13 Buildings That Tell Berlin’s Story

In 1793 Frederick William II bought Pfaueninsel, an island in the River Havel outside Berlin, to create a park. Based upon his ideas, two buildings were erected from 1794 to 1796 at each end of the island, the little Schloss and the Dairy. Construction was supervised by Johann Gotlieb Brendel, the Court Carpenter. A cattle stall and a farmhouse were added in 1802. The farmhouse was remodeled by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, incorporating the facade of a late-Gothic house from Danzig, and renamed the Kavalierhaus.

The eye-catching little Schloss turns toward Potsdam. Externally it is unassuming; two towers of unequal height are joined by an obviously painted timber wall and a pretty Gothic iron bridge above it. The interior is quite remarkable and includes intimate rooms retaining their original furnishings, wallpapers, and textiles. Of particular note, the Tahiti Room is painted to look like the interior of a native hut with views out over South Sea islands. The architectural elements of this large Neoclassical room are entirely made of polished woods—elm, nut, black poplar, plum, apple, and walnut—and the walls are veneered. Outside, the original landscaping was simple with paths cut through the island’s woodland. But in the 1820s a new park was laid out by Peter Joseph Lenné, Germany’s leading garden designer. English in character, it had ornamental trees and animal shelters housing exotic animals, such as kangaroos, llamas, and bears. (Charles Hind)

In the 19th century, the German bourgeoisie increasingly believed that every citizen should have the chance of a comprehensive cultural education. Accordingly, Frederick William III of Prussia commissioned architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel to design an art gallery to house his collection in a museum complex on an island in the Spree River in Berlin. The museum was built on a plinth to raise it up from the island, which was prone to flooding, and Schinkel also changed the course of the river to protect the island. The subsequent construction of the Neues Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, and the Bode Museum gave the island its name of Museuminsel. Schinkel’s concepts for the Altes (Old) Museum were based on drawings and sketches by Frederick William himself, which showed a Classical, templelike building with a row of columns facing the square in front. The interiors are organized around two courtyards connected by a central rotunda—loosely based on the Pantheon in Rome—all architectural elements that previously would have been used solely in palatial or ecclesiastical buildings. Work began in 1825, and the museum opened to the public in 1830. With its articulate, well-proportioned appearance and simple internal layout, it is widely considered to be one of the most important buildings of the Neoclassical period in Germany, and it is certainly the most distinguished of Schinkel’s creations. (Lars Teichmann)

Rising 164 feet (50 m) above the Oranienburgerstrasse street facades, the restored golden dome of the Neue Synagogue is a flashy presence above the dour apartment blocks. The synagogue was designed by Eduard Knoblauch and opened in 1866. It could seat 3,000 worshippers, and it was a strong cultural statement in the Moorish style by the established German-Jewish middle classes.

The building was advanced for its time, with central heating and gas lighting placed next to the stained-glass windows, causing them to glow at night, as well as the extensive use of iron as both a structural and expressive material. The spectacular dome was constructed with a light armature of wrought iron, clad with timber boarding before being finished with zinc sheeting, and gilded fretwork. The street elevation is built of richly ornamented polychromatic brickwork, flanked by two domed towers heralding the entrance, also gilded.

The synagogue survived 1938‘s Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) thanks to the courage and determination of the local police chief, who defended it against the Nazi mob. At the onset of World War II, the golden dome was daubed with pitch to make it less conspicuous, but in 1943 Allied bombs damaged the main hall, and it was demolished in 1958. Restoration of the entrance halls and dome began in 1988; when workers found the remains of the synagogue lamp under the rubble, it was restored and sent on a tour across the United States to raise funds for the restoration. The synagogue was opened as the Centrum Judaicum in 1995. (Charles Barclay)

The Reichstag’s history stands as a testament to the symbolic power of certain buildings. As a symbol, it has experienced both the depredation of political fanatics and the attention of one of the world’s leading contemporary architects.

