A
Comparative Study of Contemporary Preservation Practice in Berlin
emily Conklin
Conklin
Case Studies
Preservation, traditionally, is all about keeping history alive through renovation, replication, and modern ideas of status and “clean” or “well-maintained” aesthetics. But what does a preservationist do when a material history is intrinsically messy, cluttered, and decentralized? Preserving historic monuments and intangible cultural assets often requires preservationists to engage with unsavory histories – wartime conflict, racial and class violence – and also contend with stories that are outside mainstream readings of history. These “counter stories” are all around us, embedded in the urban fabric of cities, if only we understand how to read them.
In Berlin, there is a rich history of alternative lifestyles that flourished as the city was disinvested during its “divided” years, a time both difficult and complex: The city was carved into four zones, the French, the American, the British in West Berlin, and the Soviet
Union claiming the East. The Berlin Wall divided the capitalist West zone from East Berlin, as well as from the surrounding “red sea” of East Germany at large. Never has there been a more concrete manifestation of the tensions between ideologies as the physical barrier of the wall — yet in realty, the wall was not very tall, or very intimidating a scale figure at all. The ideology was the force behind the separation.
My final project interrogates the ways in which Berlin as a city has preserved its heritage from these divided years through two works of architecture: one colloquial and one monumental, one left and one right, one small and one large. Despite these differences in scale, however, even the smaller interventions have been able to permeate the city’s mythology.
THE HAUS
The Haus Schwarzenberg started as a squat in Mitte, and therefore was very poorly maintained during the divided years — neighborhoods closest to the wall were heavily policed and physically uncomfortable to reside in, as they were close to the eastern military’s “no man’s land.” Consequently, many of the old buildings, apartment houses and shops were abandoned during these decades. When the wall came down, however, the proximity of these neighborhoods became an asset, not a burden, and the abandoned structures were well-poised for the takeover of artists and anarchists from the West looking for alternative housing and community. The Haus was almost immediately recognized as an artist’s enclave, known for its courtyard that hosted art exhibitions, parties and concerts late into the night. It, as well as the street facade, stairwells and many common spaces, were covered in ever-changing layers of graffiti, notably anti-capitalist and anarchic diatribes. This outward facing decoration, as it could be called, communicated very publicly what was going on inside: how the residents felt, and what their mission was as a collective. As the years went on, however, the facade also continued to deteriorate underneath the paint, and conversely, the rest of the tree began to be cleaned up (or, gentrified). As aforementioned, Mitte became a hot, central neighborhood and many new wealthy residents sought updated apartments with clean, white facades and new stucco. As these popped up on either side of the Haus, however, the grimy and colorful facade became even more prominent, but also, more valuable.
Eventually though, conservation professionals explained to the residents that the loose and failing stucco on the facades posed a danger to street traffic, making repairs (and, in the residents’ eyes, “cleaning”) necessary. However to keep with the tradition of grime and graffiti, the collective decided to seek alternative, experimental preservation applications
that would allow the old stucco and art to remain. This search eventually manifested in a unique, clear glaze coating applied to the entire building — the glaze kept loose stucco in place and helped weatherproof the structure, but its clear nature still let all
the existing debris and decor beneath stay visible. It is worth noting from a preservationist perspective, though, that this application did indeed “freeze” the Haus facade in time — the facade is no longer aging, changing, and decaying as it was first meant to.
What is notable about this act of preservation, though, is that it visibly preserves a bottom-up social construction through architecture that otherwise would have been swept up by the broom and dustpan of new, developed Berlin. While Mitte has changed and gentrified around the Haus, and ideas of squatting and art collective activity have changed and updated, this very tangible memory of the roots of the area, and its difficult past, is memorialized in the veneer of the Haus Schwarzenberg walls.
The schloss and the haus Emily View of the newly opened Humboldt Forum with a vew of Franco Stella’s modern facade The Haus Schwarzenberg today, located in MitteYet while memories of the Wall and the red regime are still extant in the local memory, there is an older and more entrenched attitude towards German heritage favored by many right-wing communities and individuals that disregards the mythologized expressions of space and politics that emerged in the 80s and 90s. If the hausprojekt are Berlin’s basis for being a Self-Made City, characterized by bottom-up emergence and governance, on the right of the country’s political spectrum, many communities and prominent capitalist figures still retain varying degrees of Prussian nostalgia. This attitude corresponds closely to other shades of nationalistic politics that we’ve seen embraced in many contemporary European governments like Italy and the United Kingdom. Broadly, these groups most ardently see their vision for a contemporary Berlin embedded in the histories of more monumental architecture. Newly opened in 2022, the new Humboldt Forum is right now the center of these imaginations — a stunning yet puzzling recreation of the former Berliner Schloss, or Berlin Palace, whose Baroque-era mass claimed a key, central site on Berlin’s Museum Island, on the banks of the Spree.
Both the Haus and the new Schloss assert a period of significance – 1989 and the 16th century, respectively — through their intentional preservation of architectural façadism. Yet when viewed in direct comparison, we can begin to see the reasons why experimental preservation, and safe and open critical discourse, are important for design professionals throughout the world to pay attention to. While there is no “right” or “wrong” history inherent in these two buildings, the messages and assertions they embody are charged with political significance, and as designers we must be aware of how our design choices can, and should, be read by the city we would most like to see.
