space laboratory for architectural
research and design
Professor Steffen Lehmann, PhD
Chair, School of Architecture and Built Environment,
The University of Newcastle, Australia
Abstract
What is it exactly that makes a city a great and creative place? In today’s globalised world, a clear-cut identity, good public space and sustainable place-making are qualities which increasingly represent the desirability for living in a city. Over the last 15 years, Berlin has transformed itself from industrial age casualty to the hub of youth art, has re-emerged as a magnet for young people, and redesigned itself as a metropolis and symbol of contemporary Europe. There is no doubt that Berlin is a cosmopolitan, forward-looking city, conscious of its status and confident about its stature. The city doesn’t need to constantly declare or self-assure about its status. Currently, Berlin attracts a ‘creative class’ who gravitate to its inspiring public space network for walking and cycling; its large number of robust, flexible buildings; and the wide range of types and sizes of its character places waiting to be occupied with fresh ideas about living and working in the inner city.
Those places are well suited to new approaches to informal urban design and artistic searches for undiscovered potential, which frequently hides in the derelict, post-industrial fabric. Such ‘places not done yet’ attract the interests of artists in creating provocative, temporary interventions in urban public space. Opposed to Richard Serra's famous dictum: ‘to remove the work is to destroy the work’, these site-specific, temporary installations can stimulate and regenerate a place and lead to new perceptions and readings of ‘city’, or, as Charles Landry has put it: ‘One continuing issue is the narrowness of planners' horizons and the fact that they find it very hard to focus on desires rather than needs.’ (Landry, 1995) Since you cannot buy culture, it is not the corporate headquarters and shopping centres of Potsdamer Platz or Friedrichstrasse, but such ‘places and spaces not done yet’ that hold a promise for freedom of personal expression and individual interpretation.
The euphoria of post-reunification times has long disappeared. After the fall of the Wall (1989) and the settling of the ensuing turmoil, the years 1990-2000 have become the ‘golden years’ of Berlin’s re-emergence. However, the advantages Berlin possesses today will persist only if the city manages to maintain its distinctiveness and its affordability. Following the earlier fate of Paris and Barcelona, Berlin’s affordability is likely to be ending soon and the city may stop being a desirable ‘Creative City’. With the completion of the government’s move to the new capital and the influx of a large number of bureaucrats, a phase of consolidation and mainstream consumerism has begun. Artists are being forced further out of the centre by high rents and new developments. By 2012, Berlin’s status may well have shifted to another city, probably to Istanbul or another city in Eastern Europe.
Keywords:
Introduction
Over the last 15 years, Berlin has emerged as a magnet for young people and has redesigned itself as a post-industrial metropolis and a symbol of contemporary Europe. What makes Berlin such an attractive 21st Century centre and creative environment for the artistic crowd from all over the world? It’s a city that has successfully handled structural changes and developed specific strengths. If we can analyse the reasons for this, it is likely that we can come closer to a definition of the criteria of what makes a ‘Creative City’, a place where culture is nurtured, and why it happens that certain places become cultural centres.
Berlin then and now: a metropolitan city
During the 1920s Weimar Republic [1] years, Berlin was for a short time Europe’s cultural centre. Today it is undergoing something of a revival of that status. The symptoms are similar. For instance, in the fashion industry, Berlin has emerged as the European epicentre of ‘youthful cool’ fashion and, since the Berlin Wall came down, the artistic community has thrived, with more than 3000 fashion designers now basing themselves in the city. In the art scene, it is the capital of galleries and ateliers; Berlin has over 500 art galleries (data 2007; in comparison, Sydney has around 110) and large art galleries from NY and LA have opened branches there. Daily, Berlin offers around 1300 cultural events (more than New York), with events covering the whole spectrum from high to low culture. Berlin has always had some of the best universities, colleges and libraries, and, with almost free university education and top art academies, it is a great place to study. Several art academies compete for the most talented students. Despite these attractions, living in Berlin is still surprisingly affordable compared to other cities, such as London, which long ago became too expensive for young people. The owner of an influential Berlin art gallery, Max Hetzler, noted recently about Berlin: ‘Nobody works here. Everybody is either a politician or an artist.’ (Hetzler, 2007). Clearly the city is again embracing certain decadence, a kind of ‘Dance on the Volcano’ as it did in the 1920s.
