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A manifesto (1977) by
Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas
with Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff,
and Arthur Ovaska

A critical edition by
Florian Hertweck and Sébastien Marot

UAA Ungers Archives for Architectural Research

Lars Müller Publishers

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 The City in the City - Berlin: A Green Archipelago
(19771is one
of the most intriguing urban manifestos of the late 20th ce¡tury.
Authored by Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas,
in collaboration with Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff, and Arthur
Ovaska, this project was the first to introduce the notion of
the archipelago in the urban design spheren and certainly the first
to both address and endorse the contemporary phenomenon
of urban degrowth. But despite its strength and originality-and
some kind of mythicalfame-which make it a close relative to
Cottage City and Detirious New York, it has remained relatively
unknown for more than 35 years, even though its relevance
has only increased since then. lncluding yet unpubtished material
and a facsimile of the original manifesto, this critical edition
clarifies the condition of its genesis and, most of all, reloads
it in our debates on the future of cities and territories.

tsBN 978-3-03778-326-9

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 MYY
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A manifesto (1977) by
Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas
with Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff,
and Arthur Ovaska

A critical edition by
Florian Hertweck and Sébastien Marot

UAA Ungers Archives for Architectural Research

Lars Müller Publishers

 RELAUNCH
Sébastien Marot

BERLIN: A GREEN ARCHIPELAGO

THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTER
Sébastien Marot

"BUT MOST OF ALL, UNGERS": BERLIN STORIES

Rem Koolhaas

47 PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
BERLIN INFLUENCES AND RAMIFICATIONS
Florian Hertweck

THE CITY IN THE CITY

GHOSTWRITING
Rem Koolhaas in conversation with Florian Hertweck and Sébastien Marot

AN EXHIBITION CONCEPT
Arthur Ovaska in conversation with Sébastien Marot

AN EXCITING EXERCISE
Hans Kollhoff in conversation with Florian Hertweck and Sébastien Marot

A SYMBIOTIC OPERATION
Peter Riemann in conversation with Florian Hertweck and Sébastien Marot

APPENDIX
Bibliography
Biographies
Acknowledgments
lmage Credits
RELAUNCH
Sébastien Marot

For two decades nown not¡ons of the urban arch¡pelago or the archipelago city have
appeared with increasing frequency in debates on urban design, both to describe
the ways in which urban areas actually function and to shed light on how they should
be conceived. ln a context dominated by the metropolitan condition, in which the
explosive growth of urban or suburban phenomena has led to a singular blurring of
the distinction between the city and the countryside, this terraqueous trope, borrowed
from physical geography, suddenly seems to be taking hold in the realm of human
geography, like a metaform capable of translating and structuring the formless,
fragmented, diffuse, dispersedn or multipolar city. Many and yet one simultaneously,
suffused with the entire imaginary of navigation, it conveys the promise of a new
contract or a new dialectic between the city and the territory surrounding it, between
nature and culture, which would move beyond the classic opposition between the town
mouse and the country mouse. All in all, the archipelago is today one of the central
possible tropes for the hypercity or the post-urban metropolis. However, the provenance
and lineage of this notion are still rather hazy,even in the thinking of its most ardent
advocates.ln republishing the collective "manifesto" that introduced this concept into
the contemporary urban design debate, and unraveling the circumstances in which
it was written, our intention is to set off and amplify its delayed action effect.

It was in September 1977 that a modest publication entitled Die Stadt in der Sfadt -
Berlin das grüne Stadtarchipel appeared in German. The title page specified that
it contained an "urban design concept for the future development of Berlin, devised
and presented by Oswald Mathias Ungers." lt was published by the Studioverlag
für Architektur, headed by Liselotte Ungers from her husband's office in Cologne, but
the 48-page, square-format pamphlet was printed in the United States by the Arnold
Printing Gorporation, a smallfirm based in lthaca, NewYork, home to Gornell University,
where Ungers was professor of architecture at the time. As the preamble to this
pamphlet explains, the model of the archipelago city had come into being a few weeks
earlier, in the margins of a Summer School on the topic of the Urban Villa that Ungers
had organized in Berlin for Gornell students.The idea was the fruit of collective reflections
conducted by a small group of young architects and teachers, with Ungers at its center,
who had come together for this summer program, and the preamble lists them in
the following order: Rem Koolhaas, Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff, and Arthur Ovaska.
They were all around thirty at the time, and thus twenty years younger than Ungers,
and had all been his students at Gornell before either teaching alongside him (as
Kollhoff and Ovaska did) or working in his practice in Gologne. Three of the four were
European (Koolhaas, Riemann, Kollhoff), and-with the exception of Koolhaas, whom
Ungers already viewed as a kind of alter ego-all were still tied to their older colleague,
either professionally or through institutional links (as his students, assistants,
or colleagues).
The preamble to the pamphlet further stipulates that this version is "an initial reworking"
of these shared reflections for presentation to a committee of the German Social
Democratic Party (on September 23,19771.This political context doubtless explains the
Ianguage and format chosen for the publication: a quasi-scholastic arsenal of arguments
in the form of eleven successive theses, each accompanied by an explanation and
a conclusion, with the whole pamphlet constituting a semitheoretical, semioperational
call to make Berlin the testing ground for an alternative model of urbanism. Gontrary
to the doctrine of urban renewal that was fashionable at the time, this new model would
embrace the underlying premise of depopulation in Western cities and metropolises, and
envisage these as archipelagos of urban islands set in seas of greenery, which would
incorporate the atmospheres of naturen the ingredients of agriculture, and the infra-
structure of contemporary suburbia. Devised to give direction to the stillvague project
for a new Internationale Bauaustellung (lBA) in Berlin, this was, thereforen a radical model
of disurbanism, or urbanism of negative urban growth, which, far from seeking to stem
them by measures that the authors deemed illusory and counterproductive, would
actually refashion the mechanisms that contribute to the thinning and the dissolution
of cities.The really original element of this exposition is the model itself, the methods
that the text proposed to select and stimulate the urban genes that make up the essence
of these islands, along with the ingenious line of argument that it develops to extract
this model retroactively from Berlin's particular urban reality, history, and imaginary.

ln a nutshell, all the ingredients were present tor Die Stadt in der Stadt to become
one of the jewels in the crown of a theoretical-literary genre that was very prominent
in the 1970s' architectural scene. We are referring here to the site-specific manifesto,
the "learning from" syndrome that led several architects from this era to devote their
energies to describing a particular city, becoming apologists for specific places that were
viewed as holding the keys to an alternative way of approaching urban design, which
these authors wished to present as particularly significant and topical. Examples include
Learning from Las Vegas (Venturi, Scott-Brown, lzenourn 1g72l, "Ghicago á la Carte:
The Gity as an Energy System" (Alvin Boyarsky,1970), Los Angeles: the Architecture
of Four Ecologies (Reyner Banham,1971l, or the masterpieces of this genre that would
be published at the end of this decade: Collage Ctty (Colin Rowe,1978) and Delirious
New York (Rem Koolhaas,1978). lt is quite apparent that Die Sfadf in der Stadt - Berlin
das grüne Etadtarchrpel belongs to the same vein, and it is in this context that it
should be interpreted.

However, even if this text has gradually acquired a sort of mythical fame, especially
today, when the problems of negative urban growth and "shrinking cities" have given
it a certain topicality, it has by no means enjoyed the critical acclaim accorded to the
other manifestos. lts low-key format and the circumstances of its publication no doubt
partly explain its limited circulation to date.The rare copies of this slim work must not
have been disseminated to any great extent beyond Ungers's circle or outside the
political milieu of Berlin urban planning for which it was initially devised. ln fact, the only
opportunity the manifesto had to reach a wider audience was in 1978,when the journal
Lotus International printed an English and ltalian translation (slightly reworked) in
a volume on the urban block. lt is this version, rechristened "Gities within the Gity," that
is referred to by the rare critics who have actually read its text, and it is certainly not
easy to obtain or even consult this collectorns item nowadays.The main purpose of this
republication as a facsimile, therefore, is to provide, in full, the original edition of this
astonishing manifesto.

That is not the sole aim, however. Prior to the "reworking" carried out by Ungers,
there had already been two written formulations of the project. The first is a five-page,
typewritten text in English, with the sober title "Berlin: A Green Archipelago," which
Koolhaas wrote by way of contribution to his senior colleague's reflections on Berlin,
Ieaving it with Ungers when he visited the Summer School in June or July 1977. The
second is a slightly revised and extended version of this original text, which Ungers drew
up with the assistance of his student Peter Riemann, and which was briefly circulated
in photocopies during the exhibition that concluded the Summer School session. Slightly
longer and renamed "The Gity in the Gity - Berlin: A Green Archipelago," the text of
this second version was accompanied by a series of maps and illustrations depicting
the urban islands and the architectural or urban planning references that the
project proposed transplanting to Berlin.

ln order to assist readers in identifying the various ingredients that went into the com-
position of this hybrid and interactive manifesto, we have decided to reproduce here,
also as a facsimile, a transitional document with Ungers's handwritten corrections and
additions to Rem Koolhaasns typewritten text, and to include a portfolio of illustrations
produced by Peter Riemannn which accompanied the genesis of this manifesto; many
of these illustrations have never been published previously.

To complement this, we have also gathered accounts from the four people around
Ungers (t 2OO7l who participated in various capacities in this theoretical adventure.
lnterviewing these four architects, whose subsequent career trajectories were all very
different, proved an instructive and fascinating experience.The memories they were
kind enough to recall for us and the ways in which they look back today at this shared
experience shed light on this memorable manifesto from varied yet complementary
perspectives.

Finally, this file of data and evidence is framed by two historiographic essays, in
which we have endeavored to set this manifesto project into perspective. While the first
focuses on the genesis of the project, tracing out the courses pursued by its two main

8
protagonists and looking at the history of their interaction, the second seeks to position
the manifesto within the history and imaginary of urban design in Berlin, and to track
down some of the ways in which it resonates in contemporary discourse.

Our intention in presenting this genetic republication is partly documentary, that is to

say, to finally provide access to-and shed more light on-the theoretical strands that
converged in this major, yet little-known, milestone in contemporary urban thinking. But
it is also to offer a fortifying tonic to the contemporary debate by providing it with an
incentive to move beyond the models and the intellectual straitjacket of what is still,
curiously, dubbed "urbanism." "Die Stadt in der Stadt - Berlin das grüne Stadtarchipel"
was one of the first manifesto projects to explicitly address the negative growth of
cities, along with a number of other problems that have become only more pronounced
since then. lt was also the first such text to suggest adopting an approach that would
reintegrate and precipitate into the metropolitan area all of its exteriors or externalities
(transport infrastructure, suburbs, tourism, forestsn agriculturen etc.), as well as
earlier projects developed by a handful of architects to structure these "other spaces"
(Hilberseimer's suburban settlement-units in Ghicago, Wright's territorial grid for
Broadacre City, Le Gorbusier's collective farms, etc.). lt therefore exemplified, thirty-five
years ago, a broadening of architectural and metropolitan culture-whose return to
the agenda is long overdue.
BERLIN: A GREEN ARCHIPELAGO

The first draft or version of the Berlin manifesto consists of a 6-page typescript, written
by Rem Koolhaas sometime in June-July 1977,when he visited the Summer School.
The original typescript (A), which contains many crossings-out made during the writing
of the piece (and some handwritten notes), is currently in the Ungers Archives in
Cologne. But there exist also two different copies of this original, bearing handwritten
corrections or additionsn the first (A) bV Koolhaas, and the second (A') by Ungers.
While the one revised by Koolhaas contains relatively minor changes which essentially
consist of correcting a misspelling or replacing a word by a better one, the other, also
in the Ungers Archives, is more heavily annotated by Ungers, who introduces significant
modifications and substantial additions (including a new title). Ungers did this revision
around the end of the Summer School when preparing the final exhibition, where
the concept of the Archipelago, rebaptized "The City in the City," was to be presented
along with the work produced by the students on the Urban Villa. This document (A')
is thus the draft (template) of a second version (B), which was typed by Peter Riemann
and briefly circulated as a handout during the exhibition.ln essencen B is a typescript
of the text as modified by A', but also includes more editing modifications, and an
entire closing paragraph (which was probably handwritten on a missing last page of A').
For instance, it suppresses a few line breaks, as well as all the numbers introduced
by Koolhaas to distinguish the different moments of the demonstration, and turns the
whole text into one that flows continuously. Regular misspellings by A (area's, archi-
pellago ...) are systematically corrected. None of these first versions of the manifesto
were ever published. ln this genetic edition, and in order to help the reader sort out
the respective contributions of its two authors, we have chosen to give here the facsimile
of A', where the original version by Koolhaas (A) and the additions and modifications
introduced by Ungers are simultaneously present and clearly distinct. We have then
indicated in footnotes all the significant modifications made by Koolhaas to his own
text (A) and allthe additions effectively introduced by Ungers in B.

