Architecture sights in Berlin
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Sony Center
Designed by Helmut Jahn, the Sony Center is visually the most dramatic of the three Potsdamer Platz sections, fronted by a 26-floor glass-and-steel tower that’s the highest building on Potsdamer Platz. It integrates remnants of the prewar Hotel Esplanade, including a section of facade (visible from Bellevuestrasse) and the opulent Kaisersaal hall, which had to be moved 75m to its current location using some wizardly technology. The heart of the Sony Center, though, is a central plaza dramatically canopied by a tentlike glass roof with supporting beams emanating like spokes of a bicycle. After dark it erupts in a light show of changing colours. The plaza and its many cafés…
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Spreedreieck
So much has been accomplished since reunification, yet Berlin remains a work in progress. The biggest project of 2009, the Spreedreieck, is a 10-story office high-rise situated on the triangular plot of land next to Friedrichstrasse station. Designed by the late Mark Braun, its twin glass towers echo the blueprint of the Modernist building Ludwig Mies van der Rohe conceived for the site back in 1929. The new structure preserves the GDR-era Tränenpalast (Palace of Tears), so-named because the Friedrichstrasse station was where West Berliners had to say their teary farewells after visiting their relatives and friends stuck behind the Iron Curtain.
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Akademie der Künste
The Brandenburger Tor stands sentinel over the elegant Pariser Platz, which was completely flattened in WWII, then spent the Cold War trapped just east of the Berlin Wall. Look around now: embassies, banks and a luxury hotel have snapped up the city’s priciest real estate and hired top architects to rebuild in style and from the ground up. The only building on the square with a glass façade is the Akademie der Künste at No 4, designed by Günter Behnisch. It’s one of the town’s oldest cultural institutions, founded by King Friedrich I in 1696 as the Prussian Academy of Arts. Come here for readings, lectures, workshops and exhibits.
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Philology Library
The latest addition (2005) to the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University) is the Philology Library, a masterpiece of modern architecture by Lord Norman Foster. Nicknamed the ‘ Berlin Brain ’ because of its cranial shape, it has four floors sheltered within a naturally ventilated, bubble-like enclosure draped in aluminium and glazed panels. An inner membrane of translucent glass fibre filters the daylight, while scattered transparent openings allow momentary glimpses of the sky.
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Bundesnachrichtendienst
So much has been accomplished since reunification, yet Berlin remains a work in progress. In the near future, the biggest ballet of cranes will likely be dancing above Chausseestrasse in northern Mitte, where the new headquarters of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the German equivalent of the CIA, is taking shape. Designed by Kleihues + Kleihues, the enormous complex is being built on a lot formerly occupied by the GDR-era Stadium of the World Youth and expected to provide 4000 jobs when it opens in 2012.
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Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
The hulking building between Kulturforum and Potsdamer Platz houses part two of the State Library, picking up where the collection at the main branch on Unter den Linden leaves off, ie in 1955. Called ‘Stabi’ for short, it clearly bears the Scharoun imprimatur but wasn’t actually completed until 1978. Free 90-minute tours (in German) run at 10.30am every third Saturday of the month. Otherwise, it’s only accessible with a library card which comes with age and residency restrictions.
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Hansaviertel
The Hansaviertel, built from 1954 to 1957, northwest of Tiergarten, and is a loosely-structured leafy area blending high-rises and single-family homes. It grew from an architectural exposition, the Internationale Bauausstellung, or ‘Interbau’, held in 1957, and represents the pinnacle of architectural vision in the 1950s. More than 50 architects from 13 countries – including Gropius, Luciano Baldessari, Alvar Aalto and Le Corbusier – participated in its design.
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Neue Mitte
So much has been accomplished since reunification, yet Berlin remains a work in progress. Over on Alexanderplatz, a chunky retail-office hybrid called Neue Mitte was completed in 2009. The design itself, by the architectural firm of RKW of Düsseldorf, is remarkably unremarkable and local punters have joked that its merits lie mostly in obscuring the view of the humongous, pink-mantled Alexa shopping mall that opened in 2007.
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AEG Turbinenhalle
Peter Behrens (1868-1940) who is sometimes called the 'father of modern architecture' designed the 1929 Berolinahaus on Alexanderplatz (now a C&A clothing store), but his most accomplished structure is outside the centre: the 1909 AEG Turbinenhalle, an airy, functional and light-flooded ‘industrial cathedral’ with exposed structural beams. The building is considered an icon of early industrial architecture.
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Weltzeituhr
A popular meeting spot since 1969, this huge clock is a good vantage point for surveying the socialist buildings that frame Alexanderplatz. Look for the frieze-decorated House of the Teacher, the House of the Electrical Industry decorated with a quote from Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and the Park Inn hotel, nicknamed 'Bed Tower.'
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Haus der Elektroindustrie
The massive building on the north side of the Alexanderplatz square is the 1970 Haus der Elektroindustrie, which now houses Germany’s federal environmental ministry. The letters on its façade spell out a quote from the 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin.
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GSW Headquarters
Of the city's remarkable new buildings, a standout is the energy-efficient extension of the GSW Headquarters by Louisa Hutton and Matthias Sauerbruch, which sports a double-layer convection façade with blinds that automatically change colour depending on the temperature.
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Ku’damm Eck
Noteworthy new buildings include the 2001 Ku’damm Eck, a corner building with a gradated and rounded façade festooned with an electronic billboard and sculptures by Markus Lüppertz.
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