Bonn politicians have warned for quite some time that Berliners are living in a bubble. You cannot, they say, base a sustainable economy of a city on fun (e.g. Love Parade) and tourism alone. They also say Berlin does not care enough about its future – following too much the slogan ‘poor but sexy’ (quoted from Berlin’s Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit, 2006: Berlin ist arm, aber sexy!). The city is certainly no financial centre; it is bankrupt and cannot afford its huge number of world-class museums and three opera houses. It is a city without any substantial economic infrastructure – hardly any significant industry is located in Berlin – and it depends widely on subsidies. The legacy of the formerly ‘divided city’ is the duplication of buildings in the eastern and western halves; there are two TV towers, two Egyptian Art museums, two city halls, and so on. Architect Hans Kollhoff has put it this way: ‘Of course, Berlin does not need three Operas – it needs four!’ (Kollhoff, 2007). At the same time, while a system of continuous art subsidies thrives, it is the centre of Germany’s urban poverty. Over 50 percent of its 3.5 million people receive some form of social benefit payments from the government. The latest economic ranking of German cities lists Berlin in last place (50th) (source: INSM City Ranking, Sept. 2007. See also: Castells, 1990). Around 22 percent of the population is unemployed. With so much daily hardship, Berlin can never be as charming and as light as, say, Barcelona.
Berlin as a testing ground for new forms of urban citizenship
Berlin has always been open to outsiders and immigrants. The cultural influences from Eastern Europe, from Poland and Russia for instance, play an important role in the character of the city.[2] Since 1991, the city has experienced a kind of ‘Bevoelkerungsaustausch’ (population exchange); around 1.6 million Berliners have left and 1.66 million have moved there (some people joke that most of those ‘New Berliners’ are actually from Munich). This is an exchange of half the population within a very short time. It now has a high percentage of young people (over 40 percent are under 35 years old), and more than half of Berliners are single. The city is not considered to be an ideal place for families. But there have always been other reasons why to move to Berlin: these ‘New Berliners’ made a conscious decision to choose a certain way of life, and they take a more relaxed attitude to the standards that exist at other places. They have come to Berlin to realise ideas that cannot be done elsewhere.
There is also significant urban sprawl. In land area, Berlin is eight times larger than Paris, but has never been as romantic, and it is probably a hundred times uglier! However, it attracts 60,000 tourists to the city every day, many keen to learn about the particular history of the place. The city is now ranking at third place as Europe’s most popular tourist destination.
Berlin’s history is worth a closer look
Established as the Prussian capital in the 19th Century, Berlin was subjected to great urban layouts, such as the ones designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel: the Museum Island and the eastern end of the Unter den Linden Boulevard. It has always had a constructed identity, ever since Friedrich II wilfully shaped it from a military outpost to become the Prussian capital. Berlin was founded and built in the sand, the Maerkischer Sand, just like Las Vegas, another place of constructed identity.
The city is the birthplace of Architectural Modernism (Behrens, Taut, Mendelsohn, Mies van der Rohe – have all worked there), and has been the inspiration for some of the greatest of city films. ‘Symphony of a great City’ by Walter Ruttmann (‘Sinfonie einer Grossstadt’, 1927), was one of the first ‘metropolis’ films. It shows one day in the urban life of the city dweller, from the anticipation of arrival in the morning to the nighttime advertisement billboards – and it introduces the intriguing tempo and rhythm of the modern city. Another equally poetic Berlin film, Wim Wenders’ ‘Himmel ueber Berlin’ (‘Wings of Desire’, 1987), features a poignant moment when an old man tries to find the remains of his lost Potsdamer Platz, reminding us of the mythical aura that hovers about this place. Literature has had a great influence too, for instance Alfred Doeblin’s ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ (1929). His character, Franz Biberkopf, is the archetype of the urban migrant, and his city life is the main focus of the narrative. The book was turned into the film “Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf”, by Piel Jutzi (1931). Thus, from the Weimar Republic to the ‘Wende’, urban spaces and the idea of the Metropolis have played and continue to play a fundamental role in modern German literature and cinema.
 Fig. 01: During the inflation years 1923–24, burning money was less expensive than buying firewood. |
However, not everything in the 1920s urban lifestyle was about amusement. Think of the morbid images of the painter George Grosz (and equally the work of the painters Otto Dix and Rudolf Schlichter), which shows a stimulating metropolitan life, but also reflects an irresponsible society and warns of the rise of fascism – WWII led to the city’s destruction in 1945.