S.M.
 BERLIN: A GREEN ARCHIPELAGo

BERLIN: A GREEN ARCHtPELAGOI 1 A" adds thetitle "Ihe city ln the citf" and Koolhaas's
becomes a subtitle.
ln B, the cover bears simply the tifle "Die Stadt in der Stadt.,'
Any future 'plan'for Berlin has to be a pran for a city in retrenchment. On the front page, it reads:
DIE STADT IN DER STADT
But since the total surface of the city is finite and given, and can, for obvious The city in the city -
political reasons, not be reduced, it follows that the city will have to develop a concept for Berlin as a shrinking metropolis
Rem Koolhaas
strategies for the controlled decrease of its density in order not to lose O. M. Ungers

its over-all urbanity. Peter Rieman¡

This inevitable process of retrenchment could be seen as a negative experi-
ence, to be hidden behind manifestations of a fake vitality, but it could
also be an experimental project to intensífy the experience of Berlin as an
architectural ensemble.
(Berlin is not the only city to face the predicament of shrinkage. But its
extreme and ideosyncratic2 character of laboratory would aflow the strategies
it develops to deal with its retrenchment3 to achieve a prototypical ,pilot'
status4 that could inject new models in a Zero-growth Europe.)s
And the first page of the text bears the following tiile:
THE C¡TY IN THE CITY
BEBLIN: A GREEN ARCHIPELAGO
2 Koolhaas writes "ideosyncratic" for "ldiosincratic,,, butthe
misspelling is meaningful: the most particular and specific
0dlos) bears in itself an idea or an ideal (e/dos). B corrects
the misspelling.
3 A (RK) replaces "retrenchment" by "contraction.',
4 B misreads: "would allow it to develop and assumethe
status as a prototypical strategies'pilot' project that could
inject ...", when the correction intended by A, (ONIU) is
probably: "would allow it to develop prototypjcal strategies
and to assume the status of a'pilot' project that couJd
inject..."
5 B, following A", suppresses the parentheses.
6 A' (RK), replaces "primordial" with "'ideal'."

The present idea that inner-city areas can only be rehabilitated through
more construction that restores a primordialo state is counterproductive and
should be exorcised. on the contrary: in the context of a program of selective
deflation of urban pressure, even of a partial dismaniling of malfunctioníng
parts of the present city, Berlin's human shrinkage offers a clear and unique
opportunity to identify and 'weed out'those parts of the city that are now
substandard, for architecturat or other reasons, and to intensify and even
complete the fragments that would be preserved.
The remaining enclaves that are thus ,saved'and disengaged would lie like
islands on the otherwise riberated prain of the city, and form an archiperago
of architectures in a green lagoon of natures.

A The or¡ginal typescript of Rem Koolhaas

A' Handwritten correct¡ons or additions
by Rem Koolhaas
A' Handwritten corrections or add¡t¡ons
by Oswald Math¡as Ungers
(e see pages 13-23)
B Draft of a second vers¡on that circulated
as a handout dur¡ng the exh¡b¡tion
C The original manuscr¡pt of Oswald Math¡as

'E-E-E-E
Ungers
(J see pages 72-80)
D Publication of Oswald Math¡as Ungers
by Studio Verlag für Architektur
(r see pages 8l -'130)

12
E**** *S' l-\ *4e o-*l
v {'- r:ru::i : A :sclirprr,rago
GF*rlErT

*ry future t illan r f or 3erlin h.as to be a plan for a eity in

retrenchmeat
3r¡i si-ace ti:"e
total surface of imb the city is finite and given,
and. can , for obvious poiitical re&sons , not be reduced, it
ek follo¡¡s ti:at tir.e city r^¡ill have to d.evelop strategies .for
thé controiled. d.ecrease of its d.ensity in order not to ].oose
its o:rer-s.ll urbanity.

Th.is laevitabie process of retrenchment could. be see:L

'l.s
a negative to be hid.d.en behind. manif estations
"rry*{j*o.*,
of a fake xai*r*rjn vitality , but it could also be K
.¡;- o.r.L t:Á:JcL'rrlleltual- pf'OJeCt TO 1nter3siíy
tire experience of Berli-n as an archiieetural ensenble.

{3er1in i s not t.h* onty city to face the predicax,ent of

shrinilage . 3ut ils ext:ene anrd ide,:s¡mcratic charq.eter # r{i c-
laboratory l"rCILrld g% allorr' develop$
rrototYPical -f*g fe¡'a S

'pil"oi; ,rF&e*¡s-that cou'!,d" inject ner¡ mod.els in a r& Zero-

gro'.,:.ch buiope.4

'Jhe present idea that i-nner*city area's can only be re* .

]rabilitaied. k through more construction tnai; rcstores a

prinord"ial state, is counüerproductive and. shourri- be
exorciseet. on th.e contra-r'y : in the contexi of a progran of
seleclive d"efl-atioa of urban pressure, even of a partia].
cl"isna.::t1iag of :r.alfu:rctioning parts oí the preseet city ,
Be:rl inr s hunan sirrinkage off ers a clear ar:.d. unique oppor-
iuaity fs iCentify lxüdr:a¡nr¡fr* and. fveed. out' & tb"ose
pa.ris of ds&e the ci-iy that &üf are xlotr substandard., f or :
arehitectrral gr otb.er reasons,
a¡rd to intensify and. erren con,
plete the f:'agneats that i*ould H
be :reserved-,
|ilre renaining * enclaves i;hat are th¡:"s tsayed"t aed. d.isengaged,
itouia iie ffi iiice isr anc.s on the otncrr.¡ise
-]--Lbera'heci piain of the ci'by,, and- forur an archipeila¡5o of
a-rcLitccturec i::. a raxc**qryMxfuun:r green lagooa of
nab.:res
BERLIN: A GREEN ARCH¡PELAGO

I 7 Obviously a m¡sspelling: both A and A' correct this into

The first operation of such a project-a Berlin as green archipelago-ought
to be the identification and selection of those areas that already have a strong
existing entityT that deserves to be preserved and reinforced.
These enclaves would not be selected on the basis of a particular taste or
even for their aesthetic qualities, but only to the extent to which they embody,
in a pure and legible form, ideas and concepts, so that the history of archi-
tecture would coincide with the history of ideas once more.
"identity."
I B,following A', replaces "each Viertel" with "each lsland
or Mini-city-"
I B strangely replaces "anti-thetical" with "anti-theairical."
Probably a misread¡ng.
10 B, followinq A', puts this whole sentence inio the
conditional tense.
11 B, following A', suppresses "for Moscow," and replaces
"where Russian architects" with "where the architects."

(The areas would range, for instance, from the Olympíc Stadium site to the
Tiergarten Viertel, the Charlottenburg area and the Márkisches Viertel.)

2"-
The next step in the operation is the 'completion' of the preserved fragments,
that will now receive their final architectural intervention.
The objective needs of each 'island'would be identified once and for all and
would be met through the insertion of a series of Social Condensers to answer
the particular needs of each Viertel.s
This project would lead to the development of a repertoire of complementary
facilities of an explicitly anti-theticale nature.
Pressure in overcrowded areas is deflated by the creation of voids-parksn
pools, etc.-while low-key areas such as Westend are intensified by the
construction of high-intensity centers.l0
The only further architectural or design activity would consist in completing
and revealing the Gestalt of the particular islands that are selected.

This phase would be as much an exercise in briefwriting and programmatic

sophistication, as it would deal with formal issues. Not all the new insertions
have to be designed anew.The most relevant examples of such an approach
are still offered by certain Constructivist proposals for Moscow,1l
 I
o.t4
Tl.re frrst operati on of sucir a pro jeci a Beriin asvarchipell ago
ought to be the id"eniification. and s.qte.c,!¡on of those area's
idaLtú.Y
,,'hat already have a strong existi-ng'e¡e;ti=É¡r that deserves to &¡siirn
be preserYed" anC rej-aforceC".
fh.ese enc,layes ¡ngnnfrr¡¡or¡lC not be selected. <¡:r the basis of a
particular taste or even for their esthetic oualities, but onl¡r
for the exbeat to ¡¡hich they embod.y , in e. p1lre aad- Iegible W
forn, id.eas end. coacepts, €*F;!r so that the histor¡r of
a.rcl:.tecture ¡vould. coiaciCe {xÍt with the history of id.eas o¡Loe
l¡ alF p

(Wt fhe area.ts r,¡ould range for instance, from the

O1¡rc.pic Staiiun site, to the Tiergarten Viertelrihe Charlotten-
burg ar€a and. tl:.e i'Iárkisches Yj-ertel.)

2':
The ne:rb step in the operation is the 'com¡]etion' of the
preserved- fragnents, tfrat l¡ii} nol¡ receive-their final
a¡c]:i tectura] interu'entíon,
Tire egr ob jective need.s of each 'island' i+quld. be id.entif ied"
once and. for all and- be met trgugh the inüertion of a series
oi Soc'ial- ñllrnirsi Cond-ensers t&..ansr"rer the pariicular need-s
or eacb lw,& ,{ úq nd, 0 r fn t qi-c i *Y "
?his project r¡ould. 1ead. io the developnent of a rgpegtg!¡g
gf *cpg*gpel*"qp¿ -fg"g:i-1itieg- of an explicitly onti-th.etical
nature qre^\ .tou{f@
Fressr.re in oversro?¡ded afeJ€ i# deflated. by the creatiox. oÍ
voirL$ -. pprJi¡ , oools , etc. - nhile I lorE-i<ey A{€a's sucb. ag
ire"tl#slLg$8Ir;"rl":-r:-ud by the of b"igh.-iateagity$
"oo"r*rrction
centei's.
fhe onl-y further arclri"tectu.ral or design acti-vity irould
consist in coepr et'ing and. revealing the/Gestalü tf tn" par-.
ticul ar isl and.s 'bhat are selected-.

This ::hase rvorllc be as nuc]: an exercise in brieflvritin$ and '

prolrarcl3aüic soplisticationr 3s it l.rould" doal '...¡it?l fornal j-ssúes.
l{ci al1 tire ne},' inseltioas have to be designed" a¡rei¡-
¡
'l:tc ;lcst rcl-ct'ait- exan:l es of sucir an ap--]roac\ ¡re s bitl o-f f ereC
b--. Ce:t¡si,*r Ccnstn:et.i vi Si ¡ic:ogi *
t ¿g r #!¡r-lqlgl|tn
BERLIN: A GREEN ARCHIPELAGO

where Russian architects, through extreme material shortages, developed an
economy of both conceptual and material means, where minimal architectural
expenditure had maximum social benefits.
It would therefore be possible to realize projects that were once proposed
for other parts of the world, but which were, for whatever reasons' aborted,
in retrospect.l2 (For instance, Leonidov's 'Palace of Culture' could be built
in the vacant strip at the center of Kreuzberg, and his linear Magnitogorsk
project be built along the Avus.13)
(Other examples of retroactive architecture related more specifically to the
history of Berlin would correct important omissions by constructing such
12 B suppresses "in relrospect."
13 B, following A', replaces "along the Avus" w¡ih "along the
linear strip between Unter den Eichen and the S-Bahn."
14 B, following A', adds here: "a't lhe end of l\4Üllerstrasse."
15 B rephrases the end of the sentence ¡n "or one of Taut's
domes over the 1936 Olympic Stadium," suppresses the
parentheses of this whole paragraph, and, lollowlng A', adds:
"Along the Havel could be a series of River iowns completing
Wilhem lv's plan for the Havel Landschaft." F¡nally, it relocales
here the bottom paragraph (numbered "5") to the next page
of A, about the social differentiation of the islands.
16 A (RK) replaces "deteriorate" with "wh¡ther away-"
17 A (RK) replaces "types" with "manifestations."
18 B, following A', addsr "and define the structure of the
city in a city."
19 B,following A', puts "safaris" between quotation marks.

essential projects as Mies's rectangular skyscrapersl4 or roof over the 1936

Olympic Stadium with one of Taut's domes.1s)

