Modern Architecture and Politics: Berlin

The capital of Imperial Germany, a cultural and artistic melting pot of the Roaring Twenties, the capital of the Nazi regime striving for world domination, a front-line city in the Cold War and the popular epitome of a (seemingly) regained unity of the world after 1989: with its eventful political history, Berlin is the city of the 20th century. In this course, we will analyse Berlin's architectural history over the past 120 years as an expression of the city’s changing and sometimes competing role models in the focus of world historical developments through key buildings, building programmes, debates, actors, and politics. A major focus will be on building policy since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and on attempts to recover the city’s architectural history.

Critical understanding of the political, social and cultural conditions of architectural practice using Berlin as a key example of the major political and cultural fault lines of the 20th and 21st centuries.

In presence

90% lectures, 10% seminars
 

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