 Fig. 02: George Grosz, ‘Daum marries her pedantic Automaton George’ (1920) |
An iconic symbol of the Cold War and a divided world, the Wall divided East and West Berlin for 28 years, from the day construction began in 1961 until it was dismantled in 1989. Until the fall of the Wall, the west of the city was an isolated island. John F. Kennedy’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ was of remarkable significance: ‘I am a citizen of Berlin’ is the famous quotation from the 1963 speech by the U.S. President in West Berlin, declaring the city to be a symbol of free democracy, an expression of unbroken faith in the future of Berlin. Despite the division of the city and its island-like position, Berlin was an experimental centre and a source of ideas on new progressive urban development for many years after the war (just think of the two building expos: InterBau in 1957, and IBA in 1986. As Balfour notes, both building expos brought international architects to build in the city). It has always been the most mysterious of international cities, with a touch of the forbidden and the decadent, a place where, in the 1970s, people like Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Nick Cave lived. However, now that there is no more Wall, a good deal of the mystery has gone, but the city’s past is inescapable. It is like a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing.
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| Fig. 03: The Wall divided the city from 1961 to 1989. An East German guard escaping into the West. |
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| Fig. 04: ‘Walled City’, the Berlin Wall, 1961-1989: the longest canvas for graffiti art, expressing the hopelessness of an unnaturally divided city. |
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| Fig. 05: Scene from the Wenders' film 'Der Himmel ueber Berlin' (1987). |
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| Fig. 06: During the 1970s, both - East and West Berlin - saw the model of the 'Retorten-Stadt' housing slab. |
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| Fig. 07: On 9th November 1989: The opening of the Wall took people by great surprise. With the fall of the Wall parts of Berlin's uniqueness got lost. |
Since the fall of the Wall, urban conditions have changed drastically and, at breathtaking speed, two halves have been joined to make a whole. In the 1990s, Berlin slowly reinstated itself as the capital city of the reunified Germany (the parliamentary decision to move the capital from Bonn to Berlin came in June 1991). Many developers learnt a lesson during those early euphoric years. At Potsdamer Platz, ten billion Euros was invested in construction in the 10 years from1992 to 2002 so that it could become the symbol of the ‘New Berlin’. However, around 100,000m2 office space is still empty.
The ‘Golden Years’ of Berlin’s re-emergence
After the fall of the Wall and the settling of the ensuing turmoil, the years 1990-2000 can be called the ‘golden years’ of Berlin’s re-emergence. Berlin emerged as a field of ideologies and debates. A large number of independent initiatives were founded, such as self-organised theatres, flea-markets, and plenty of other small scale (non-commercial) activities popped up in every district: creativity blossomed - beyond any business plans. Passionate discussions about ‘Visions for the urban Future of the City’ took place and everything seemed possible for a short time. Architectural critic Ulf Meyer noted, that ‘this was the moment when utopia seemed to happen - just before reality kicked-in’ (Meyer, 2007).
Projects such as Potsdamer Platz, Spreebogen, Alexander Platz, Friedrich Strasse, Palast der Republik, Schlossplatz, Museums Island, Checkpoint Charlie, and so on - gave parallel and sometimes contradictory visions of historical dimensions. As a result, an extraordinary transformation of spaces occurred in the post-Wall period. Around 2002 – with most of the construction sites finished – Berlin had fully adapted to its role as a capital, the world’s youngest capital city. At the same time, during these years of fast change, art clusters and initiatives of urban regeneration developed in courtyards in Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg (e.g. the Hackesche Hoefe, Kunsthoefe, Kunst-Werke, Oranienburger Strasse, Sophie-Gips-Hoefe, etc.). Today, these courtyards, nestling among numerous historical buildings, are probably the most interesting places in Berlin’s urban fabric. The unpredictable artistic interventions in these courtyards are more inspiring and creative than most of the ‘official’ public art, ‘decorating’ the new ministry buildings of the newly arrived government.[3]
Culture is something that grows slowly – it is not built. This is why art is not produced in those large new buildings around the Regierungsviertel; while artworks can be preserved and exhibited in places such as Potsdamer Platz or the Regierungsviertel, the most interesting contemporary art does actually not need to be preserved for permanence – it is meant to be temporary, ephemeral. (Kwon, 2004) For instance, in 2002, the art project ‘Rethinking. Space-Time-Architecture’ showcased seventy temporary installations [4] in Berlin Mitte, collaborative works from teams of architects and artists, which took advantage of the city’s courtyard culture by engaging creative teams of architects and artists in urban interventions. This project reminds us that a degree of complexity in urban structures is necessary to generate and facilitate human contact – a basis for any city life. As Christopher Alexander has pointed out, the ‘city is not a tree; it should not be designed as a system.’ (Alexander, 1965) The relationship between urban connectivity and a city’s composition suggests that the degree of ‘life’ in a city is directly tied to the complexity of visual, geometrical and path connections. In the fine grain of the courtyard systems in the old centre we find that there is an optimal distribution of connection lengths, and violating this distribution system with inappropriate new planning removes life from the urban environment. Most of the time, it is the smaller, intimate places full of character that make a city more enjoyable (as well described in the work of Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin).