3
Around the'tuned-up'and 'completed' enclavesn the remaining fabric of the
city would be allowed to deterioratel6 and turn slowly into nature.
Parts of redundant infrastructures, whose corpses now litter whole parts of
the city, and other insalubrious properties should be condemned in such
a pattern that, together, they would eventually form a system of nature-a green
grid-a catalogue of typeslT that range from suburb to parkland to dense
forests and even to urban farmland.This nature grid would isolate the islands
and establish the metaphor of a 'green' archipelago,ls

The green grid could accommodate suburbs at a variety of densities, belts

of farmland that penetrate all parts of the city, and parts that are developed as
ecological preserves-forests and wildparks-that would stimulate new forms
of tourism, such as hunting safaris,le
n[tt,<- fhe a::chitects, tircu¡;ir e:.:brene nate¡'i-al shortages,, deveioped.
* an economJ¡ of both
neanS,%'i¡.inina1arch.itecturale:cpend.itr¡re]rad.naxi.an:n
social benefit.
0

Ii l.¡oulC ti:erefore be possible to realifr projects that

t'¡ere oace proposeC'. for oiher parts of tlre rnror1d., but
1.¡ere , for reasoas aborted" , in retrospsst.
r'¡hatever ¡ffi
(For instance, leonid.orrs 'Palace of Gulture' could. be
built in the vacant strip *nr#r* at the center of Kreutzberg,
a:ed his linear l"iagnitogorsk pro j ect m*rf *g-t¡r*i*+ +f ong -
ipiui;"rti" únff,- 06 ,; e ct li-C,'ri?l;i -Eqh Li
t

tlre ,us¡€- F tt^ { r -?;

''3¿;
"- of re'broactive architectu¡'e related &CIre
d0ther e;<anples
€ specifically to ih.e history ol &*r }erlia , wouló
comect inportaat ornnissi-ons b;r construct-ing sucb. essential
@'s\'u*r¡bu&s: paJpv-Lsi's!
rflh*??,'e,f3"o'-ls'ffirectangulars1qrscrap*""*ltliee"c(
# 'ovei
útTlir"¡?rfie"'""
-ob roóf tb.e 19iA -fu Ol;apic StaCiu¡r r,¡ith one of

ü f {,) ir,á?ioJr ¿"á ¡r'd¡e& o {t')

,;?,f*w/!b$'$ftY,Y1*:.rl:?i',i,?t,Wt?Y,f
iili,iór;?*ffa¡ú&r¡¡a,ífhr "
ldetrn¡
ffiAroundt}re|tuned-upland'comp1eted'enclaves,
the renaining fabr:-c of tli.e city woulcl be allor,,¡ed. to d.eterio-
rate & anC turn slor,rly iato nature.
Parts- o{,redund-ants infrastructures., i'¡hose *sr¡t corpses t¡¡rÉi
ooro #JJ&Fr*bole ?arts of the city , and- other io**rr.¡rious
lt.==s=niN*ñF properties shauld. be concl-enned. ia such. a patternÉ¡
that to6eth.er, tbey would eve:rtua1-ly forn a systen of nature -
a g?een grid - a catalogre of types that rall.ge frolr suburb,
to parklandrto d.ense forests ancl even to urban farmlánd.-
Tnis natu-re grj.d. r.¡ou"lá isolate the island.s dl establi"sb
ihenetap}ror"o{ar¡wl5reen'archipe11agordil{6fi.y{rit*
nd¿¡*ruc*-urc of tl¿ cr't-y r4n n r,ñy.
uut"'
fhe -gi6;n grid. could. accomodate suburbs at a variety of
d.ensiiies, betts of farrr$land tirat peaetrate alt parts
eif the city, Ax and narts tl¡ai rn* are d.ey'elor:ecl as
ecclogical tresefves - foresis anC l.rild.parks- tbat ¡¡ould.
stinulate ner,¡ foras of isunk tourisa, such as hunting
,^t
--arüirJ.
I .'
^
T 4%1 ñ
 BERLIN: A GREEN ARCHIPELAGO

The polarity of Nature-Gulture or Nature-Metropolis that is nown in most
instances, latent, compromised and diluted, will be intensified and made
explicit.
Since such a 'system of Nature' would be fundamentally designed, i.e.
20 B, following A' replaces "city" wilh "cities."
21 B replaces "those categories of inhabitants" with "those
inhabitants" and, following A', adds here: "who like to live
in tent houses and ..."
22 B relocates this paragraph to the preceding page
(see footnote 14).

synthetic, it would through its rich juxtapositions intensify rather than diminish
the sense of a Metropolis, whose essence is to be: an environment completely
invented by man.

4
The Nature Grid would also accommodate the infrastructure of the Modern
Age; i.e. apart from an extended highway system that connects the islands' it
would absorb supermarkets, drive-in cinemas, churches, banks, etc., and all
those 20th-century typologies that rely not on 'place' but on mobility, and that
cannot be inserted in existing urban fabrics without ruining them.

Apart from the various densities of suburban development, forests, wildlife

preserves, urban farms, and the infrastructure of the Modern Age, the greenbelt
would also be used to'park'temporary mobile facilities-such as mobile
homes, Airflows, Fairs, Markets, Circuses-that could travel for years on the
coordinates of the nature grid without ever entering the city.2o

Such facilities would generate urban 'tribes' of Metropolitan gypsies: those

categories of inhabitants-pensioneers for instance2l*who do not benefit
from a fixed location in the city and whose existence would be stimulated by
a more roving lifestyle.

5
The differentiations of the islands should not be only of an architectural
nature. Social and political differences should be superimposed on the system
of islands, so that the units function also socially as identifiable enclaves.22

t_
 &

the pol-arit¡r 1'lature*Culttr-re or Nature - l.Ietropotis that

is no-v.r, in mosb instances latend? conpronised. and di1uted.,
*dnfll, uill be is intensif ieC ancl- mad.e erplicit.
$incesr:g}a,s}'steu'of}lature,r.¡ou1dbefunclanenta11y$
d.qglgaqé hlhfr¡*r*'b' ;r¡í'r xn¡ Uie- iir: melr¡@ nlp rsr C n !
i. e. synth.etic , it would. throu-gh its rich juxbapisitions
intensj-fy ra'bher than d.i¡s!'inisb the aense of a 1*xrrn6ip¡:¡*
lietropol-is, wh.ose& essellce is to be : aa eavirorurent
cox.pletely in:yented. by maa.

Ei:¡¡rr
4
The nature Grid. r¡oulrl also accomoclate ¡ the infrastrucf,r.¡¡e
of i;he l{odern Age .j-.e. apart fron an
extended. bighr';a¡' systen that connects the isla¡.d.s, it r.¡ould
absorb super:earke ts, drive-in cinena ' s o churches , banls ,
"{i. t
ani. all those 2otir century t¡rpologies that rely act orr 'place
but on i¡.obility, and. that cannot be inselrted- in existing
urban g fabrics i¡ithout r.uining them

¡inart fron the varj-ous d.ensities of suburban d-evelopnent,

f orests, r"rild.-life preserrrcs, urban farms and. tb.e i?rastrugture
of tb.e llod.erlr Aseo *he greenbelt i.¡outc also be used. to ipark'
te;:poraily-c;dd*ir nobite facili ties sush. as *nMd*b mobi le
bones, .*irflol-is , Fairs, t&Xets , Circusses - tbat could.
travel for years orr th"e coord.inates of the n.t rre Brid
r,¡itb.out ever ent ering the c:rtf J CJ r

Such fasil-ities ¡rou.ld. generate urban 'tribes:t of },letropolita¡r

sy-ns ies r tllgtqu¡f,otf;ñ9fi ffi"lgñntrüabitants -pensioneers for
insüa¡ece - cilm--do-n-d't-tené-flt--froÍ-á fixe¿ location in tb.e
city B¡.d, *mf-+-r,ihose
¡¡ir*mxr existense $ould. be stj-eul-ated.
by e ctore roving life-style

Í¡e si¡Mrernh:¡i*xdss differeatiati-ons of kk** the isla::d.

sl:.ould" :rot be onry of an arch.iteetural nature. socisJ" and.
¡oit ii ca1 cliffa¡ erencss
--^
Mn shouid be su¡eriúposed. on tb.e
s:¡s,bsa of islancls, so tb.at t?:.e units fuaction e.lso social
gs :-áentgifable *nelaves-
BERLIN: A GREEN ARCHIPELAGO

Particular Projects 23 B,following A', replaces "into the Kreutzberg area"

with "into the Ernst Reuter Platz."
24 B, following A', replaces "of l\,4agn¡togorsk along the
Avus" with "of the lvlagnitogorsk Iplan] by Leonidov along
1
the street Unter den Eichen."
The insertion of Leonidov's Palace of Culture into the Kreutzberg area.23 25 B, followinq A", replaces "in the Kreutzberg area" with
"in the Theodor Heuss Platz."
26 Although this project is not crossed out in A', it is not
numbered by Ungers, and will be, in effect, suppressed from
2 the list in B, even though the idea of covering lhe stadium
The transplantation of Magnitogorsk along the Avus.2a wilh one of Taut's domes is indeed present earlier in lhe text.
Maybe BK's formula here was felt to be possibly shocking
for the visitors to the exhibition in Berlin.
27 A' adds seven new ideas of transplantations to the list
3 given n A. and reorders this iist. These new suggestions,
The realisation of Miesns angular skyscraper as a multipurpose social center interspersed with those of RK, are listed in the following order:
"The placement of Adolf Loos' Chicago Tribune skyscraper
in the Kreutzberg area.2s on Scholzplatz." (3rd)
"The insertion of'Central Park' into the area of Goerlitzer
Bahnhof." (sth)
4' "The transplantation of the royal crescent in Bath to the
Volkspark." (6th)
The completion of the Olympic stadium through the iniection of Expressionism "The insertion of the palace of the League of Na'tions by
in the present landscape of fascism and modernism.26 Hannes l\,4eyer in the Tiergarten area next to the Philharmonica
Hall and the National Library." (7th)
"The construction of El Lissitzky's Wolkenbügel on the
intersection of the Generalzug." (8th)
5 "The partial realisation of the Algjerproject of Le Corbusier
The development of a linear Wall Park along the Berlin wall, which, after along the Spree." (gth)
"The construction of the double towers of the World Trade
unification, could be joined, at regular intervals with the existing wall zone Center at the end of the l\y'üllerstrasse as a gateway to East
on East German territory. Berlin or as an enlrance gate to the West." (10th)
Projects numbered 1,2,3,5, and 6 by RK become respectively
1st,4th, 2nd,11th, and 12th.
B lists the projects in the order defined by the numbers in A',
6 but omits the numbers.
The development of the Tiergarten area as a polemic against the ideology 28 B, following A', replaces "Urban repair" with "Urban
Reparation."
of Urban repair.27 Urban repair2s assumes an inexhaustible demand on each 29 B,following A', puts "Kitsch" be'tween quotation marks.

urban location for ever more housing, ever more shops, ever more social
facilities, that can then be made manifest by a simple operation, the creation
of a more healthy urban fabric. But such assumptions overlook the fact
that these areas may be in disrepair exactly because such a pressure does
not exist.
Not only do such proposals lead to a confusion of real and synthetic history,
with all the attendant threats of the production of Kitsch2e in the name
of good taste, but the need to which they address themselves is also equally
synthetic.
Especially in Berlin, where the atmosphere of inflated vitality is evident
in almost every construction, such an approach would exacerbate the issue
of retrenchment and only postpone the final moment of reckoning,

