Volume 48, Number 17 · November 1, 2001
Berlin: The Lost Opportunity
By Martin Filler
City of Architecture, Architecture of the City: Berlin 1900–2000
edited by Thorsten Scheer, Josef Paul Kleihues, and Paul Kahlfeldt
Berlin: Nicolai, 430 pp., DM97.99
Rebuilding the Reichstag
by Norman Foster
Overlook Press, 256 pp., $75.00
The Reichstag: The Parliament Building by Norman Foster
by Bernhard Schulz
Prestel, 120 pp., $16.95 (paper)
Architektur in Berlin: Jahrbuch 2000
edited by the Architectenkammer, Berlin
Hamburg: Junius, 176 pp., DM68.00
How to rebuild a world city in the wake of man-made catastrophe is a notion that is just beginning to dawn on New Yorkers. But the infinitely resilient burghers of Berlin have been doing so for more than half a century, starting in the aftermath of World War II and then starting over again following the collapse of the Wall and the regimes that built and backed it. Rarely in modern times have there been reconstruction projects as far-reaching or lavishly funded as those of post-apocalyptic Berlin, and never have they been so fraught with symbolism or, in recent years, so wrought with soul-searching.
Review, 4580 words
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