From Devastation, to Division, to Transformation: the ‘City of Talents’
Today’s new status shows a cosmopolitan, dynamic energy, and a creative urban milieu; Berlin is regarded as the new centre of the art world, a ‘City of Talents’. It is a global phenomenon that cities are searching to discover their post-industrial identity in an attempt to transform or reinvent themselves. The ‘renewed, knowledge-based city’ is not based on heavy industry, but on the service sector, conference tourism, urban living, creative industries, and all the potential hidden in the urban fabric through unique ‘places not done yet’. So, why do artists feel a particular affinity with Berlin, and why now? In Berlin, it’s easy to use public space as an ‘urban laboratory’, for instance through temporary interventions in public space to give meaning to the public realm through new approaches to informal urban design.
There is a continuing artistic search for the undiscovered and disregarded potential of the city. The notion of the ‘Creative City’ (Florida, 2002) points towards the metropolis as an urban laboratory, and it is probably in such freedom of exploration (sometimes even beyond health & safety concerns) that make a city creative. The values most favoured by creative people are, according to Richard Florida:
Berlin offers many challenging spaces with unique character that are ’not done yet’. But in addition, it is a place of:
All these qualities made the 'New Berlin' a symbol of the renewed young Europe – as opposed to Paris, which has not yet managed to reinvent its identity. But all is not perfect. East Germans still, almost twenty years after the fall of the Wall, have a hard time finding a new identity. Conflicts and contradictions are a daily experience and plentiful, such as:
Berlin is complex, hard to grasp, sometimes difficult to understand, with mysterious qualities. In comparison, Sydney is obvious and direct, where public space has been handed over to consumption and developers (just think of Darling Harbour). As a city, Sydney has still to find more complex and multi-layered answers to questions of urbanity.
Interestingly, the city of Newcastle – Australia's second oldest city and NSW's second largest city, 140 kilometres north of Sydney – offers just such highly charged places that artists are searching for. This is a good reason to organise the 2008 event 'Back to the City' in Newcastle. It is a working-class dominated town where most of the old industries have left. Marcus Westbury has put it this way: 'For the rest of Australia, places like Newcastle and their problems and opportunities are easily forgotten or deliberately neglected. (…) imagine what Newcastle could be if someone cared.' [5]
The possibilities for transformation of existing urban situations is crucial
Such temporary artworks (interventions) in the public domain can reveal the history of the site and offer a different, deeper meaning – different from the planners' and developers' idea about how to integrate art in the city. The artists operate with strategies similar to the impermanent, subversive works by the 'Situationists' in the 1960s [1], and ephemeral site-specific works are based on references to a particular location or situation. The Situationists created spaces and posed questions which forced architects to view the world in new and unexpected ways. (Sadler, 1998) In this context, performance-artist Gordon Matta-Clark asks the crucial question: 'Why hang things on a wall when the wall itself is so much more a challenging medium?'[7] Installation artists have often been able to work with space and materials in ways that architects cannot. I believe architects and planners can learn a great deal from such temporary operations, or as Philip Drew has pointed out: 'The artist frequently appears to be at liberty to develop a new means quickly and inexpensively with an ease that the architect can only envy' (Drew, 1996).
For a long time, Indian-born artist Anish Kapoor has been a good example for interdisciplinary collaboration and for challenging the perception of space, with installations such as 'Marsyas' (in London, 2002) and 'Svayambh' (in Munich, 2007).