20
 fuV- ntu-tt og .uf he-
t
íh
'. W¿f# t ;'t {&{ riu\ td -ferx'* bx,rxr lo fr on
^7tl'o'uf
I t', b ?;
Pg:!3,c:43.qf lro,i e.q,ig
\
l. t'lle insertion of leonlclovrs Palace of ;ffiffii culture
into the@. e.r¡f $eufpt, f(af¿*
,r,,pr{r'0r.r ,{'{onJ.,'cal lza¡k' ,rodo lhc'18 ttrPca of Cw't¡ze-lqlü'h4,
-fff.x
k^ plaq
4:J3" l"lryplantation of l{agni f,6 gorsÉ.6-ong *¡r* k:J¡p*6.
i
s.!,ÍrlJ[Ín',l,rY!l'""{íi,fri',':.í,? r r,i¡,,¿l ,,,ts:}t,e ,,:¡-,¡drct É,, hotz¡,,Latz,
1
J,Firua** The reaatf*rton of Mies aagnlar skyscarper as
a multi,-Dur-oose sóciai center in the @.
Theodor He,.t¡c Ptql¿ , : ;:Soetb&e€q{u
*#*Wl flaFar<,r.o yat.-*tt.e*t iq ll ,vo}*'*
lbe Fr!* to*pf*tion of ffir Ol¡rnpic stad.iu¡a area through
the injection of E>¡pressionisn.,l*,the present la¡rd-scape
of fascism and. mod.erai"*. (Tor i'.i'o', , .u yq,* *? e elyrq g.a, c. l{* Cirrr^rj
qolsf¡-ugjton o{ tt tii,l¿trit l/toL4aubúgel rttn ,qÍe),rrlt0,1¡ o{ rt,
f.-l¡ et\Pt"tt7"t6'
. laf
Sf'thu d.evelopment of ffi a linear lteli- park al6ag
the Berlin ¡*a11, i.rhicb , *t* after the uaifisatioa, cou.1l
be joineC' at regular iatervals wif,h the existiag wall
0|,- - "hfiffittn{rt1 s{ IteA6,tr. l,ruu.lterritor;r.
soq9.,gp-{da***ta the East Gernan
I d+r.-*tr¿+ 0t b (arbv¡,¿r alou) tle lp.re
f o*{K;ffi lÍ".,li?-{$tüf tl{rJ}yi%?{",[iv{y#i*nl:^f :!w.\1.,T,ri&i/'h,
-tiergarten
&fh¿ df tAe
d"evelopneat area *¡e as á polernie. agai-ast
v
ühf i<ieologv of urban'{&f,". urban L
a:r iaexhalfstjLl - 6 r]amon^
--==X*ffi'tiü _ _a-_ -
__r_ ui'ban
each ,. ^ "W*;"=;;;
ár
location, for #S+ more h.ousiag, ever
nore shops, . elpr nore. Ecrlc s_ociar facilities, that ur*c
ca¡. ou*$#ffi ffiinpie ;;;";;;;";-9k,"""
i¡h-
hea1iyirrbaafabric.Butsué¡.assumptionsover1ookthefaet#
that these area nay be ia d.isrepai-r exactly becaü.se t such
a pressuretrll d.oes not exist. -

Not only clo such g?=*anln;¡cr proposals lead. to a confusion

of real and. s¡mthetic history, i^¡ith a1l *** ¡¡s aütend.ant
threats of tbe prod.uction of 'rit"d. in tbe na"ule e# of good.
*aste but the need. wi:ish ttrey aclress thenselves to. i; *, {6n*
'
er¡:all,w s¡rniiretic, ffi
Especi ally i n Berlin , t*here the atnospirere of inflated.
vitality is e¡rj-dent in al¡rost eyery coastruction, such
¡,v*¡u YJrlggi.uaue EItg
issue of retrenci:rle*/!o$ oostpone the final nonent
oi F .re!'n¡r fe-C'g o w,-i,-V,
BERLIN: A GREEN ARCHIPELAGO
TheTiergarten Viertel3o offers an opportunity to accept the retrenchment model
and turn it into a strength: all the existing villas, no matter how contaminated
their ideological pasts, would be faithfully restored in an operation of ideologi-
cal taxidermy, and then embedded in a park.Then one would need no new
museums, no new architecture, only a garden and a scattered social facility.
ladded in manuscript by RKI
The alternative suburban-grid.
The farming grid,
The forest grid with 'negative architecture.'
The minimal accommodations for mobile home sites.31
30 B,following A',adds here: "and the areaof the Südliche
Friedrichstadt." Obviously, Ungers already idenlifies this urban
island as a potential micro archipelago where the whole idea
could be tested. And he would indeed concentrate on this area
during his next Summer School on the Urban Garden (1978).
31 These manuscript notes by RK, already present in A,
obviously lisl themes that Koolhaas thought worlh develop¡ng.
B, following A', replaces lhese indications with a paragraph
that partly develops them:
"ln lhe open areas between the urban islands of the green
archipelago, an alternative suburban grid could be inserted
w¡th Ludwig Hilberseimer's suburban housing development
planned for Chicago, mobile home parks as ret¡rement
cities, Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre city development, and
Le Corbusier's collective farming projects. This area would
contain all the facilities that make up a metropolitan fabr¡c
combined with a green pattern of widely differing nature reach-
ing from wllderness areas, hunting grounds, and forest land
to parks, playgrounds, and spod fields."
A'then adds a kind of general conclusion in six points:
"This urban model would satisfy several major goals:
1. The restorat¡on of identity in the city fabric.
2. The closeness to nature and open space.
3. The problem of planning how to make the city smaller
instead of makinq it biggen
4. The improvement of urban quality.
5. The pluralistic order as opposed to a centralised system.
6. The intensification of the complexity of the city as a comple-
mentary organization."
... and also adds another one in the margin: "8. The restoration
of the historic memory of the place."
B strictly follows A' up to the sth point bul omits the 6th and
the marginal one.
Finally, B adds a closing paragraph that Ungers had maybe
written on a missing last page of A':
"This model also would transform a concept developed by
Wilhelm lV for the Havel Landschatt in the 19th century as
a continuous evenl of architectural memories between Berlin
and Potsdam. The Havel Landschaft is slructured by a series
of architectural statements reflecting the history of the past
and thus turned into a humanistic environment where memo-
ries become reality and realities exist only as pieces of mind
and knowledge. ln this sense the fragmented castle on the
Pfaueninsel by J. G. D. Brendel, the island of the Neo-Classical
Heilandskirche by Persius, the lerraced house for the court
gardener by Schinkel in the Glienicke Park, the fort¡fied
machine house by Persius,lhe Neo-Gothic Babelsberg Palace
by Sch¡nkel and finally the buildings in Potsdam transform
the natural landscape into an archipelago of places wh¡ch
we create with our memories. The Havel Landschaft contains
lhe key and the essence of the idea of Berlin as a green
arch¡pelago, and thus reviv¡ng a humanislic tradition of Berlin
and applyinq ¡t to the present time."
 -F¡
üe ¡rb.d f¡e*¿ *d*d¡&*
* *raq
cud
0¡' Iff{t'f¡*"*
g.Jr¡}gg&,f'{fffi
tJt{ {* a*c*¡f &*
l.aff*¡,c* * the existing vil1a's ¡ oo tás*áü:raatter hol¡ conta:r.inated-
the!r*s*rábid-eo1ogica1rrasts,ltould"befaitbfur1yM$
restoreo s in tadla*l an operati on of id-eological
d.axi-d.ern;r ,. and" thea enbecided in a park.
:k 'Inea IÉ- /o*u i^¡ouio neeci no n-eb¡ uruseums, no new
archj-tecture, only a garclea and a ssatiered. social facili.ty"

I tA..*

t&u urlaa r
r;;Í;f;&
tuitue 0fs'4
I u terv
-,
vl'vwt rr:n,r",::",b,,:{
-lt

alley tta'lt'/e Jttburbat4^***

ato ^lt^'-,-xJ,,,Á
t,:l^,,.,4a r. *ernl roit¿
2,,0t
fOf¡ld &e ,,e,.'r'lor;!i W-u
tte tllKfISu{. Íí:;
W: I")lwtJ fl¡tb01
w o[''sle hrtu'e
( i't,r0rr r utt vrhaq (r rrtñ¡";'n^"i;;";';;itfí',/:.!!''f l::,
lo -rffiu
r tr
:!i
t'tt,t
ffi I',":i!','^'i
i;,,Wio,,utíoyDlVJn'¿htibroqcl,hc,|c,17|evcr0rY
3'
eüi'
q,,dL\; ri uirc,' r ew*"ftf! o' b'-'
;,):.t "'r:' T,re I:E
l:¡ i *i M:gl #'e {3$i{ h'{?l:*

\'''
6+!
lr. T,
&Crn;Í{-:frk
THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTER
Sébastien Marot

"Strange emissaries journey across Europe, and beyond;

meeting each other, bearing incredible instructions."l
Situation st lnternational Antho ogy

":":r::::,",d gets his own geneatogicat tree."2

Thirty-five years after it was first published, The City ín the City-Berlin: A Green
Archipelago has not received the critical acclaim and broad dissemination it de-
serves, primarily due to its hybrid status, oscillating between an evocation of
a contemplative Utopia and a strategic arsenal of arguments for a project devel-
oped for a speciñc city in a given set of circumstances: Berlin in the late 1970s.
A further reason for this neglect lies in the text's dual authorship, which, strangely
enough, has made it a kind of bastard or orphan. If we are to grasp its meaning,
we must turn the spotlight on an important episode in recent architectural history,
namely the five intense years (1972-1917) during which a resonance developed
between the realms explored by Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas. This
strange text can actually be read as the ultimate lruit of this elective affinity, which
was to exercise a decisive influence on the trajectories of these two key figures of
contemporary architecture. In a sense, this paradoxical manifesto is the hopeful
monster thaf their meeting ultimately produced.3

GALAHAD
Oswald Mathias Ungers, born in 1926 into a family olmodest means from the Eifel
valley near Cologne, begins his architecture studies only after his return from
prisoner-of-war camps. Driven by an "emotional interest in modernity," he enrolls
at Karlsruhe's school of architecture, where he encounters two generations of
**jq.@***
': &.k,&3re i , d* qld¡ rAF I cosMoPoLrs
r *á&,q¡*
***A€.&t&@. 1
.
'"**, '4 lvan Chtcheglov (al¡as Gilles luain), Mappemonde-
. &* a*.*&r*t$ i i-*4,*4-i&,!e&@ Métropolitain: frcgments of a planisphere collaged
'&$tt!*r,&:*r&g ¡ {&q.k,Jq+r!,lhñ
!\¡rj:br;r, :- onto a map of the Paris metro, early 1950s

'I Quoted from "The Adventure." in: Situat¡on¡st lnternatianal

Anthology, Iens. Ken Knabb (ed.), (Berkeley: Bureau of Public
Secrets, 2006), http://wwwbopsecrets.org/Sl/5.adventure.htm
(accessed February 21,2013). Origlnally published as "Laven-
lve," in. lnternat¡anale Situat¡onniste 5 (Paris, December 1960).
2 Rem Koolhaas, "The Terrifying Beauty of the 20th Century"
(1985), in: S,M,L,X¿ (Rotterdam, 1995), 208.
3 The expression "hopeful monster," popu arized by cerman
genetic expert Richard Goldschmidt, des gnates the agent
and product of a kind ol evolutionary leap. The painter Jean-
Baptjste lvarot has ln turn deployed the term to evoke three-
dimensional " andscapes" that break out of the constraints
of conventional formats. ln as much as t evokes the notion
: **6 ta
! dit of a bastard or a hybrid, seemingly sterile yet compris ng
¡-*¡d'M :i,t::, :Y
5 qJ: the hope of a renaissance or an evolut onary turning point, it

fu *f, seems entireyfitting in thls context.The present essay s

essentially based on our still unpublished 2008 PhD, "Palimp-
F1€:: i. sestuous lthacar A Relative l\,4anifesto for Sub-Urbanism."
S nce then, "The Cjty in the City" and the nteraction of ungers
and Koolhaas have attracted growlng interest. Beyond the
references indlcated in our footnotes, the works of Jasper Cepl,
Erika lVühlthaler, Lara Schrijver, and PietrVittorio Aureli are
particu arly relevant on the top c.
THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTER

