Potsdamer Platz
by Clay Risen

It used to be so simple. By the 1980s, people had come to accept the idea that Berlin would forever remain a divided city — the drab, expansive communist East, the quirky, stunted West, and at its center, bisected by the Wall, the bombed-out expanse of the city's once great café district, Potsdamer Platz. What had been the vibrant heart of a bustling city, the birthplace of art movements and philosophical debates, had become a black hole at the center of a divided nation.

Now Potsdamer Platz is once again the site of intellectual strife. In 1991, Berlin, a city which prizes its parks, museums, and other public spaces, made the curious move of selling most of the Potsdamer Platz property to two multinational corporations, Sony and DaimlerChrysler. And as the projects reach completion, ten years after the fall of the Wall, an increasing number of Germans are accusing the government of selling out, of sacrificing the city's historical ideal of an urban community in favor of a landscape dominated by big business.

It's not so much the idea of commercial development in the city center that has many citizens in an uproar — in fact, the buildings themselves, divided into the Sony Center and the DaimlerChrysler Center, are rather stunning examples of 1990s urban architecture — earth tones on the outside, wood and chrome on the inside; environmentally conscious designs such as large, well-insulated windows to reduce heating costs; and numerous gestures toward the "public sphere" and the "human element," such as ponds, street-side café space and a giant, open plaza, called the Forum.

The Sony Center web site links this last element to the idea of creating a public-friendly space: "Free from the formal restrictions of an enclosed room and with natural ventilation, the forum will be a place where public events and cultural presentations can take place."

But this notion of linking anonymous corporate architecture to public space that has drawn the most criticism, and points to the larger problem with the new Potsdamer Platz: Once you get past the cinemas and generic restaurants, the area is a very cold, uninviting place to visit, not at all what Berlin as a community of people is about. The pond is an ultra-modern, ultra-marble pit; the shopping center is of a generic mall design more at home in an Omaha suburb than the new Capital of Europe.

Despite heady rhetoric to the contrary, the planning of the Postdamer Platz area belies a narrow but all too pervasive assumption that both leisure time and contemporary social interaction are based exclusively around consumption. Most of the "public space" is devoted to movie theaters (run by Sony, of course), high-end restaurants and shopping. It is perhaps no coincidence that the first event held in the "public space" was the Berlin Film Festival, whose major attraction was Leonardo DiCaprio, posterboy for hip overconsumption.

And as a site of consumption, Potsdamer Platz is a success — it combines a superficial if somewhat cold exterior with a maximum concentration of purchasing possibilities. But as a site of public interaction, a place where people can meet, take a walk, perhaps discuss the issues of the day, it is a failure. But more than that, it is a milestone marking a new phase in city planning, where not only the architecture but the streets, even the parks, are made subservient to the optimization of corporate space and the cult of consumerism.

Walking around the almost-completed Potsdamer Platz, one begins to muse, "what could have been?" One Berlin architect, himself no fan of the site, told me that the planners passed over other projects which placed a greater emphasis on living spaces, small-business offices and artist studios in favor of a plan which brought both money and international recognition. But international recognition is different from respect, and one has to wonder what the world can expect from a Berlin that places such a heavy emphasis on big business at the expense of organic cultural space.

Perhaps no nation is more inclined toward broad, poetic gestures in urban planning than Germany, and of all the cities in Germany nowhere is this more true than Berlin (for example, the roof of the renovated Reichstag is a clear dome, so that visiting constituents can literally "watch over" their politicians inside).

So ultimately, if Berlin is a city where public life and the urban environment are so heavily endowed with meaning, one must ask what the new Potsdamer Platz is supposed to symbolize. Berlin wants to be the business and cultural capital of Europe in the 21st century, but what sort of culture is it trying to take the lead in promoting? Will it be one shaped by ideas, art and personal interaction or, as Potsdamer Platz indicates, by Sony, Mercedes and Leonardo?

E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.