The Reichstag was built in an imposing Neo-Renaissance style in 1894 by Frankfurt architect Paul Wallot to house the assembly of the Second Reich. Conceived as a powerful statement of German national pride in which regional representatives would have their voices heard, it was burned down in 1933 by Nazi Party activists bent on undermining national democracy and casting blame on the Communists. Only just escaping demolition, it was then damaged in Allied bombing raids in World War II. A ruin, it was patched up between 1958 and 1972 to serve as government offices. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Reichstag became the home of the legislative assembly of the reunited Germany, the Bundestag. The building’s uneasy resonance was expressed when it was wrapped in sheeting by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1995.

In 1999 British architect Norman Foster stripped the building to its bare walls and inserted a lightweight glass and aluminum dome over the internal courtyard. The courtyard is flanked by two suspended interior spiral ramps, enabling the public to witness their parliament at work. Foster’s mastery lies in his use of light: a mirrored funnel plunges down from the dome, providing daylight and ventilation to the lower debating chamber. Illuminated at night, the dome acts as a beacon for German democracy. (Jamie Middleton)

The Turbine Factory for the Allgemeine Electricitäts Gesellschaft (AEG) was completed in 1909 by Peter Behrens. AEG was the foremost electrical company in Germany, a pioneer in the development of electrical consumer devices. Behrens was not just an architect; AEG also employed him as an artistic consultant from 1907 onward, aware of the work he had done at the Darmstadt Artists Colony, where his synthesis of art and lifestyle embodied the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”) approach. For AEG, he created posters, lamps, and furniture, as well as the company’s logo.

The turbine assembly hall, completed in 1909, is a seminal work of early Modernism, a paean to the triumph of the machine age. Designed in collaboration with the structural engineer Karl Bernhard, the building is monumental. It is also perhaps the first example of a building intended as a corporate symbol. Situated at the edge of the factory complex, it signified AEG’s aspirations, paring them down to a simple, Neoclassical form. Often referred to as a “temple of power,” its form was defined by the function within—the progression of huge industrial turbines along an assembly line. The rhythm of the structural columns mimics the orders of Classical architecture, pre-dating Modernism’s often shadowy and unacknowledged relationship with formal arrangements. (Jonathan Bell)

Originally built in 1902 by architects Reimer & Körte, the Motiv-Haus experienced a fast history of refurbishments, turning into a double-storey cinema in 1919 and into a theater in 1922. Theater director Theodor Tagger commissioned architect Oskar Kaufmann with a complete refurbishment to turn his theater into something special.

The Renaissance Theater, completed in 1927, was Kaufmann’s seventh theater in Berlin, and it was to be his masterpiece before he emigrated in 1933. With his previous theaters, he was mostly obliged to the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil movements, continuously developing his idea of the “intimate theater,” where stage and auditorium form an architectural unit, pure in form yet rich in materials and detail.

While leaving the exterior of the theater untouched except for a half-round entrance building, he transformed the rooms inside into a fluent play of colors, décor, and materials. Kaufmann uncaged the rooms from their rectangular shells determined by the acute-angled building by deploying an organic floorplan with curved walls and ceilings. The inside is lavishly decorated with floral ornamentation in stucco and drapery. Corridors and foyers are resplendently colored in shades of blue and green. The walls of the auditorium are clad with French rosewood in dark red, and the back of the curved balcony is covered by a mural of geometrical wooden inlays.

It seems like all of Kaufmann‘s previous theaters were samples for this one: the architectural strictness of the auditorium and the opulent ornamentation of the foyers are not contradictions but harmonious parts of a cohesive interior, making the Renaissance Theater a masterpiece of a theater. It is also the best preserved Art Deco theater in Europe. (Florian Heilmeyer)

From the outset, Herbert von Karajan, the leader of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, championed the 1956 competition entry of Hans Scharoun for a new concert hall. Von Karajan believed that Scharoun’s revolutionary concept of performance in the round was ideally suited to the musical interpretation of the orchestra. Scharoun recognized the social dimension of this new type of concert hall layout, saying, “Is it mere chance that whenever people hear improvised music, they immediately gather round in a circle?”

In the completed concert hall, no seat is more than 115 feet (35 m) from the podium. Scharoun created an interior landscape with the seating blocks at different levels and angles, in the manner of a hillside vineyard. Working with acoustician Lothar Cremer, Scharoun tuned the folded planes, raked terraces, and canopied ceiling for acoustic advantage.