the Modernist movement: the pioneers, who are more theoretically inclined, and
the pragmatic constructors (such as Egon Eiermann), who are much more literate
in technology, but in his view also much less cultivated. In this "Germany year
zeto," its cultural and moral tabula rasa rendered even more absolute by wartime
bombings, Ungers develops an enthusiasm for the history of architecture, draw-
ing "a11 of thepalazzi... the facades... the entire arrangement and such."a His
initial projects resolutely distance themselves from technological credos, concen-
trating instead on typological variation and a skillful intermeshing of volumes
and spaces that endow a quasi-urban complexity on the houses he constructs. The
combined house and office he builds in Cologne in 1958 exemplify this approach,
linking its relatively autonomous spatial and sculptural grammar with the condi-
tions of the sile and its built environment: "The house enters into a dialogue with
its context in a way that is as original as it is respectful. While the roof profile and
the choice of materials harmonize with the adjacent structures, the building at the
same time consciously asserts itself as a sui generis cosmos? in which the old and
the new strike a balance in a process of interactive continuity."s As the project
catches the attention of several critics, including Aldo Rossi and Nikolaus Pevsner,
it immediately garners a degree of international renown for Ungers. Symptomati-
cally, these critics give very different interpretations of Ungers's original under-
taking. While Pevsner piaces it within the Expressionist tradition, which is rather
alien to the architect himself, the young Aldo Rossi expresses a view fairly close
to Ungers's own, lauding responsible architecture that draws its premises directly
from reality rather than hiding behind an exclusively social line of argument or
seeking merely to express vaguely personal feelings. Rossi also cites the archi-
tect's clearly pluralist statements: "Europe does not feed on a single universal STAYING AFLOAT
Oswald Mathias Ungers (right), w¡th Reinhard
idea. It is multiform. It is a continent in which many images and many opinions
Giesélmann, circa 1960
coexist in great vicinity to one another, a land in which there has been equal
growth of mysticism and Enlightenment, and a new vitality has developed in the
tension between these two extremes."6
In the same period, Ungers circulates a brief manifesto, written with Rheinhard
Gieselmann, Zu einer neuen Architektur (Tbwards a New Architecture). Rejecting
the impoverishing reign of Functionalism and technology, it cal1s for a celebration
ofarchitecture as art and as the creative expression ofthe "vital clash between the
active individual and his environment": "architecture is a vital penetration into
a multilayered, mysterious, evolved, and structured reality. Its creative function
4 "Die Rationalisierung des Bestehenden," interview, Oswald
is to manifest the task by which it is confronted, to integrate itsellinto that which Nlathias Ungers with Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist,
Atchpl6179 lAachen, July 2006)r 7 English translation in Log
already exists, to accentuate and amplify its surroundings. It always consists in 16 (summer 2009):72
the recognition of the genius loci out of which it grows."7 5 Fritz Neumeyer, "Lenlgma dell'architettura: Un tutto a sé
stante e un'unitá di partico ari," in: Oswa/d Matth¡as Ungers:
Architetture 1951 -1990 (Nlilan, 199 1), 8.
6 Quoted by Aldo Rossi, "Un giovane architetto tedesco:
A RATIONALIZATION OF THE EXISTING Oswald Mathias Ungers," ni Casabella 244 (Milan, October
1960):22-35.
By heightening his latent passion for the cosmos of architecture, the diametrically 7 Ungers and Gieselmann,Zu enet neuen Archítektur,1960.
Ci. Ulrich Conrads, Programmes et man¡festes de I'arch¡tec-
opposed critical interpretations of his work drive Ungers to delve deep into the ture du XXe s¡écle (Paris,1991), 203-04.
historical, theoretical, and iconographic corpus of the discipline, which will lead 8 Heinrich KlaÍz,The History of Postmodern Arch¡tecture
(Cambridge, [/]A, l9BB), 221.
him to celebrate the richness and autonomy of its language. In the early 1960s, 9 Ungers, LArchltecture comme ¿héme (Paris,1982), 23.
10 rb d.
his studio thus assumes the air of an ideal library, with successive projects simul- 11 Schne//strasse und Oebáude ('966). Ptátze und SLrassen
11967), Wohnen am Park (1967 ),Stádtebaul¡che Untersuchung
taneously drawing on its resources and enriching it. P ade t bo m (1967 ), Ve r ke h rs b an d S p re e (1968), S c h n e il ba h n
und Gebáude (1968); Blocksan¡erung und Parker (1969), and
On the one hand, in terms of urban design, these projects bear witness to a finally Beriln 7995 (1969).
profound empathy for the situations that they reshape, and are conceived as 12 Grcssfarmen ¡m Wohnungsbau (19661, Wohnungsysteme
in Stahl \1968), Wohnbebauungen 11968), Wohnungsysteme ¡n
transformations that generate orderly typologies, rationally inflected on the basis Grosstafeln (1968), Dle w¡ener Superblocks (1969).
 laa ' '''.''
.rf ,
't
),)--l]

of logics and syntaxes abstracted from the existing situation. The Grünzug Süd
project (1962) illustrates this attitude, presenting itself as a precise elucidation of
a heterogeneous series of urban situations, whose morphologies, reinterpreted
and rationalized, provide the underlying themes for the various configurations
proposed. This offers the most striking illustration of the procedure that Ungers
will later describe as the -"ralionalization of the existin g." In 1966, he wouid in-
deed produce an astonishing apology for this unrealized project, iiterally running
sections of his plan like a street right through a two-page spread covered with
views of the existing site... as if the site is, in essence, the actual material of the
project. "IJngers had entered into an interaction with history-not just in the in-
signif,rcant sense of building in a way that could be said to 'take into account the
old city,' but in the sense ol drawing upon history for formative principles that
could be transferred to the present.... It can be said that the 'determination of the
design through interpretation of given factors'was the design principle."8
On the other hand, from an architectural perspective, Ungers's projects delve
into a skillful manipulation of primary geometric forms or of archetypical ele-
ments of the discipline's vocabulary (atrium, portico, loggia, amphitheatre, etc.),
which he draws together, adjusts, juxtaposes, intermeshes, and assembles like --ITHE
MUSE OF THE EXISTING
fragmentq of composite mosaics. Several projects developed in 1963-65 bear wit- Oswald Mathias Ungers, illustration for the
Grünzug Süd proiect (1962-65)
ness to this quest to devise a morphological architecture, capable of "bringing
together the greatest possible number of ideas and concepts within a stratified
whole."e These projects are all manilestations of "possible models of a pluralist
city"ro utrd are the theaters of a coincidentia oppositorum in which the variety of
forms and spaces assembled provide a palette for a whoie panoply of uses and
lifestyles. In a sense, they are also all imaginqry museums, forums of contradic-
tions, Noah's Arks in which the genetic heritage of architecture would have taken
shelter to survive the deluge of Functionalism and the amnesia it triggers. For
Ungers, the "rationalization of the existing" involves rallying the discipline's
entire theoretical and morphological culture.

BERLIN
In 1963, Hans Scharoun, who also believes that in Ungers he has identified a new
representative ofthe Expressionist tendency he heads, has him hired as a profes-
sor at Berlin's Technische Universitát. However, Ungers soon declares that he
does not belong to this camp, and that Expressionism is an impossible ambition
in architecture. Almost as soon as he assumeshis Lehrstuftl he designates West
Berlin, which has only just been encircled by the Wall, as the terrain and subject
matter of all his teaching activities, structuring these in an intense cycle of theo-
retical and design seminars, the results of which are systematically published by
hiq assistants,ll,These publications be-ar witness to the resolutely rationalist twist
Ungers gives to his teaching, encouraging his students to tease out the syntaxes NOAH'S ARKS
and architectural types latent in the structures and elementary programs of the Oswald Mathias Ungers, pro¡ect for student
accommodation ¡n Enschede, Netherlands, 1964
GfoJ\stadt. These large-scale programs, together with the constructive and formal
sÍsiems associated with them, are also addressed in seminars and publications
focusing specifically on these topics, and anticipating subsequent investigations
on the architecture of bigness by several decades.l2 The projects developed by
the students under Ungers's direction explore, in situ and with striking vigor, the
ways in which these elementary programs interact or are mixed together, extract-
ing from them geometricaliy ordered typologies with clearly asserted figures. The
THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTER

heritage of Constructivism, explored on study trips to the Soviet Union, mani-

festly inform these projects, which, as Kenneth Frampton puts it, "seem to fuse
two fundamentally antithetical traditions: on the one hand. the Russian
avant-gardist thrust toward monumental and dynamic structural form; on the
other, a fragmentary Piranesian poetic appropriate to the devastated iandscape
ol Berlin." 13
In the course of these five years, in which he will construct only his project lor
the large Márkisches Viertel ensemble, IJngers flings himself body and soul into
teaching and into elucidating what he considers to be the fundamental concepts
or themes of architecture. The whole teaching program he sets up as professor and
then director of the school works toward a rational anamnesis of the history of
architecture and its corpus, with Berlin acling al one and the same time as palette
and receptacle. To stimulate this anamnesis, Ungers invites numerous foreign
architects and critics to Berlin, including Peter Blake, Lucius Burkhardt, Giancarlo
de Carlo, James Stirling, Shadrach Woods, Louis Kahn, Colin Rowe, or Peter Cook,
and in 1965 even hosts a congress ofTeam 10 architects, although their sociological \\\\
bent, leavened with a pinch of Germanophobia, does not necessarily make them
RADICALITY 1

very receptive to his empathy for history and the existing.la However, Ungers does Student proiect, in Schnellbahn und Gebáude,
TU Berlin, December'1966
not seek interlocutors solely in the present, and it is during this period that he
develops an intellectual and emotional relationship with Schinkel's muvre that
will lead him to see this body of work as a masterful condensation o-f the essential
principles of architecture, which in his view are the coincidentia oppositorum, the
primacy of the idea, transformation, or morphological metamorphosis, the inter-
pretation of tradition and of the genius loci, and Unity in diversity.ls For Ungers,
all of the morphological lessons of the master are most clearly legible in the archi-
tect's interventions in the Glienicke park in Potsdam, in this Havel Landschaft
designed as a scattered collection ofedifices "d reaction poétique" ("ofpoetic reac-
tion")-and as a genuine "cittd qnaloga",("analogous city"). As he would later say:
"Glienicke was practically the textbook for my theoretical work in Berlin."16

EXILE
In December 1967, againsl the backdrop of student protest sweeping across Berlin,
IJngers chairs an international congress at the TU on architectural theory, to which
he has invited an esteemed collection of speakers, inciuding Sigfried Giedion,
Julius Posener, Reyner Banham, Ulrich Conrads, André Corboz, and Colin Rowe.
However, the event is cut short when a crowd of students bursts into the room RADICALITY 2
Student project for Leipziger Platz (Eckart
brandishing a banner: "All houses are beautiful:go out and build!" Even worse, Re¡ssinger), ¡n Plátze und Strassen, TU Berlin,
the students will soon stigmatize the Márkisches Viertel as symbolizing the social June 1967

order that must be overturned. Ungers, whose reformist spirit has little in com-
mon with these moves to break with the past, experiences the episode as a brutal
rejection. Perplexed, the architectural theorists gradually scatter, and Ungers
trails Colin Rowe through Berlin's bookshops and on long walks around the city.
Rowe, who will later declare that he gleaned his deepest understanding of Berlin's
texture that winter with Ungers as his guide, cannot fail to feel a certain affinity
for the cultivated dimension of his colleague's intellectual project. In a gesture of
empathy he will soon regret, seeing it as his greatest mistake, he suggests that
Ungers join him in Cornell and take charge of the architecture school there.
A year later, Ungers burns his bridges and moves with his family to Ithaca, NY,
precisely as a wave of student protest unfurls in Cornell. By the 1960s, under the
13 Kenneth Frampton,"O. lvl. Ungers and the Architecture of
Coincidence," ¡il O. M. Ungers, Work ¡n Pragress,1976-1980,
IAUS no. 6 (New York, l98l): 1.
14 Wjth the notable exception of Peter and Allison Smithson,
whose nterest for the "as found" resonate rather lntimately
witr Unqers s ow- preoccupat ols.
l5 Oswald lvlathias U^gers, F've Lesson" f.or Schrnkel s
Work," in: Ihe Cornell Journal af Arch¡tec¿ure I (New York,
1981)i 118-19.
16 'Die Rationa isie'ung des Bestehe.den, .: ibid.. p.10.
English translation in Log 16 (summer 2009), p.7Z
l7 Oswald and Lselotte Ungers,Kommunen in der neuen
Welt, 1 740 -1 971 (Cologne, 1972).
leadership of Colin Rowe and the Texas Rangers, Cornell has become the Ameri-
can Mecca of Neo-Corbusian "space talk" and of a "contextualist" urbanism that
draws inspiration from the pochés in Nolli's plan of Rome 0747) and from all the
compositional precedents found in classical cities. When Ungers arrives at the
lchooJ, tlrls ambition of
reconciling the "theaters of prophecy" (the masterpieces
of ¡ngd.er4 architecture) with the "theaters of memqrry" (the fabric of ancient
cities) is on the verge of taking a more conservative turn, both aesthetically and
pótlticattv. For the "contexturalists," Rome is the "open" city par excellence (in
Karl Popper's sense), and Colin Rowe organizes increasingly frequent trips there
for his students.
Although he has much in common with Rowe, Ungers's belief in architec-
ture's ability to embody and intensify the site is much more radical than this
Lo!19n of formal bricolage, which conceives architecture's mission as melding
with and simultaneously activating a context. Furthermore,_Uqgprs-lq Rationalist
Agg4da d{ygs.him -to confront the reality of contemporary urban situations more
resolutely, making use in his morphological urbanism of the fashionable analyti- URBAN GENETICS
c4J.tgols of the era: modeling, simulation, and computers. Very soon, as with Oswald Mathias Ungers, Lysander New City,
Ithaca. 1970
Scharoun in Berlin, fhe entente cordiale between Rowe and Ungers collapses and
is replaced first by mutual incomprehension and subsequently by turf wars within
the school; clearly, all the initiatives undertaken by the recently appointed chair
to give a new direction to its teaching, such as inviting the Team 10 members to
teach as guest lecturers, do not facilitate matters.
There is something of a sense of starting over again in Ungers's exile in Ithaca.
With his wife, Liselotte, he begins enthusiastically studying the movement that
led religious or utopian communities, which had met with scant acceptance in
Europe, to emigrate to America in order to live in keeping with their principles,
viewing hippy communities as their heirs.17 Deeply affected by the cultural and
ideological transformations unfolding in the West, he is naturally inclined to draw
lessons from them. However, in this atmosphere of pedagogical conflict, his exile
also comes to resemble time spent in the wilderness. Isolated, cut off lrom his
professional roots, Ungers finds himself in a kind of dead end and his only real

