as there are memories of it?