Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany


Related people
John P. Schooley Jr. (was created by)
Daniel Libeskind (was created by)
Description
Libeskind's submittal for the post-Wall redevelopment of Potsdamer Platz in central Berlin was a more radical approach than most, including the selected master plans of Renzo Piano and other. "Libeskind's scheme is a labyrinthine and provocative rumination upon a new urbanity. Unlike almost every other plan submitted to the competition, which timidly elected to end the twentieth century by clinging to the palimpsest of the past, Libeskind's proposition has little use for simplistic tracings of nineteenth-century grids. Rather, he casts and interweaves nine main lines of force, one for each muse and each deriving from his own radically subjective reading of the city's identities, events, and images." (Weller, 2005 p.20) "As a representation the plan hovers between the real and the impossible, between a catalytic mindscape and a cityscape. Overloaded with information and brought about by relative indeterminancy, the drawing asks that we consider building a new, more complex city, one that might require new developmental processes. The architecture for this new city is in fact not a plan, but rather a map. The map figures a labyrinth which offers a way out of the twentieth century, beckoning us into a city that is foreign to everyone and hence a place anyone might make home." (Weller, 2005 p.20) Keywords: Germany, Berlin, maps, drawings and/or plans, linear/vectorial. Submitted by Jane Amidon for LARCH 253.
Style/Period
1990s (1990 - 1999)
Source
Weller, R. (2005). Room 4.1.3. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.