EXILE
Oswald Mathias Ungers at Cornell, surrounded
by the Texas Rangers: Werner Sel¡gmann,
&t. Fred Koetter, Jerry Wells, l97l
&*:,
THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTER

"BORING FASCIST'
Rem Koolhaas ¡n front of the Architectural
Association in London, c¡rca 1970

wellspring of energy is in his Studio of Architectural and Regional Design, among

the handful of active students attracted by his reputation. In 1972, the year in
which The Rolling Stones bring out their famous Exile on Main Street, a new
student joins him in lthaca. Taller and more determined than most of the other
students, he cannot fail to be noticed in the school: "Colin Rowe used to ask
loudly,'So who on earth is this cool ass?"'18

ARGHIPELAGO
Born at the end of the war in Rotterdam, a city devastated by bombing, Rem
Koolhaas acquired a latent interest in the architecture and the imaginary of the
Gro/Sstadt at a very early age from his maternal grandfather-one of the great
Dutch architects of Dudok's generation. However, his first notions of the world
seem to have been shaped on the other side on the world, in post-colonial Indo-
nesia, where he spent four years (1952-1956): "My first awareness of archipelago
was in Indonesia, as a child. I was fascinated that there were more than 400 islands
... The word always had an incredible resonance. It symbolized the separateness,
but also the larger entity of something. It is a really poetic model of both separat-
ed and closed systems ... It seemed to have a great relevance in conditions where
the whole had been broken. It became a very verifiable model to me then of, let's
say, the closest you could come to entity and unity in the contemporary world."1e
He adds that this intense experience proves highly liberating: "The tropics gave
the neurotic Northerner I was back then a kind of determined frivolity."zo
When the family returns to the Netherlands in 1956, the bold enterprise of
Brasilia, which he discovers through magazines, fires up the adolescent's dreams
of architecture:'411 I wanted was to be an architecf, aBrazllian architect. Nie-
meyer... I really thought that I would emigrate to Brazil ..."21 However, other
passions later take center stage, in particular writing. At the age of sixteen, shocked
by a National Geographic article describing the new attractions of Disneyland, he
flings himself into writing a novel, Johann in Disneylandl.lll w_as fascinated by
Disneyland because it demonstrated that the artificial can be better, more oom-
plex, and more efficient than reality; that it is also the only way to respond to
the.demands of the masses, to these very large groups ...22" His taste for the cine-
ma and for screenwriting also takes off when Koolhaas forms a friendship with
a schoolmate, Rene Daalder, who shares his instinct for tracking down the taboos
of the era, in particular the most repressed taboo of all in postwar Dutch society:
1B Elia Zenghelis, in a private conversation, December 2007
19 "Archipelago," in: "Rem Koolhaas A-Y" conversation
with Beatriz Colomina, El Croqu¡s 134/ 135 (Nladrid, 2007): 379.
20 "Ladeuxiémechancede I'architecture moderne," in:
L'Arch¡tectute d'aujourdhul 238 (Paris, April 1985): 2.
21 Jacques Lucan, Patrice Noviant, and Bruno Vayssiére,
"Rem Koolhaas: Amsterdam-Nord," iff Arch¡tecture
Mouvement Cont¡nul¿e 6 (Paris,1984): 16-33.
22 Olivier Boissiére and Dominique Lyon, "Entretien avec
Rem Koolhaas," iil Arch¡tecture: réc¡ts, f¡gures, f¡ct¡ons,
Cah¡ers du CCI no.l (Paris,1986): 79-84.
23 "La deuxiéme chance de l'architecture moderne," int. cit.,
1985, p. 2.
24 Bart Lootsma, "Now Switch off the Sound and Reverse
the Film: Koolhaas, Constant, and Dutch Culture in the 1960s,"
in: H u nch 1 (Rotterdam, 1999): 162.
25 lnt. cit. with Olivier Boissiére and Dominique, Lyon,l986.
26 Bart Lootsma, art. cit., p.152
27 Quoted in ibid., pp.157-58.
28 lbid.. o.162.
29 "The C¡ty ofthe Future: H-talk with Constant about New
Babylon," Haagse Posi Amsterdam, August 6,1966 (repro-
duced in an English translation in lvlartin van Schaik and
Otakar lVacel (eds.), Ex¡t Utop¡a: Architectural Pravacat¡ons'
1956^76 (Ny'Lnicc. 2002). l0-13.
Germany. "I wanted to become a filmmaker, and I forgot my dreams ol architec-
ture to become a scriptwriter, then a journalist."23 They both become central
figures in 1,2,3, etc., an avant-garde group with a fluctuating membership, which
rejects the notion of cinéma d'auteur, arguing that cinema, llke jazz, is all about
teamwork, and that the actors, the director, camera crew, and scriptwriters ail
make an equally important-and interchangeable-contribution.2a

INTENSIFYING REALITY
As the only member of 7,2,3, etc. who is not a film student, Koolhaas becomes
something akin to the scribe in the group. "I wasn't really a gifted writer. I always
found it very diff,rcult. But I wanted to write for certain papers, ltke Rolling
Stone."2sIÍ 1963, he becomes a typographer and compositor, as well as a critic and
journalist, at fhe Haagse Post. Tltis magazine, close to the liberal right, is a rather
aggressive advocate of capitalism, the free market, and intellectual independence,
and to that end has recruited "a series of non-conflormist younger journalists,
a strange mix of intellectuals and ragamuffins, that were all to become part of
the sixties'avant-garde."26 The philosophy of this journai, which goes against the
grain of the emotional and 'alternative' style of the era, is defined concisely by
the writer, painter, and boxer Armando, who is in charge of its cultural section;
"Not moralizing or interpretrng (art-rfi.cing) the realit¡ but intensifying it. Starting
point: an uncompromising acceptance of reality.... Working method: isolating,
annexing... Facts are more interesting than commentaries and guesses... most
NETWORK
"Haagse Post (Koolhaas): And then the t¡ma
has come for New Babylon .., When that moment
has arrived, will ¡t cover the entire surface of the
earth?
Constant: Yes, ¡t will indéed. A network of sectors
will span the globe. I have abandoned the ¡dea of
the c¡ty as a kind of node, th¡s round shape marked
on the map like a red blot. I am thinking about
a very open structure, entirely coherent, so that you
can travel through it, and with all the fragments
of the landscape integrated w¡thin it.
Haagse Post: Like a football ¡n a net.
Constant: Yes, I¡ke a net draped over the globe.
And ¡n the meshes of this nét l¡fe w¡ll unfold ..."
Constant Nieuwenhuys, New Babylon, in Haagse
Post, August 6,1966

critics are the bastards ofjournalism... These bastards have to leave the stage."zt
The articles and interviews that Koolhaas writes from 1964 on, exploring con-
temporary figures from the world of cinema, literature, architecture, and the arts
(Fellini, Hermans, Le Corbusier ...), are particular caustic gems of this cold, ratio-
nal, and literal conception ofjournalism, which deliberately ignore the hierarchy
of facts, viewing the interviewee's gestures or their secretary's outfits as being just
as important as what is said in the interview.
In 1966, Koolhaas moves into the limelight al Haagse Posl when he steps up
to dissect-with the clinical spirit of the Nu1-Journalism-the ideas, motifs, and
figures involved in the Provo protest movement then spreading across the Nether-
lands. At the very height of events, the vigorous interview he conducts with the
movement's leaders portrays them "as a bunch of spoiled adolescents who have
taken Constant's ideas about the homo ludens a bit too literally," giving the
impression of being "confused reactionaries rather than progressives."2s How-
ever, Koolhaas's polemical spirit is seasoned with a good pinch of curiosity, and
perhaps his interview with Constant on his fantastic project for a nomadic and
networked city, New Babylon, heips to spark the young man's renewed interest
in architecture.2e A priori, the journalist and the ex Cobra/ex Situ artist have
nothing in common, yet when the latter explains to Koolhaas that the point is not
so much to change the worid but rather to anticipate its necessary evolution, the
utopian project suddenly assumes the speculative form of a scenario well suited
to illuminating and intensifying an emerging reality. In any event, just a year later,
when architecture historian Gerrit Oorthuys invites 1,2,3, efe. to take part in
a seminar on cinema and architecture at Delft University, Koolhaas explains to
his audience-and maybe convinces himself-that architecture is actually more
interesting, more important, and less boring than cinema.

3t
THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTER

LONDON
With hindsight, Koolhaas has always claimed that his background in screenwrit-
ing, compositing, and journalism provided a perfect preparation for architecture.
And so, in 1968, it is with this intellectual baggage that he moves to London to
study at the Architectural Association. The four years he spends at the AA are
both stimulating and disappointing. Koolhaas is entirely out of step with the
Flower Power mood, the Pop wave, and all the counterculture paraphernalia that
have taken hold of the institution, which at the time is dominated by members
of the Archigram group. With this prevailing ambience, after just three weeks,
Peter Cook is already stigmatizing the newcomer as the _:.:bori!g fascist." At the
same time, Koolhaas benefits to the utmost from the visual media revolution
underway in this anything-goes setting. What's more, the AA is not a monolithic
block, and a "Formalist" student, who is convinced by the power of architecture
and fascinated by the Constructivists-and who spends his summers tracking
down relics of their work in the Soviet capital-can certainly find people on the
same wavelength. As a result, he grows very close to Elia Zenghelis, a young
Greek teacher who feels passionately about Modernist heroes (Mies, Scharoun,
Niemeyer), is steeped in the history of cities (Léon Krier will also join his studio),
and is, like Koolhaas, repelled by the students' laid-back attitudes. As early as
1969-10, both architects, together with their respective spouses, the couple ofcou-
ples who will lound OMA five years later, have already formed a school within
the school.
The AA is also a good vantage point that allows Koolhaas to tune into more
convincing ideas than those emanating from the AA, and in particular those of
Italian Architettura Radicale. Its protagonists, taking an approach diametrically
opposite to the fun vibe of Archigram, coolly appraise in "critical utopias" or
"counter-utopias" the vanishing points of the modern production mechanisms
of architecture and urbanism, exacerbating these same processes, which they like
to describe in clinical or psychoanalytic terms (paranoia, schizophrenia, lobotomy,
etc.). Among these strange tales, it is above all the "image-based discourse" of
Superstudio's Continuous Monument, with its narrative mode akin to that of
editing and scriptwriting, that grabs Koolhaas's attention. Exceedingly ambigu-
TRAVELLING MONUMENT
ous, this disturbing fable of a ubiquitous monument colonizing the world demon- Superstudio,The Continuous Monument, 1969
strated the power of architecture. And if Superstudio was able to illustrate this ln the desert (top) and over Berl¡n (bottom):
"The Wall leaving the old c¡ty untouched"
Utopia so realistically via existing cities and landscapes, perhaps this proved that
the matrix of this Utopia was already there, latent, within the reality of those sites.
Furthermore, the Monument had something of the opacity of a wall, and on one
of the montages, its white, abstract mass could be seen superimposed (super-
fluously?) on the Wall that had already divided Berlin, and Europe, for almost
ten years.

