ARCHITECTURE REVIEW : Exhibition Gives Berlin Its Undivided Attention

Of all the European capitals devastated by World War II, Berlin suffered the most extensive destruction of its buildings. Soviet artillery and Allied air forces pounded the proud city into rubble in retribution for the mad dreams of Adolf Hitler. Sliced into four occupation zones by the Allies, Berlin was further divided in 1961 by the notorious wall that split it into East and West Berlin and turned West Berlin into an urban island surrounded by hostile Communist territory.

West Berlin set about reconstructing its torn fabric with fresh energy. In the past four decades, waves of rebuilding have changed the face of the city, transforming the ruined town into a modern metropolis.

This transformation is celebrated in an exhibition titled “Berlin Modern Architecture” on view at the Pacific Design Center’s Murray Feldman Gallery. The exhibit, which runs through Sept. 23, illustrates the work of about 500 architects from many countries, including some of America’s top designers, who have contributed their talents to the city’s reconstruction since 1954.

“Berlin Modern Architecture,” is laid out in three sections, shaped like a triangle, circle and square. The triangular section, titled “The Phase of Reconstruction,” deals with the period up to the the erection of the Berlin Wall. The circle, titled “The Phase of Growth,” covers the Cold War years through the mid-1970s when the walled-in city was heavily subsidized by West Germany and morally supported by the Western world. The square, titled, “The Phase of Improvements,” illustrates the verve of the 1980s, culminating in the 1987 Berlin International Building Exhibition that featured the projects of a roster of big-name architects, including Americans Charles Moore, Robert Stern, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk and Stanley Tigerman, along with Japan’s Arata Isozaki and Kisho Kurokawa and Italy’s Paolo Portoghesi and Gae Aulenti.

“The aim of this exhibition is to place the International Building Exhibition in its spatial and temporal context,” states Wolfgang Nagel, chief of the West Berlin Building and Housing Department, in his foreword to the exhibition catalogue. “It is intended to show that this event took place against the background of a lively architectural culture.”

Austrian architect Johanne Nalbach who, with her husband Gernot designed the exhibition, described the show’s intention as a demonstration that “Berlin is present and powerful in architecture and ideas.” She said that the contribution of the international design community has “given Berlin an inspiration and a challenge.”

The International Building Exhibition (known by its German acronym IBA) involved a program of housing and social and cultural services organized around the theme of “Living in the City.” Its architecture is dominated by the post-modern style that rose to prominence in the early 1980s, when IBA was initiated. “Both the strengths and the follies of post-modernism are seen in IBA,” Susan Doubilet wrote in Progressive Architecture.

One of the best examples of post-modern IBA housing is the Tegel Harbor complex designed by Santa Monica-based Moore Ruble Yudell. Set on a lakefront promenade in a West Berlin suburb, MRY’s Tegel Harbor apartment complex, with its steep mansard roofs and formal facades that create a picturesque profile enclosing internal courtyards, updates the classic style of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s nearby Humboldt Villa.

“Berlin Modern Architecture,” which has toured European and U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco, epitomizes an urban style that is striking as a total polar opposite to the Los Angeles experience. “The spirit of Berlin is about order-- Ordnung, “ Gernot Nelbach observed, “while L.A.’s architecture illustrates urban freedom or disorder. I feel we have much to learn from one another in these matters.”