City profile: Berlin

Berlin is a German city and federal state, situated in the heart of Europe. It has been the capital city since 1991, and is the largest city in the country with around 3.4 million inhabitants. This profile explains Berlin’s historical development and emphasizes changes which took place during the 20th century (the Weimar period in the 1920s, followed by the Nazi takeover in 1933 and the city’s destruction during World War II, then the division of the city into West Berlin and East Berlin, until its final reunification in 1990 after the Wall fell down). After reunification, Berlin experienced a new period of urban redevelopment in which many new buildings were constructed. This profile also outlines some recent positive changes in terms of Berlin’s economic growth and its transformation into the capital of innovative new companies in the digital, culture and media industries.     

新世纪之交的德国城市设计——百年思想的演进与更替

德国城市设计学科的发展对世界产生了广泛而深远的影响,本文对德国当代城市设计面临的挑战与对策进行了系统梳理。文章首先对现代城市设计早期德国的城市设计内涵的基本认识进行了总结,在此基础上回顾了现代主义兴起、东西德分裂条件下德国各个时期城市设计发展的基本特征。在此基础上,分三个方面对德国当代城市设计进行了梳理:1)重塑美学和历史在城市设计中的合法地位,帮助确立当代全新的城市设计范式;2)社会导向的福利国家模式应对全球化影响的多种城市设计举措;3)落实一系列可持续城市发展的策略。文章最后概括了德国城市设计发展经验对于我国的借鉴意义。     

水城:城市水资源的保护与利用

该文介绍了德国把城市水域重新利用开发为新的城市空间,利用滨水空间建造的高品质文化建筑,为居住之城增添许多新型城市空间的理论和实践。     

Urban identity policies in Berlin: From critical reconstruction to reconstructing the Wall

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the East-Central European cities had to re-invent themselves to quickly adapt to a globalising world. Urban identity production policies were usually geared to connect to a chosen pre-socialist “Golden Age”, ignoring the socialist past as a simple disturbance of a “normal” development path. This story the cities were to tell, however, frequently conflicted with the socio-economic realities of a rather unsmooth transformation process, making the socialist past part of the urban identity. In the case of Berlin, a post-socialist and at the same time a post-western-stronghold city, urban identity production is bound to be more complicated than anywhere else. After the failure of the policy to “critically reconstruct” the cosmopolitan metropolis of the 1920s and thus erasing the past of the divided city, policies developed in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall aim at turning the Cold War past into a central element of the story that is to support its urban identity, notably leading to the comprehensive re-emergence of the Berlin Wall in the cityscape. This policy – unmatched in other East-Central European cities – has its origins in a historic struggle for identity, leading to the questionable attempt to make “change” the main story Berlin is to tell. This theme however – in conjunction with the reconstructed Wall as image brand – may fall short of creating an urban identity accepted by large population parts.     

Artist intermediaries in Berlin: cultural intermediation as an interscalar strategy of self-organizational survival

This paper argues that intermediation is both a valuable form of occupational self-organization for professional artists and a political act of embedding with socio-spatial ramifications at different local, urban, and global scales. A case study of events organized in Berlin by the interdisciplinary cultural centre Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik demonstrates how artists strategically practice intermediation as modes of autopoietic and dissipative self-organization and as an interscalar survival strategy. These artist intermediaries add improvisational flexibility to the state’s understanding of Verstetigung (sustainable anchoring that fosters a reliable relationship between urban policymakers and cultural producers) and challenge neoliberal urban development logics that instrumentalize creativity.     

柏林:城市街道的民主与活力

柏林在1990年德国统一之后重新成为民主德国的首都,东西柏林的历史隔阂和发展失衡的问题在新柏林城必须得到弥补,柏林墙倒塌后的裂痕地带在统一柏林的建设中成为联系东西柏林的纽带,政府区、中央火车站等一系列重要的城市功能区都规划建设在这一带。整个新柏林的规划建设都充满了联邦德国的反思,历史上希特勒独裁政治的伤疤、东西德的分裂促使重新统一后的德国对政治的透明性的重视,以坦诚的姿态表达对于"民主"的尊重。不仅是政治建筑本身,新柏林公共空间的设计和管理都反映出德国当局对于民主的态度——属于公众的城市空间在政治性空间中所占的地位是什么。街道是城市中最常见的开放空间,直接为市民的通行、休闲服务,在公众城市生活中占有重要分量。文章在柏林对几个较政治化的区域的街道空间进行了考察分析,探讨柏林如何保证城市街道的民主性,让街道生活充满活力。     

The Making of Early Republican Ankara

Zeynep Kezer outlines the ascendancy and development of Ankara from an obscure, central Anatolian town into a capital city that was to become the focus of the new nation state. Informed by German architectural and technological expertise, it was executed to rigorous Modernist planning principles and aesthetics, and came to represent in urban form the polarisation of pre-republican and republican Turkey. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

All Night Long: The Architectural Jazz of the Texas Rangers

In the mid-1950s, a group of young faculty at the University of Texas School of Architecture in Austin - aka the Texas Rangers - entertained themselves with weekly sessions of a sophisticated, collective drawing game, ‘Dot-the-Dot’, in which there was an emphasis on inventive fluency in hand drawing as well as an innate knowledge of historic European city plans. What happened when Mark Morris , Visiting Associate Professor at Cornell University, decided in a design studio to ask present-day students to revive the game?     

Understanding the Hobrecht Plan. Origin,composition, and implementation of urban design elements in the Berlin expansion plan from 1862

ABSTRACT

The nineteenth-century master plans for European cities influence their development beyond their intended lifespans and provide a variety of robust urban fabrics to this day. The Hobrecht Plan for Berlin's urban expansion (1862) was intentionally conceived to adapt to an uncertain future, remaining influential even today. For a considerable time, the Hobrecht Plan was disregarded and considered irrelevant across the spectrum of development plans in Europe. This article presents a comprehensive re-assessment of the Hobrecht Plan with an emphasis on its intrinsic value. The plan defined a new set of urban patterns, forms and spaces in 15 section plans and a range of public space typologies defining Berlin's cityscape. The plan developed a spatial and structural framework using three different urban design elements: the ring boulevard, the harbour square, and the neighbourhood square. These key organizing elements have helped public spaces remain the effective planning units of Berlin's neighbourhoods. This analysis provides insight on how contemporary master plans can better formulate long-term strategies to address complexity, adaptability, and flexibility. The article presents novel outlooks on Berlin's city structure and new knowledge of Hobrecht's contribution to the planning discipline.     

“水城”计划：柏林城市滨水地带的复兴

城市滨水地带曾经在工业的发展中发挥过巨大的作用。进入后工业社会以来，随着经济社会形态和产业结构的变化，城市中的滨水工业生产用地以及仓储用地相继被废弃。这些已经被污染的用地尽管需要花费高昂的代价去整治，但也具有很高的商业开发价值。本文介绍了德国统一之后柏林城市滨水地带再开发的两个大型项目实例，以期为国内类似问题和项目的研究提供借鉴和参考。