The concert hall, completed in 1963, is the centerpiece of the Kulturforum at Berlin Tiergarten, with the Chamber Music Hall attached on one side and the State Institute for Musical Research and Museum of Instruments on the other, all by Scharoun. The concert hall was designed from the inside out, the irregular internal volume being legible on the outside, while the upper walls are boldly clad with gold-anodized aluminum. The sense of a spatial landscape is characteristic of the foyer spaces as well as the auditorium, with flowing routes from the entrance to the hall’s various levels.

Scharoun was perhaps the greatest exponent of organic architecture in the postwar years, and his fluid approach to architectural space and form is now frequently copied. (Charles Barclay)

The swan song of one of the greatest masters of the most influential architectural style of the 20th century, the New National Gallery in Berlin is the masterpiece of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—a mature example of his Modernist statement and the perfection of architectural cubic simplicity. An integral part of the area’s Kulturforum, the gallery, completed in 1968, houses 20th-century European modern painting and sculpture. Essentially, the gallery is a simple, square pavilion. Nearly all the exhibition spaces are located underground, with the lobby and ticket-sales point at ground level. The main visible space is a glass-enclosed, meticulous steel framework, a simple yet beautifully detailed structure with a flexible interior. The hall is wonderfully lit, with sunlight coming through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls and reflecting on the dark, polished flooring. Mies’s admiration of pure geometry is ever-present, from the dark-beam grid of the ceiling construction to the sequence of slim metal roof supports in the outer walls. In structural and spatial-planning terms, the gallery resembles the master’s earliest work in the United States. (The architect moved there in 1937 to escape the Nazis.) The gallery’s minimalist elegance and structural abstraction is representative, not only of Mies’s work, but also of the whole style he fronted. Not for nothing was it referred to as the “Classic Greek Temple” of our times. (Ellie Stathaki)

During the 1980s, West Berlin faced a paradigm change in town planning—the demolition of old buildings had allowed space for a more sensitive acquaintance with the substance of the historic city. The commission for the housing block on Schlesische Strasse, known as the “Bonjour Tristesse” building, was an explicit sign of this change: to fill in an empty block corner instead of tearing down all the old houses and building something completely new.

This was the first project abroad for Álvaro Siza, already famous for his sensual, yet minimalist, buildings in Portugal. In Berlin, Siza had to learn that architecture is mostly the art of compromise. The austere design of this block arose out of the strict regulations of Berlin’s social housing programs, which forced the architect to repeatedly modify his innovative housing scheme.

Siza had to add a story and simplify the facade. Initial sketches had shown a facade with curved lines in the windows, balconies, and brickwork, however, harsh economies forced him to reduce the composition to a rigid pattern of small windows in gray plaster. Instead of four big apartments on each floor, accessible via four separate staircases, the block now accommodates seven small apartments.

A graffiti artist painted the name (recalling Françoise Sagan’s 1954 novel) on the facade shortly after completion in 1983. The name stuck, and it is said that the architect himself prevented the graffiti from being removed during a refurbishment. (Florian Heilmeyer)

After reunification, Berlin was repopulated with embassies, and arguably the most original of these is the Embassy Complex for the Nordic Countries, completed in 1999. Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland decided to house their embassies in one complex, with a shared building, the Felleshuset, for functions, dining, and a communal sauna. Berger + Parkkinen won the competition to design the complex, while the individual embassy buildings were designed by firms from the countries concerned. The complex is daring both for housing five different nations in one compound and for the refreshing transparency of its architecture. The positions of each embassy reflects the geographical relationships of the countries, the whole being bound together by a copper panel wall that follows the site boundary. Within this palisade, the architects used timber, glass, perforated steel, and copper louvers to create a sense of lightness and elegance. Each embassy building includes a notable material from its home country, the most dramatic being a 50-foot-high (15 m) granite slab to create the narrow facade of the wedge-shaped Norwegian embassy. By contrast, a walkway canopy that connects the Felleshuset to the Danish embassy is made of translucent glass fiber. This is stretched over a frame and illuminated from within to make a glowing strand across the open end of the compound, an ethereal presence at night. (Charles Barclay)

