Last updated Hotel Adlon - construction of the new building at Pariser Platz, 1995
Critical Reconstruction is a theory of architecture and urbanism originally developed by the Berlin architect Josef Paul Kleihues. It was first applied at Berlin's International Building Exhibition in the 1980s, and was subsequently used in the reconstruction of the city after the fall of the Berlin Wall under Senate Building Director Hans Stimmann. Critical Reconstruction encouraged a return to traditional (pre-World War II) architectural styles and typologies, and sought to recreate the pedestrian-centered urban street life of the early twentieth-century European metropolis through the restoration of the inner city’s original baroque-era street plan.
Post-wall Critical Reconstruction in Berlin was closely associated with an architectural approach called "New Simplicity," theorized by Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani and championed by architect Hans Kollhoff.
Hans Stimmann also used Critical Reconstruction as the basis for his Planwerk Innenstadt, an inner-city development plan for Berlin that favored the demolition of mid-century buildings and the infill of empty plots with higher-density, mixed-use structures.
Major examples of Critical Reconstruction in Berlin include Potsdamer Platz, the Friedrichstadt Passagen, and Alexanderplatz.
Alexanderplatz is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from Mollstraße in the north-east to Spandauer Straße and the Rotes Rathaus in the south-west.
Mitte is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding.
Bernhard Hans Henry Scharoun was a German architect best known for designing the Berliner Philharmonie and the Schminke House in Löbau, Saxony. He was an important exponent of organic and expressionist architecture.
Hans Kollhoff is a German architect and professor.
Fischerinsel is the southern part of the island in the River Spree which was formerly the location of the city of Cölln and is now part of central Berlin. The northern part of the island is known as Museum Island. Fischerinsel is normally said to extend south from Gertraudenstraße and is named for a fishermen's settlement which formerly occupied the southern end of the island. Until the mid-twentieth-century it was a well preserved pre-industrial neighbourhood, and most of the buildings survived World War II, but in the 1960s and 1970s under the German Democratic Republic it was levelled and replaced with a development of residential tower blocks.
The Arbeitsrat für Kunst was a union of architects, painters, sculptors and art writers, who were based in Berlin from 1918 to 1921. It developed as a response to the Workers and Soldiers councils and was dedicated to the goal of bringing the current developments and tendencies in architecture and art to a broader population.
Alfred Messel was a German architect at the turning point to the 20th century, creating a new style for buildings which bridged the transition from historicism to modernism. Messel was able to combine the structure, decoration, and function of his buildings, which ranged from department stores, museums, office buildings, mansions, and social housing to soup kitchens, into a coherent, harmonious whole. As an urban architect striving for excellence he was in many respects ahead of his time. His best known works, the Wertheim department stores and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, reflect a new concept of self-confident metropolitan architecture. His architectural drawings and construction plans are preserved at the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Berlin.
Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani is an architect, architectural theorist and architectural historian as well as a professor emeritus for the History of Urban Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. He practices and promotes a formally disciplined, timelessly classic, and aesthetically sustainable form of architecture, one without modernist or postmodernist extravagances. As an author and editor of several acclaimed works of architectural history and theory, his ideas are widely cited.
The International Building Exhibition Berlin was an urban renewal project in West Berlin, Germany. Initiated in 1979, it was completed in 1987, matching the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin. The IBA followed two distinct strategies: "careful urban renewal" and "critical reconstruction." With a budget of $1.2 billion, it was to house about 30,000 people in selected areas of West Berlin.
Josef Paul Kleihues was a German architect, most notable for his decades long contributions to the "critical reconstruction" of Berlin. His design approach has been described as "poetic rationalist".
Haus Vaterland was a pleasure palace on the south-east side of Potsdamer Platz in central Berlin. Preceded by Haus Potsdam, a multi-use building including a large cinema and a huge café, from 1928 to 1943 it was a large, famous establishment including the largest cafe in the world, a major cinema, a large ballroom and numerous theme restaurants, promoted as a showcase of all nations. It was partially destroyed by fire in World War II, reopened in a limited form until 1953, and was finally demolished in 1976.
