 |
| Daniel Libeskind 'Out of Line' (1991) |
Berlin could be seen as an exemplary spiritual capital of the twenty-first century, as it once was the apocalyptic symbol of the twentieth-century demise. The identity of Berlin cannot be re-founded on the ruins of history or on the illusory ‘reconstructions’ of an arbitrarily selected past.
The transformation of the shape of (future) city must be accompanied by corresponding changes in the mentality associated with prewar lot lines, anachronistic visions, dreams that money can buy. What is necessary is an optimistic view of the twenty-first century: a radical rethinking of zoning, function, property, and program. These categories are no longer appropriate to the changed relation between capitol, capital, public responsibility, and the end of ideology.
What we need is a connection of Berlin to and across its own history. This connection, this movement, goes through the relation of the old and the new, capitol and capital, full and empty, the 'no-longer' and the 'not yet'.
The lost center cannot be reconnected like an artificial limb to an old body, but must generate an overall transformation of the city.
Potsdamer Platz can be the place where the East-West, center-periphery division can overcome the conflicts that were born, witnessed, and died in this very place.
These conflicts cannot be resolved by reconstructing a hollow past, but by laying new foundations and new images that are open to concrete dynamics.
DANIEL LIBESKIND 'Out of Line' (1991)