Greening Potsdamer Platz

The BBC's Stephen Evans reports on guerilla gardeners in Berlin:

Modern Berlin may be a prosperous place but its troubled past has left its mark on the city's character, including a tendency to the alternative. Among the counter-culture railing against society are arsonists, saboteurs, artists and even gardeners.

Petrus Akkordeon, as he calls himself, emerges from the S-Bahn station on to Potsdamer Platz and plants a small flower.

What could be simpler?

Up he comes from the underground into the soulless square, takes out his trowel and digs and gouges between the cracks of the paving stones and plants the shoots - a line of green in the grey of the granite.

Potsdamer Platz today is a long way from what it once was - the pulsating heart of Weimar Berlin, the city's hub of charm and cafe society.

It was where the tram routes met, where the literati met and, no doubt, the not-so-literati. It was the place of chatter and deals and morning-after-the-night-before coffee.

Today, it is, I think, a pretty soulless place.

It was devastated in the war and left desolate after it - split down the middle by the Berlin Wall. On the wasteland freed for development by the Wall's demolition has arisen the cold glass of the Sony Centre, with its windy canyons of offices.

A new sort of desolation, you might think. Until that is, Petrus arrives with his gardening tools.

Petrus Akkordeon, you see, is a guerrilla gardener. He told me he does it to make people happier.

"Everything is grey," he says. "No flowers. No trees. And if you plant one flower, the whole place changes."

"For several seconds, it's a nice place. People see these flowers and feel better for a moment. There's a man planting on Potsdamer Platz, he must be crazy," he says, describing himself, of course.

A fitting protest against the abomination that is the Potsdamer Platz, which combines the anonymous sleekness of a suburban American office park with the bone-chilling monumentality of Nazi architecture. Descending into the mammoth square cave of the U-bahn entrance, you feel utterly dwarfed and insignificant. The only less inviting place in Berlin is the new Hauptbahnhof, which, in addition to being utterly confusing and having elevators apparently powered by molasses, has all the charm and flair of Cincinnati's lamest mall.

Evans uses the guerilla gardeners to meditate on the conflict over how Berlin is changing:

Sometimes I call into a small wine shop near where I live. It is run by a man called Peter who has lived here in fast-gentrifying Prenzlauer Berg since he was 13, way before the Wall came down.

I like him a lot and we discuss excellent German wine and moan about how the area has been overrun by yummy mummies pushing baby buggies the size of BMWs, and about how Bob Dylan growl-alikes howl outside the chi-chi cafes to yuppies on their Macs and iPhones.

So much worse than the rather congenial East Berlin way, which is to just get a crate of beer and three or four kitchen chairs and put them on the cobbles outside and drink and talk on the street.

But the two ways squeeze each other. The new trendy bars and the little groups of the old East Berliners on the same stretch of cobbles, jostling for space in Berlin as the city remakes itself.

Comments

[Oliver]

Germany is a fabulous place to stay, there are so many little towns which sit on the edge of lakes, where people bathe and go during the summer. The great thing about visiting these lakes is the fact that they are quite shallow meaning that little kids can paddle in them and really enjoy.

[Sebastian]

@akkordarbeit

And again: he mentioned the entrances to the station, not the buildings

The maestro wrote of "the abomination that is the Potsdamer Platz, which combines the anonymous sleekness of a suburban American office park with the bone-chilling monumentality of Nazi architecture." That cannot be a commentary on the subway entrances alone, even if they get singled out later. I understood that to be an example, a moment when the monumentality is particularly felt. Well, if he wants, he can tell us.

Speaking of subway entrances, doesn't this one call up associations with the Nazi past much sooner? Only there is nothing monumental about it.

[akkordarbeit]

@Sebatian
And again: he mentioned the entrances to the station, not the buildings. So forget about my speculation about the buildings not-so-elegant size, if you prefer.

But it's easy to realize that Andrew has touched a sensitive area, one that causes strong allergic reactions in some...

I am not a particular fan of evoking Nazi comparisons too quickly either, but to me your reaction seems a bit over-sensitive...

[akkordarbeit]

@Sebastian: Cool down, man! ;-)

[Sebastian]

@akkordarbeit:

I don't think Andrew compared the architectural style of Potsdamer Platz to Nazi architecture. After all, he wrote of a combination of the "anonymous sleekness of a suburban American office park with the bone-chilling monumentality of Nazi architecture".

Well, I guess that makes total sense then. Just like Janis Joplin never expressed any interest a Mercedes-Benz.

Not completely off-topic: the size (height) of the buildings at Potsdamer Platz is NOT driven by "skyrocketting" property prices as in most places with skyscrapers, but by a pretty provincial desire to show off, I think. That's not so far from the arrière-pensée behind Germania, is it?

Ah, now I get it. Nobody ever compared the P.P. to Nazi architecture, but it totally is like Nazi architecture, because "I think" the Berlin city planners only wanted to show off, and you know who else wanted to build big houses to show off? HITLER! This is in contrast to other cities like Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, or St. Louis, which construct high buildings strictly for financial reasons.

[Berlin]

I love Germany, in certain parts it is like taking a step back in time. I love the fact that they are some years behind us in England, and many places in Germany are still very traditional and untouched by modern culture.

[akkordarbeit]

@ Sebastian:
I don't think Andrew compared the architectural style of Potsdamer Platz to Nazi architecture. After all, he wrote of a combination of the "anonymous sleekness of a suburban American office park with the
bone-chilling monumentality of Nazi architecture". And his example was the design of the entrances to the stations. So I do I think he is right on this (monumentality).
Not completely off-topic: the size (height) of the buildings at Potsdamer Platz is NOT driven by "skyrocketting" property prices as in most places with skyscrapers, but by a pretty provincial desire to show off, I think. That's not so far from the arrière-pensée behind Germania, is it?

And on the Hauptbahnhof: although I agree on you, Sebastian, in not completely getting along with the prevailing bashing of it's design, there ARE a lot of flaws and mistakes even on the practical level, some of them obviously caused by the Deutsche Bahn, others by the architects.
To name at least one example: the ridiculously narrow space between trains and balustrades on the top level platforms are quite an embarrasing mistake for such an expierenced firm, I think.

The esthetics, though, that come with the contemporary idea of turning every kind of building into a shopping mall with added functions (may they be airport terminals, trains stations or anything else), are certainly regrettable, though not at all limited to this building.

[Sebastian]

Andrew is surely talking about the Beisheim-Center and the Kollhoff-Tower. Look at the images and make up your own mind.

But personally I think if you look at these high-rises and think "Nazi", you don't know much about architecture or Nazis. Both buildings deliberately evoke images of 1930s-era architecture – just not German 1930s-era architecture. The Beisheim Center in particular cites Chicago-school skyscrapers down to to the window pane arrangements.

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I don't entirely share the assessment of the "Hauptbahnhof". Sure, it's not pretty, but on the occasions when I was there, I found it not the least bit confusing. Given the number of tracks on three different levels, I was positively surprised how easily I could find my way from A to B.

[Robert S. Porter]

Wow. You're quite the architectural critic. A comparison to Nazism? Classy.