The British Embassy in Berlin was originally housed in a building constructed in 1868. It was badly damaged in World War II and demolished in 1950. However, the land still belonged to the British state, and, when the capital of Germany relocated to Berlin in 1991, it was decided to build a new embassy there. The British Embassy, located in the Pariser Platz area, is one of architect Michael Wilford’s landmark works, a not-to-be-missed Postmodern illusion. Very strict building guidelines apply in that area of Berlin, affecting the shape and volume of the structures as well as their materials; this is the main reason that led Wilford to come up with a unique solution to the restrictions. What you see from the road is a rather discreet box-shaped structure, with a rectangular-windowed sandstone facade and a traditional slanted roof. Do not be fooled; this is just scenery. Behind this conventional, almost Classicist front, lies the most unconventional interior. An opening in the entrance reveals a two-story void with a centrally placed mature English oak tree, leading the visitor through to a surprisingly theatrical interior: a ceremonial staircase, two brightly colored volumes, the round purple conference room, and the light blue trapezoid information center. The embassy’s facilities include a 200-seat conference room, the ambassador’s dining room, a library, offices for staff members, and a glass-covered winter garden that hosts the embassy’s functions, trade fairs, and exhibitions. The building, completed in 2000, is a Postmodernist hymn, with an unexpectedly diverse glass-and-metal-clad interior, brightened by repeated lively colors. (Ellie Stathaki)

There were few examples of contemporary architecture more talked about than the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Daniel Libeskind upon its completion in 2001. Neither is it easy to find a building that leaves a stronger impression, both in appearance and what it houses. The museum, an extension to the Baroque Kollegienhaus, a former Prussian courthouse, presents the history of Jews in Germany from the 4th century to the aftermath of the Holocaust and the present, through a heavily representational building program.

The design foundation revolves around three basic ideas: the Jewish multileveled contribution to Berlin’s development, the spiritual and physical search to comprehend the meaning of the Holocaust, and the pan-European need to acknowledge this tragedy. The history and experience of Jewish suffering is told through a carefully studied multitude of symbolisms and references, leading to the creation of angular, unconventional spaces—with names such as Stair of Continuity, Garden of Exile and Emigration, and the Holocaust Void—boosted by the rich Jewish heritage. From above, the building looks like a single zigzagging line. This line incorporates three axes but also hides one more—the discontinuous Line of the Void, which visitors can see only through windows, represents the “embodiment of absence.”

The Jewish Museum, built in the recognizable and particular Libeskind style, is the structure on which the renowned architect established his worldwide fame. It was also the one that held greatest emotional resonance for him, because so much of his family died in the Holocaust. The Jewish Museum is intended as a dialogue between the past and the future. It is an unprecedented project in postwar Germany; it urges us to rethink in more ways than one, not only historically and socially, but also in spatial terms, one of the greatest tragedies of modern history. (Ellie Stathaki)

Berlin is a city with a history that, for architect Rem Koolhaas of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), “causes great emotion for me, both good and bad.” Located in the former East German sector of the city and backing onto one of its numerous canals, his Netherlands Embassy, completed in 2004, is surrounded by a contrasting array of structures dating from the Fascist and subsequent Communist eras. Consequently, perhaps, the embassy is an exercise in communication, something diplomats prize above everything else. From the sweeping drive that ramps up from Klosterstrasse into the heart of the embassy complex to the aluminum-lined circulation route that weaves its clattering way through the 10 or more stories of the building, the prevailing message is one of permissiveness, a social condition the Dutch have contrived to create for centuries. Doors slide open as you approach them—the mobile steel plate of the massive front door is a metaphor for the state’s legislative fluidity—and everywhere there are generous views outside, through occasional passages of glass flooring, via windows, and through apertures in the building’s structure itself. Even the roof on the 10th floor peels back. The shape of the building has been dictated by its spaces, rather than the other way around. This sums up the OMA approach: first conceive a response to a situation and then form a structure to articulate it. The embassy’s easy engagement with its context nullifies any grim historical echoes. Humor also helps in the mission. The glass-walled gym, with its lime-green, poured-resin floor, whispers that most Calvinist of desires—the wish to be seen to be working hard—although the effect here is more high camp than army camp. (Mark Irving)