Celina KRESS, Engineer-architect, doctor in history, lecturer and researcher at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, TU Berlin
Gross-Berlin Unlimited? From urban growth to new city-countryside connectivity
After decades of stagnation, Berlin’s population is growing rapidly again. Recent development reminds of the dynamics, aspirations and visions of the beginning of the 20th century. Berlin was then “behind the times” compared to London and Paris. While all sorts of images presented the metropolises as terrible molochs, octopuses absorbing land and rural traditions in their relentless growth, Berlin sparked a series of discussions about its management, governance and configuration (Gestalt). Architects and town planners then tried to tame the monster with integrated schemes intended to better organize, regulate and beautify the built space. Urbanism as a young new discipline was gaining stature with two complementary perspectives: the advocates of urban life put the emphasis on innovation and the creative power of the city, while the regionalists aimed to mix urban and rural in order to reduce the violence of rapid urban growth. Before World War I, urban planning practice was characterised rather by a spirit of collaboration between these two positions. However, during the 20th century, a clear polarisation appeared: after decades of domination of the functionalist paradigm, the doctrine of re-urbanisation became the standard, especially in the last quarter of the 20th century.
One can then hypothesise that the environmental, social and cultural challenges – in other words the “urban age” – require a new framework, given the complex relationships and the complementary qualities of urban and rural. The interrelation and interaction between urban and rural features in town planning prompt us to imagine a new Urban-Rural Connectivity; or a new Urban-Rural Space based on and produced by social and material cooperation, for example Gross-Berlin which was born in 1920 by Berlin merging with its main neighbouring cities. The centenary in 2020 of this important urban turning point invites us to take a fresh look at the urban and rural aspects of this great metropolitan region.
Celina Kress is an architect engineer and associate researcher at the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Technical University of Berlin. She was visiting professor in Metropolitan Culture at HafenCity University of Hamburg in 2013 and in Project History and Urban Theories at the Erfurt University of Applied Sciences in 2014-2015. She co-founded the group of projects for urban culture and the city BEST at the interface between spatial communication, architecture and urban development. Celina Kress is a board member of the German Society for Urban History and Urbanization Research and communication coordinator of its Planning History section.
Albert Gessner, “Perspective from the Südbahnhofstraße to the Müggelsee”, from his project for the Gross-Berlin competition, 1910. (Architekturmuseum TU Berlin, Inv. Nr. 8014)