THE WALL
In the course of the summer of 1911, Koolhaas is therefore following his most
profound intuitions when he decides to devote his field trip to the Berlin Wall; 30 Rem Koolhaas, "Fieid Tripr A (A) lvlemoit" in: S,M,L,XL,
ap. ciL,p.222.
twenty years later, he will explain that it is the shock produced by this experience 31 lbid.,p.226.
32 lbid., p.228.
that suddenly turned him into a "serious student." This twofold rendezvous with 33 lbid., p.221.
34 lbid.,p.227.
the "blank page" ol Germany and the "taboo" of architecture holds a series of 35 G. Colli and lvl. Montinari,F,edrlch N¡etzsche: Nachlass

surprises for him. First of aIl, he realizes that, paradoxically, it is the West, the 1882-1884,KgA.Bd.10, l\,4unich, 1999, p. 531. English
translation from Jaspers, Nle¡zsche, 1965 translation by
"open society," that is encircled by the Wall and made free by it. However, he C.F. Wallraff and F. J. Schmitz.
also realizes that the Wall presents a series of iterations, with a stupelying variety
of situations and inflections, and that its disturbing presence is rife with plots:
'Apart from the daily routine of inspection-military in the East and touristic in
the West-a vast system of ritual in itself, the wall was a scrípt, effortlessly blurring
divisions between tragedy, comedy, melodrama."3o In order to characterize the
lessons from this experience, Koolhaas has coined the concept of"reverse epiph-
anies." "The Berlin Wall was a very graphic demonstration of the power of archi-
tecture and some of its unpleasant consequences... In comparison, the sixties'
dream of architecture's liberating potential-in which I had been marinating for
years as a student-seemed feeble rhetorical play. It evaporated on the spot."31 He
adds, even more emphatically: "The Wa1l suggested that architecture's beauty
was directly proportional to its horror." So much for the smug optimism that in
his view has inspired the AA s teaching. Furthermore, the very impossibility of
expressing the Wall's significance through its formal analysis as an object pro-
vides him with definitive conhrmation of the "less is more" doctrine: "In fact, in
narrowly architectural terms, the Wali was nol an object but an. erasure, a freshly
created absence. For me, it was a first demonstration of the capacity of the void-
oi"rróttrlngness-to 'function' with more efficiency, subtlet¡ and flexibility than
any object you could imagine in its place.-I! wag a warning that-in architecture-
absence would always win a contest with presence."32 So much for zealous de-
fenders of the objecr and lor the semiotic arsenal his lriend Jencks is just about
to launch. In Koolhaas's eyes, the bomb of Post-Modernism will never be power-
ful enough to destroy this obvious insight. Finally, the whole catalog of inflec-
tions and metamorphoses displayed by the dispositive according to the specific
situations it crosses through seem to Koolhaas to teach a striking new lesson:
"I had never seen such a textbook demonstration of dialecllcs since witnessing the
drill of the guards at Lenin's tomb on Red Square: a fantastically intimidating
goose step-legs lifted higher than those of chorus girls-that disintegrated meters
in front of the Kremlin gate into a motley group of loose-limbed Petrushkas."33
will also remind
These morphological iterations of the various states of the Wall
A HEARTBREAKING BEAUTY
him of "the sophistication of Schinkel's thematic variations on architectural Rem Koolhaas, "The Berl¡n Wall as Architecture"
themes at Schloss Glienicke."3a ( r971 )

Clearly introduced from the stance of hindsight in his text Field Trip: A (A)
Memoir, written twenty years later, the references- to dialectics and to Schinkel.
allude directly to the second discovery of this field trip, for Koolhaas will also
stumble upon the mine of publications from Ungers's seminars in Berlin. This
encounter, as decisive as his encounter with the Wa1l, is a pure and simple revela-
tion, which resonate deeply with some of his intuitions. What Koolhaas thus dis-
covers in the heart of the blank page ol Germany is not solely a confirmation that
reality (the Wall) can be stranger than fiction (the Continuous Monument), but
also 4 {qmorislration that reality is itself pregnant with fictions that architecture,
alternating between the roles of analyst and midwife, can bring into the world. "To
,impregnate
the past and beget the future-let that be the present for me,"35 as
Nietzsche wrote. If the adventurous journey of OMA does indeed begin with "De-
lirious Berlin," it is not solely due to the reverse epiphanies the Wall provided to
Koolhaas, but thanks to the valuable testament he was insightful enough to detect
in the city.
THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTER

SHIP
In 1971, the "boring fascist" gives his presentation on "The Berlin'Wall as Architec-
ture" at the AA to an audience comprising Peter Smithson, Cedric Price, Charles
Jencks, Alvin Boyarsky, Elia Zenghelis, and the Archigrammesque teachers from
the school: "They were all there ... in a mood of semifestive, semicynical expec-
tation (this school was nothing if not fun). The images that appeared on the
screen-former conditions, concepts, workings, evolution, 'plots'-assumed their
positions in a sequence that was gripping almost beyond my control; words were
redundant. There was a long silence. Then Boyarsky asked ominously: 'Where do
you go from here?"'36
While the "polemical shock" of this presentation suddenly causes the teachers
from the school to "see him in a different light," his Berlin discoveries lead Kool-
haas to look beyond their heads and set his sights on a more distant horizon than
that of the AA. The project he embarks on subsequently, "Exodus, or the Volun-
tary Prisoners ofArchitecture," is a vessel specially chartered to carry him there.
This new scenario, with elements of both fable and manifesto, takes the form of
a colossal "metropolitan" strip flung across London, with its two parallel walls
hermetically enclosing a dozen "squares" designed as a series of collective monu-
ments. Branching out from this strip, which is intended to grow at the expense of
the existing city, are secondary strips, all identical, devoted to the private accom-
modation of voluntary prisoners and "cut through the most depressed slum areas
of the old London.... Their magnificent presence forces these slums to turn into
ghost towns and picturesque ruins."37 Exodus is thus a praying mantis, a splendid
succubus designed to drain every ounce of energy from its victim: "We witness
the Exodus of London. The physical structure of the old town will not be able to
stand the continuing competition of this new architectural presence. London as
we know it will become a pack of ruins."38
Koolhaas condenses within this project-with the Square of the Arts complete-
ly flattening the AA's environs-all the obsessions dear to his heart: the reverse
epiphanies of the Berlin Wal1, the powerful impact of Leonidov's Magnitogorsk
and j'social condensers," the "sympathy for the Devil" of Superstudio's immoral SHIP
Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghel¡s, w¡th Madelon
tales ... and the inebriating speculative acceleration he has discovered in Ungers's Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis
publications. This polemical project affirms that architecture is taking over from "Exodus, or the Voluntary Pr¡soners of Architecture"
(1972-74)
nature in the Metropolis: "Under the threat of doom, the common concern, that Map, plan, and aerial view of the main str¡p
is the fulfillment of all private desires within a subliminally collective and deliri-
ously permissive common effort, produces phantom proposals in the knowledge
that phantom reality is the only possible successor to the present reality short-
age."3e Clearly, Exodus already comprises, in the form of a contemplative Utopia,
"the vague idea" that will become the central theme in Delirious New York. Thaf
explains the numerous New York allusions Exodus will gradually take on board
(such as the silhouettes ofincandescent skyscrapers). Indeed, the fact that Kool-
haas always dates Exodus from 1972,when it serves as his final project at the AA,
should not lead us to forget that the first version will not be published until June
1973 and that it will not take on its definitive form unlll 1914, in other words, after
Koolhaas has reached his destination: Manhattan. Just like the square of the Cap-
36 lbid., p.231.
tive Globe that Koolhaas will add to the configuration during his stay in Cornell 37 "Exodus, orthe Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture,"
(conceiving it as the Strip's university), Exodus is in fact an itinerant school, a iil Ex¡t Utopia, see note 29, pp. 236-53.
38 lbid.,p.239.
vessel that, eager to take advantage of Ungers's teaching, will remain moored in 39 lbid.,p.253.
40 "La deuxiéme chance de l'architecture moderne,"
the port oflthaca for a year. int. cit., p.3.
TRIANGLE
When Koolhaas arrives in Cornell in 1912, the conflict between the two factions
within the school (Rowe/Ungers, English/Germans) is at its height. Rowe, who
has set off with his Urban Design studio down a clearly retrospective route, and
who is gradually assembling the theoretical ingredients of Collage City. is increas-
ingly entrenched in Nolli's Rome and in his Neo-Modernist/Neo-Classical dream
of the,museum-city. Koolhaas has given a cruel account of his first interview with
Rowe in'the school's basement, where he worked: "There was a dreadful smell,
not much light, and a huge ailing dog, covered in red spots amid its black fur, like
Tschumi's project for La Villette. A solitary black student was working at a table, i l,,
t tlilt
and leaning over him, Colin Rowe was whispering into his ear: 'PaIazzo Pilli,
Piazza Navona ...' as ilthese were pornographic expressions."ao Opposed to this
Modernism severed from its social program ("permitting the enjoyment of uto-
MODERN FORTRESSES
pian poetics without one being obliged to suffer the embarrassment of utopian Oswald Mathias Ungers (with Rem Koolhaas
politics"), which encompasses all the seeds of the Post-Modernist collapse he will and Peter Allison), project for the Landwehrkanal,
Berl¡n, 1973
argue against in his book Delirious New York, the young Koolhaas becomes even
more firmly devoted to the difTicult-yet in his eyes more promising-cause of
the architect he has moved to Cornell to work with.
In his relations with Ungers, Koolhaas assumes a role that is new to him, that
of coach and collaborator, which he will later sum up in the term ghostwriting:
an exercise olactive empathy that entails placing oneself within another person's
theoretical imaginary in order to assist him in expressing and focusing his ideas
(while inventing oneself in the process). The other as a vehicle of oneself. This
year of collaboration is the one in which Ungers realigns his focus to concentrate
on actual projects and on Germany. Koolhaas therefore works with him on sever-
al competition entries (Russelsheim, Düren), and on a densification strategy for ";l:
/;1"
the Landwehrkanal neighborhood in Berlin, which incorporates four monumen-
tal interventions, perfectly distinct lrom one another, yet all linked by a new
subway line. While these "modern fortresses" reflect the conceptual games and
morphological inversions dear to Ungers, coupled with the topics tackled in his
teaching in Berlin (such as the coupling of architecture and infrastructure), they
can also be viewed as not-so-distant relatives of the collective monuments of
Oswald Mathias Ungers (w¡th Rem Koolhaas
Exodus, which that would have disbanded in order to migrate into the city. A few and Arthur Ovaska), project for the L¡chterfelde
Fourth Bing, Berlin, 1974
months later, Koolhaas will collaborate on another Berlin project, this time for
the suburb olLichterfelde. In order to incorporate a project for a bypass, intended
to cut through this zone of suburban villas, Ungers picks up once again on his
hypercontextual approach. The outcome of this extrapolation of the existing is
an entirely pedestrianized neighborhood oI urban villas, segmented by long
buildings with public walkways running along the top of them; these alleyways
link up with the area covering the bypass, and the entire ensemble finally culmi-
nates in high-rise apartments, which respond to the isolated monolithic blocks
found in the environs. The project thus picks up on and reinterprets all the ingre-
dients olthe site to shape a three-dimensional system of circulation, allowing this
suburban district, through densification, to dse to the challenge of an infrastruc-
ture that, although created to cut through its fabric, would instead be absorbed by "WARRING BROTHERS"
that sellsame urban labric. Colin Rowe and Oswald Math¡as Ungers ¡n lthaca

The year that Koolhaas spends in intimate intellectual communion with Un-
gers in Ithaca is an extremely fruitful and instructive experience for him. It is
there, while completing Exodus, that he will mature and hone the ingredients of
THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTER

his theoretical narrative about New York (the paranoid critical method, the grid,
etc.). It is there, too, inspired by Alvin Boyarsky's('Chicago á la carte,", that he
begins to collect the postcards that witl make up his own "image-based digcgyrse.l'
It is in Ithaca, too, on the eve of the oil crisis, that he reads -The I ímits to Growth,
the first book to resolutely sound the alarm about the state ofplanetary resources,
and draw attention to a global phenomenon that Koolhaas himself describes as
a "rcalily shortage." Finally, it is there that he discovers, in the window of the
campus store, a copy of,Learningfrom Las Vegas, which leads him to fhe"realiza-
lioq.that you could no longer write manifestos but that you could write about
cities as if they themselves were a manifesto."al In other words, it is in Ithaca,
in close proximity to Ungers, that the ghostwriter begins to develop the notion of
a " relrg aetiy e m,anifesto " for Manhattan.