Altes Stadthaus is a former administrative building in Berlin, currently used by the Senate. It faces the Molkenmarkt and is bound by four roads; Jüdenstraße, Klosterstraße, Parochialstraße, and Stralauer Straße. Designed by Ludwig Hoffmann, chief of construction for the city, it was built in 1902–11 at a cost of 7 million marks (US$1,750,000) to supplement the Rotes Rathaus.
The Embassy of France in Berlin is the diplomatic mission of the French Republic in Germany. Designed by Christian de Portzamparc and completed in 2002, it is at the same address, Pariser Platz 5, as the former embassy which was destroyed in World War II. Prior to German reunification, France had an embassy in the German Democratic Republic at a different address in Berlin and an embassy in the Federal Republic in Bonn.
The Ackerstraße is a street in Berlin which runs northwest from near the Liesenstraße – Scheringstraße traffic circle in Gesundbrunnen to Invalidenstraße, where it turns south, terminating at the Linienstraße in Mitte.
Nazi architecture is the architecture promoted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime from 1933 until its fall in 1945, connected with urban planning in Nazi Germany. It is characterized by three forms: a stripped neoclassicism, typified by the designs of Albert Speer; a vernacular style that drew inspiration from traditional rural architecture, especially alpine; and a utilitarian style followed for major infrastructure projects and industrial or military complexes. Nazi ideology took a pluralist attitude to architecture; however, Hitler himself believed that form follows function and wrote against "stupid imitations of the past".
Marc Kocher is a Swiss architect, known for his residential building designs.
The House of Travel is a 18-story building at Alexanderplatz in the Mitte district of Berlin. It was completed in 1971 and is located at Alexanderstraße 7.
Klaus Zillich is a German architect, landscape architect, urban planner and professor emeritus.
Bruno Flierl is a German architect, architecture critic, and writer. He is considered one of the most important figures in the architecture and city planning of East Germany. He assisted in the design of the Pariser Platz and argued for the preservation of the Palace of the Republic in the debate over the restoration of the Berlin Palace.
Walter Rossow was a leading German Landscape architect and, during his later years, a university professor. After 1945, together with leading architects of the time such as Egon Eiermann and Paul Baumgarten, Walter Rossow played a key role in reconstructing Berlin.
Bodenschatz, Harald, and Uwe Altrock. Renaissance der Mitte: Zentrumsumbau in London und Berlin. Berlin: Verlagshaus Braun, 2005.
Brichetti, Katharina. Die Paradoxie des postmodernen Historismus: Stadtumbau und städtebauliche Denkmalpflege vom 19. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert am Beispiel von Berlin und Beirut. Berlin: Schiler, 2009.
Burg, Annegret. Berlin Mitte: die Entstehung einer urbanen Architektur. Edited by Hans Stimmann. Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1995.
Feireiss, Kristin, ed. Alexanderplatz: Städtebaulicher Ideenwettbewerb. Translated by Michael Robinson and Hans H. Harbort. Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1994.
Hennecke, Stefanie. Die kritische Rekonstruktion als Leitbild: Stadtentwicklungspolitik in Berlin zwischen 1991 und 1999. Hamburg: Kovač, 2010.
Hertweck, Florian. Der Berliner Architekturstreit: Architektur, Stadtbau, Geschichte und Identität in der Berliner Republik 1989-1999. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2010.
Stadt Der Architektur, Architektur Der Stadt: Berlin 1900-2000, edited by Thorsten Scheer, Josef Paul Kleihues, and Paul Kahlfeldt, 381–87. Berlin: Nicolai, 2000.
Ladd, Brian. The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Lenhart, Karin. Berliner Metropoly: Stadtentwicklungspolitik Im Berliner Bezirk Mitte Nach Der Wende. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2001.
Strom, Elizabeth A. Building the New Berlin: The Politics of Urban Development in Germany’s Capital City. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2001.
Till, Karen E. The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Ward, Janet. Post-Wall Berlin: Borders, Space and Identity. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
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