The Schloss has a long history. The remains of the foundations of a monastery lie on-site, but the structure was mostly a Renaissance foundation with Baroque finishes. It, like many works of grand public architecture in Germany, was bombed during World War II though: so the Schloss’ engagement with contemporary preservation practices begins in the wake of its ruination in 1945. Those “original” ruins were demolished by the German Democratic
From top to bottom: Detail of the clean new Baroque facade detailing; the interior courtyard’s new keystone triumphal arch, reconstructed; a wider view of the coutryard revealing Stella’s rationalist intervention alongside the “old.”
THE SCHLOSS
Republic (GDR), as they were seen as a memory of an outmoded Germany, and a signifier of a capitalist, imperialist state. The Communist party wished to start afresh, and instead imposed a smaller, very Modern building in its place, dubbed the Palace of the Republic. This glass, steel, and concrete structure looked every bit like a new office on Madison Avenue, though it held not only government offices and assembly spaces, but a unique mixture of public-facing entertainments, including:
“Two large auditoria, art galleries, a theatre, a cinema, 13 restaurants, 5 beer halls, a bowling alley, 4 pool rooms, a billiards room, a rooftop skating rink, a private gym with spa, a casino, a medical station, a post office, a police station with an underground cellblock, an indoor basketball court, an indoor swimming pool, private barbershops and salons, public and private restrooms and a discothèque. In the early 1980s, a video game arcade for the children of Volkskammer members and staff replaced one of the restaurants.”
Yet to even further complicate the narrative arch of the Schloss site, as well as a monumental building, the People’s Palace was in turn demolished as well after only a few decades of use. After reunification, the former government complex fell into disuse, and moreover, it was deemed unsafe after the discovery of tons of asbestos in its walls. Over years, the structure was dismantled wall by wall, stripped down to only its structural frame. Ironically, its dissipation mirrored that of the old regime around it, being absorbed piecemeal into the “new,” or larger capitalist, western world.
Of course eventually, it was erased. While the site remained empty for a short time, it wasn’t long until the government answered the campaign of a majority right-wing call to replicate the success of the Louvre, but for Berlin. Yet with the absence of any existing ruins or structures, the architects were challenged to fully rebuild
“A building was interesting not because of its harmonious composition, exquisite materials, or pleasing appearance... these could be empty qualities if the building did not relate to its immediate and historical environment.”
In a “gentle renovation” from 2009 to 2011, the facades were sealed beneath a layer of transparent veneer, which maintains the current visual and textural asepct of the surface while protecting it, insultaitn the building from humidity, and preventing stucco pieces from falling off.”
“There is a difference between a state of disrepair to which one eagerly rushes and a state of disrepair from which one desperately flees.”Jorge Otero-Pailos, “Ethics of Dust” installation. Resin casts of the patina and details of threatened facades.
this historic structure using new materials and techniques. The result is only three fully new Baroque facades (an awkward oxymoron) with the final fourth being the “modern” messenger, designed with contemporary materials and techniques by Franco Stella. It opened “virtually” over the pandemic, in December 2021. Visitors were finally welcomed within its walls in Spring 2022.
While the Haus and the Schloss as case studies operate on much different scales — one being a three story building, at one point indistinguishable from the continuous row of homes and shops on a small residential street and one being an imperial and state-sanctioned political monument — they most poignantly illustrate two different preservation ethos. One of reconstruction, and one of preservation. While all forms of preservation involve levels of fallacy, as they resist the passage of time and change, there is a distinct choice made to maintain a building versus completely rebuilding a monument that had been lost. The techniques of material preservation and intervention used in these projects also display varying levels of preservation ethos, namely the standard mandate to “replace in kind.” The Haus did not want to replace or alter anything, though when faced with a safety mandate, their choice to use the most minimal visually invasive application available at the time — a clear facade veneer coating — attempted to retain existing integrity, already maintained, edited, and otherwise manipulated in real time. Even if the application of the veneer came at the expense of further change and evolution in space, there can be an understood effort towards experimental preservation.
On the other hand, though, the Schloss is a complete reconstruction, meaning that it’s a historic style but made completely of modern materials and techniques. Like a replica but at 1:1 scale. For example, the structure is steel and concrete, and its monumental walls are not solid limestone as in the original Baroque building, but brick forms merely clad in a few centimeters of the stone. It’s a hung facade, a curtain wall that just differs in aesthetic from Madison Avenue. When people may think they are looking at a historic monument that has seen and witnessed the changing tides of a country from its capital, its heart, it’s a 21st century building newer than many of the contemporary apartment houses lining the city’s fashionable districts. Critics of preservation, of history, and of architecture likely be united in their reactions to such a trompe-l’œil.
Yet to compare the effects of the presence of both the Schloss and the Haus in modern-day Berlin is to analyze the power of preservation and its methods when serving different political goals. The Haus serves the vision of the city held by left-leaning creatives, a vision that coalesced around a very recent date in history. The Schloss serves the vision of a right-leaning individual, someone who sees pride as a nationalistic return to innocence: their vision pre-dates the Wall or the red sea, events they may see as complicating, or curtly interrupting, the flow of German history. For this reason, they chose to demolish the People’s Palace and reconstruct the Schloss, rather than preserve and maintain the structure that was indeed existing. The architectural ruin to be preserved. Because how can one preserve a form that does not, indeed, exist? That is not extant?