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| Fig. 08 and 09: Temporary installations by Anish Kapoor, in the Tate Modern, London (2002, in collaboration with engineer Cecil Balmond), and in the Haus der Kunst, Munich (2007): large scale site-specific interventions. | |
'Places not done yet' are necessary for creativity
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| Fig. 10: Installation in Schinkel church ‘Marking Time and Territory’ (arch: Scheidt / art: Ardley), curated by the author (2002). |
Almost every square metre of Berlin is steeped in history and the city has never made an attempt to gloss over this – it is part and parcel of this city. Today, these are the places for new approaches to informal urban design to reveal the undiscovered potential and even unpleasant historical layers hidden in its derelict, post-industrial fabric. It suits the interest of artists to build provocative, temporary interventions in such urban space. Those site-specific temporary installations can stimulate and regenerate a place and lead to new perceptions and readings of 'city'. Since the late 1960s, artistic practice has challenged the institution art gallery and its conventional mode of display.[8] In this regard, temporary art interventions are a great urban resource, and they are (of course) 'architecture'. As Liane Lefaivre has noted in regard to Hans Hollein's manifesto 'Alles ist Architektur' ('Everything is Architecture'; Hollein, 1968), 'it is a call for the complete dissolution of architecture. Hollein's manifesto was written at a time when conceptual artists were advocating what Lucy Lippard called the dematerialisation of the art object in search of something more fundamental'. Hollein's call for informal, mobile and ephemeral works is today more valid than ever. (Lefaivre, 2003) The interventions in Berlin's public space are informal urban designs frequently connected to social practice. They are based on the undiscovered potential revealed by site-specific installations in order to create a new awareness and reading of the city and city life. This is just the kind of thing other cities could do with more of: abandoned places with the potential to be turned into something unexpected by a provocative subculture group with highly creative energy.
The work of the media artist Cida de Aragon: Migration, Heimat, Surveillance and Public Space
Heimat and Migration
Surveillance, Paranoia and Control of Space
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| Fig. 11: Installation 'Surveillance' on Goodwill Bridge, Brisbane (De Aragon/ Heywood/ McCombe), curated by the author (2004) |
'Resilience' Women Suffrage Memorial in Brisbane
It is a reflective, quiet place where people may walk and sit in the shade. The work deals with the complexity of contemporary memorials and the problem of commemorating significant historical achievements in the 21st Century. It addresses questions of how we can best acknowledge the role of women and honours the contribution of these dedicated and resourceful people to women's rights, whose legacy, fought 100 years ago, is still ongoing and unresolved. Even today we find discrimination against women, for instance in the form of unequal pay.
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Fig. 12: Permanent artwork: 'Resilience' Women Suffrage Memorial, Brisbane CBD (Cida de Aragon and Steffen Lehmann), commemorating one hundred years of women's right to vote in Queensland (2007-2008). |
'Ampelmaennchen' and City Surface – Layers of Urbanity
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| Fig. 13: Video installation: 'wasted!' at Newcastle Region Art Gallery, 2008: the virtual and the real waste cube (in Collaboration with Ian Moore and Richard Vella) |
Conclusion: A city always in the process of becoming
REFERENCES
NOTES
[1] The Weimar Republic lasted from 1919 until the ascent of the Nazi Party in 1933.
[2] There are people from over 140 nationalities living in Berlin, including around 600.000 Turkish inhabitants, mainly living in Berlin Kreuzberg. However, the expression of multiculturalism in Berlin (‘Multikulti’, e.g. expressed in the Karneval der Kulturen) ‘requires urgently more refinement’, as noted by Indian-born journalist Amrita Cheema, 2007.
[3] In this regard, the role of art in the real estate business is interesting to explore further. Also, the conventional ‘Art-built-in’ (Kunst-am-Bau) policies for public buildings, where the artwork is connected to architecture (supposed to give meaning), but rarely achieves any interesting outcomes.
[4] The artworks of the project ‘Rethinking. Space-Time-Architecture’ (Berlin, 2002) are published in the book with the same title, by Jovis Verlag, Berlin.
[5] Marcus Westbury is a Novocastrian, as the Newcastle people are known; he is the founder of the ‘This Is Not Art’ festival and film director of ‘Not Quite Art’ (2007).
[6] The ‘Situationist International’ (or SI) was an artistic and political movement in Paris, 1957-72. Today, Berlin has plenty of such places of social experiments as Paris used to have. Just think of the Berlin squatter movement and its new models of ownership, experiments in residents’ participation, etc.
[7] Quote from 1975. Gordon Matta-Clark represents hereby an interesting, hybrid case: trained in architecture at Cornell, his (often political) installations questioned the conventions, e.g. when bisecting existing buildings and declaring the result as artwork. He addressed not only the issue of real estate, but he consistently broke the boundaries between performance and installation, sculpture and architecture, between the permanent and the transitory.
[8] For instance Andre Malraux and his concept of the ‘Museum without Walls’ (1960).
[9] Sacha Molitorisz, Sydney Morning Herald film critic, in an interview with Cida de Aragon, 20 April 2007 in Sydney.
[10] The city of Brisbane is a typical victim of the ‘Creative City’ trend: in the urge to join the Richard Florida listing, public art has to make the city’s public spaces shinier. Since every city now wants to be a ‘Creative City’, it is probably time to rethink this concept and leave the dominant discourse behind, to again identify more authentic ways.
Dr. Steffen Lehmann
Uni/RAIA Lecture 