Building as an art form, as a symbol of modernity and social event. Cityscapes develop and await their revival. The radius grows larger: An entire region is reformed, with landscapes which return a human dimension and face. And new perspectives of the city as a place worth living in and a future metropolis.
Stalinallee (Stalin Avenue) 1952 and Interbau 1957
Contest of the systems
By 1948 the political division of Berlin was confirmed by the currency reform and the blockade. The urban planning in East and West started to pursue different paths. While East Berlin was announced the capital of the GDR the isolated West Berlin became the object of “propaganda” demonstration of the West. Funded by the Marshall Plan the change from the basic repair of the city into a fundamental reconstruction took place in the 50s. There was a dream of a structured but relaxed city –definitely closing the tradition of the city of tenements originated in the 19th century.
The New Hansa Quarter
This new approach came to evidence in the first international building exhibition after WWII - the Interbau Berlin 1957. After the deconstruction and the redevelopment of this heavily destroyed bourgeois quarter the Hansa Quarter as an exemplary exhibition project was planned to be an example of “the City of Tomorrow”. Under the patronage of the Berlin Senate 53 internationally renowned architects were elected to develop single objects in a park-like landscape.
The new Hansa Quarter wanted to bury the memory of the old quarter completely in oblivion. In place of the old block structure a mixture of high and flat buildings appeared in the landscape.
Today the Hansa Quarter stands as a built document of planar rehabilitation in the period of modernism while functional buildings of the area are mostly weakly planned. Many people appreciate the Hansa Quarter because of its popular central residential area with high living standards. Critics underline above all the missing usage variety of a quarter that is dominated by housing. They ask if the Interbau with its conglomeration of single projects by popular architects ignored the requirements of a development of new urban qualities just after the war.
The Hansa Quarter as an Answer of the West towards the East
In its pedagogical claim the Interbau invited the post-war architects to enter the new models of international modernism. The Interbau was planned as the biggest building industrial and architectural show as well as a demonstration of superiority of the West towards the East. By this instrument of an international building exhibition West Berlin reacted to the East Berlin prestige project “Stalinallee” as the “first socialistic street” in Germany.
The Stalin Avenue was conceived as the central spine of the GDR capital. Geared to Schinkel´s formal repertoire, based on the “16 Principles of Urban Building in the GDR” and developed along Soviet models, monumental “residences for workers” were built here with historic style elements from 1953 on. With regard to urban planning East Berlin continued the idea of the “beautiful compact city” along the basic principles of traditional architecture. In the context of the national development program the Stalin Avenue was celebrated as “the cornerstone of the constitution of socialism in the capital of Germany” (W. Ulbricht). Today, the Karl-Marx-Allee, how this avenue has been called since 1961, stands as a cultural monument of European rank.
