MUDD 21 - City Visions II
City Visions 1910 I 2010 Harald Bodenschatz
In the year 2010, the famous urban design exhibition held in Berlin in 1910 – “Die Allgemeine Städtebau-Ausstellung“– celebrated its 100th anniversary. This can be considered a once-in-a-century event for the discipline Der Städtebau, which can be translated as “urban design”. Around 1910 the new discipline of urban design was established – above all in England and in Germany. Immediately it developed an international orientation. The challenges of the time were the background for the creation of this discipline: housing misery, hard social contrasts, increasing traffic problems and a fragmentation of communal authorities. The important aim of the new discipline was the rationalisation of the chaotically growing urban region of the industrial society. The international Urban Design Exhibition 1910 was the first important show of the new discipline “urban design” not only in Europe. The young discipline did not only present itself to the public for the first time, it was also the greatest show on urban design that had so far been held worldwide. Approximately 65,000 visitors saw the exhibition. Within the same year, parts of the exhibition were shown in London at the famous Town Planning Conference of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Important parts of the exhibition featured the results of the urban design competition for Greater Berlin, one of the most important contemporary urban design competitions in the world. The results of the competition encompassed recommendations for the three large sections of the metropolitan region: • • •
First, proposals for a further reconfiguration of the city center in the direction of a monumental city. Second, proposals for urban alternatives to the hitherto existing highly dense construction of tenements and apartment blocks. Third, proposals for new garden cities in the suburban area.
These three sections of the city region – the city center, the inner city and the suburban periphery – were to be structured through reorganizing and upgrading the longdistance and commuter train system. A new transportation infrastructure alongside wide radial arterial roads and green spaces were to serve the needs of ordering the continually growing metropolitan region. In the suburban area the idea of the garden suburb was of great importance. The results of the competition were, however, not a plea against the metropolis and for its disbandment, but rather they were oriented towards improving and rationalizing the city, towards a better metropolis with reformed urban blocks in the city center and with garden suburbs arranged around smaller centers in the suburban area. The Berlin exhibition Professor Dr Harald Bodenschatz
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