OMU/OMA 'e
l)
a-.
In7973, when Koolhaas ends up moving to New York to conduct his studies on : 1.1

"Manhattanism" and develop the idealized projects that will inform the annex to i{
his book Delirious New York,Ungers has almost broken out of the orbit of Team 10 HATCHING
and is focusing once again on the intuitions and principles that have originally OMA poster,1976

served as his lodestones. This personal recentering corresponds to a more wide-

spread critical development on the international scene, y$ch Aldo Rossi then
promotes at the Milan Tiiennale under the banner ory'ylliletlura Razionqle. ;
,
\w
Several different strands will come together more or less spontaneously in this
Tendenza, with its diverse representatives (Rossi, Grassi, ScofaJi, the Krier broth-
e¡s, the New York Five, Stirling, Superstudio, Botta, Bofhl ...) soon being nick-
named the Rals. Koolhaas will not_escape this label entirely and indeed, Jencks will
coin the specif ic lringe concept of Surrationalism to characterize him (and Hejduk ).
The more or less common denominator for all these architects is their shared con-
viction that architecture is not about problem-solving, but is instead a cultivated
art, rich with a whole series of precedents in the corpus of concepts, forms, and
f,tgures, capable of teasing out lrom reality (the reality of the site? Of the program?
Of history?) !!_-e¡aqs-to transmogrify, typologies to inflect, motifs to refine, or laten-
.9i_eq
to reveal. The,lorms of architecture are not indexed on elementary functions,
but are significant in and of themselves and relalively autonomous. Ungers does
not need to make any rhetorical effort to feel at home in the heart of this Neo-
Rationalist nebula, and indeed he will be viewed, on an equal footing with Rossi,
as one of its principal sources. A text he will publish in 1916, Planning Criteriq,
plearly situates his original position within this galaxy. Alongside the other archi-
tectural principles that he puts forward (the distinction between the planned and
the accidental, morphological declension, the urban dimension of architecture,
and the principle of adaptability), the most significant is still the il_dia1e_ct-ic4! re-!a.
tlq!¡hip wilh e¡istlng reality," this ambition to Siitonsifl¡ the place," which he
emphasizes as sharing a relative affinity withthe.as found of fhe Smithsons or the
contextualism of Colin Rowe.a2 Quite apparently, if Ungers's oeuvre becomes such
;ñ;tof ióféienóe among self-styled Neo-Rationalists, it is not because it rep-
resents their shared doxa, but because it manifests, to a much greater extent than
the work of any other architect, an ambition to overcome the dramatic tension
between the rational order and the dense, contingency-laden nature ofthe real. ISLANDS
OMA and Oswald Math¡as Ungers, competition
In l9'74, after a "charge ofthe dinosaurs" has forced him to resign from his role entr¡es for Roosevelt lsland,1975
as chairman, Ungers moves back to Cologne, but keeps his position as professor
 at Cornell, where other students from Europe, such as Hans Ko1lhoff, come to
join his school. As he shuttles back and forth between Cologne and Ithaca, his
de rigueur stopover is a conversation with Koolhaas at New York airport. This
phase, when both (re)formulate their theoretical positions, is thus a period of
intense exchanges between the two men. "'We understood each other so well,
Koolhaas would say, that in the end we could work almost telepathically."43 They
grow so close that when Koolhaas sets up the Office for Metropolitan Architec-
ture (on January I,1975), he presents it as being almos[ a twin studio to that of
Ungers. In the journals in which their work is published together-and where
OMA is presented as being based simultaneously in New York, London, and Ber-
lin-their close ties are made perfectly explicit: "OMA consists of Rem Koolhaas
and Elia Zenghelis, with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis, and works in
association with O. M. Ungers."
METAPHORS
Oswald Mathias Ungers, C¡ty Metaphors, at the
ISLANDS exh¡b¡tion Man TransForms, NewYork, 1976

In 1975,OMA and Ungers both take part in a competition for Roosevelt Island in
the East River in New York.The contrast between their two proposals iilustrates
the varie{y of interpretations that may be produced by acting out Ungers's con-
cept of..¡rorphological urbanism. OMAs project is defined as "a distillation of
elements, concepts, and strategies that have evolved on the Mother island."aa
Its underlying principle involves annexing this island district to Manhattan by in-
dexing it on the city grid, and creating four new blocks, which combines rows of
synthetic brownstones (glass, stone, plastic, aluminum, marble) and very high
buildings, all arranged to form one single wall when seen from Manhattan. De-
spite this calculated reutilization of the ingredients of Manhattan urbanism, this
project, which is rooted in the typical contrast "between 'agitated' low-rise and
'serene'high-rise elements,"a5 nevertheless cuts a poor figure alongside the iconic
force of Ungers's proposal, which transposes the actual plan of Manhattan's lay-
out to Roosevelt Island. This project takes the form of a micro-Manhattan, with
a grid of twenty-eight blocks arranged around a miniature replica of Central Park.
All the ingredients of the genius /ocl (blocks, streets, avenues, the park) are thus
transposed and precipitated into a kind of laboratory in which their process of
evolutive metamorphosis is accelerated.
As becomes apparent here, while Koolhaas regularly contributes to Ungers's
German projects as a ghostwriter, it is in turn Koolhaas's influence that leads his
friend to turn his attention to New York. Indeed, when Ungers decides in 1916 Io
offer his first Summer School for Cornell students, he quite naturally selects Man-
hattan, and its particular typology of the,urban block. This session coincides with
the opening of the group show Man TransForms (conceived by Hans Hollein) at the
Cooper Hewitt Museum, for which Ungers develops an exhibition design that sys-
tematically pairs a series of city plans with images and concepts that have translated
41 Rem Koolhaas, lntervlewwith Peter Fischli, in: Las yegas
and interpreted them. The text he writes for the catalog, "Designing and Thinking Stud¡o: lmaqes from the Arch¡ves of Robett Venturi
with Images, Metaphors, and Analogies," advocates a morphological idealism that and Den¡se Scott Brown (Frankfurt,2008),
¿2 Oswald lVatrias Ungers. Plan^ing Criteria.' inr Lofds
draws its references from Kant's "transcendental schematism." The imagination lnlernational 1' (1976).
43 "La deuxiéme chance de l'architecture moderne,"
is the-pritraipal faculty that makes it possible to extract from reality patterns or im- int. cit., p.3.
44 "Roosevelt lsland/1975," in. Arch¡tectural Des¡gn, u01. 47,
ages that can in turn be manipulated and transformed. The imagination is thus the no. 5 (London, December 1977): 348.

principáI lever of a dialectical relationship with reaiity, and the role of architecture
-E;,
' has always been "conceptualizing an unrelated, diverse reality through the use of
images, metaphors, analogies, models, signs, symbols and allegories."a6
45 loid.
46 Oswald Mathias Ungers, "Designlng and Thinking with
lmages, lVetaphors, and Analog es," ini Oswa d lvlathias
Ungers (ed.), Ihe Urban Block and Gatham C¡ty, Metaphors
and \letam orphosis (lthaca, 1976).
 THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTEB

The summer session on New York ("Gotham City: Metaphors and Metamor-
phosis") therefore aims explicitly to develop this approach of morphological ur-
banism with reference to the urban block. The students first of all undertake.
,a systematic analysis of a range of examples that illustrate the formal variety of
the block. which confirms the relative independence of this type vis-á-vis the "cri-
. f.e,tiO+..9{.ly-nctiglg-1itl" and fosters combinatory agitity in juggling with these
references. Hoyg¡1q¡,!h,e. prime aim of the session is to gxplore the specific poten-
tial of the block in New York, where, rather than determining the city's urban
conlex! (as in Barcelona), it is to a large extent determined by this context:
"The relationship of housing to urban design in Manhattan ... is a backward one,
the housing forced to conform to the rigid street and ownership pattern."aT In
stark contrast tó those architects who have come up with ingenious ways to trans-
gress the grid, considering it to be an anti-context, or who have seen it instead
as a foil to their alternative models for a better metropoliS (.Le _Corbusier, Buck-
_ miq9lg¡ Fulte-r, Yona F{edman), the students are encouraged to recognize and
heighten the grid's iconic power. The influence of Koolhaas's studies on Manhat-
tanism is apparent, right down to the references (Ferriss, Hood, Corbett) pro-
+ posed by Ungers and his assistants (Werner Goehner, Hans Kohlhoff, and Arthur
Ovaska) to justify their profound attachment to the genius of the grid and to
N-gry York's urbanism. For his part, the ghostwriter makes the most of this mor-
phological approach. which he will indeed attribute. retroactively. to the heroes
of Delirious New York.

THE URBAN VILLA

IJngers's decision to focus on the topic of the block in his first Summer School
is certainly related to the typological agenda of Neo-Rationalism. A few months
earlier, the young Léon Krier, a proponent of the most "revisionist" version of
the Tendenza, had organized an exhibition in London uiticizing Rossi's show
and reserving a central role for Ungers's Guvre: "The purpose [of my exhibition]
was to establish some common basis for discussing urbanism and architecture
beyond the then fashionable political categories. That is why the exhibits were
URBAN BLOCK
organized in a typological order: the quarter, the street, the square, the block, the Collect¡ve strip of student projects,Gotham City,
park, the urban fabric, the monument, and so on."48 Even if Ungers is not entirely NewYork,1976

in tune with Krier's message, this exhibition, which called vigorously for historic
centers to be preserved and lor the "reconstruction of the European city," had
made a considerable contribution to setting him once again at the heart of the
architectural scene in Europe. It 1976-17, while Ungers is actively canvassing
several institutions in Germany to try to promote his views on architecture and
obtain commissions again, his teaching in Cornell continues to explore the topic
of the block, but in situations that are much more critical than Manhattan's: Buf-
falo's fragmented urban fabric, devitalized small towns around Ithaca, etc. Fasci-
nated by the problem of urban decline he observes in the United States, and by
the associated suburbanization of the surrounding countryside, Ungers sends his
students out to develop site-specif,rc projects that can stem this phenomenon or
overcome its contradictions. The topic of the urban villa that he chooses for his 47 ArrhJr Ovaska. New Yo.k CiLy: Urba4 l\4o'phology.
. Historical Precedent for Design," in ibid.-
second Summer School (1977) corresponds precisely to this ambition. 48 Léon Krier, "Looking Back without Ange\" in: Exit Utop¡a,
see note 29. pp.309-14.
This second session, held in Berlin, marks Ungers's return to the city, almost .i 49 Oswald l\lathias Unqers. The Urban Vil a: A Prototype
ten years after leaving the TU. His two assistants/collaborators (Kollhoff and r, for lnner City Residences," in: Oswald lvlathias Ungers,
,
!
Hans Kollhoff , and Arthur Ovaska, Ihe Urb an Ví I I a (llhaca,
-O:z¿5¡u¡ are with him, as is Peter Riemann, another of his German students in New Yo.k/Corogne. 1977).
Cornell, whose skills as a draftsman he particularly appreciates. Riemann's role

ffiM
is to provide drawings, maps, and graphic analyses to underpin the arguments
on morphological urbanism that Ungers intends to develop, aimed at the city's
political decision-makers. Ungers's inlroductory statement for this session sounds
the alarm: "The city is now competing, particularly as far as the environmental
qualities are concerned, with life in the country. The future of the city therefore
depends entirely on the solution of the dichotomy between city and country. If

&iffi
the city is going to survive as a social, political, economic, and not the least as
a cultural entity, the survival is only possibie if living and environmental condi-
tions can be provided in the city similar to those of a more natural environment."ae
The oxymoronic type ol the "urban villa" (a hybrid of city and countryside) is
thus foregrounded as a model that could generate an ideal compromise between
the respective advantages of individual houses and collective apartment buildings,
and hence stem the hemorrhage ... by planning it.

@W
Berlin is the ideal arena to demonstrate this. In addition to the significant
urban "thinning" experienced by the city during this period, the model of the ur-
ban villa with changing uses over the course of time is illustrated with particular
clarity in Berlin's history. From the urban palazzo to the subdivided suburban
villa, the full spectrum of variants of this type is found in Berlin, to such an extent
that it offers scope to catalog the city's entire built environment. The categories
dreamt up by the students to categorize the highly varied structures they man-
aged to interpret as "villas as found'n testify to the breadth and range of this
MMMM@
spectrum and to the extraordinary potential of this type: alongside symmetrical,
square, romantic, bourgeois, ordinary, palatial, modern, suburban, monumental,
or Brutalist villas, we find tower-villas, castle-villas, industriai villas, vilias of the
_{ead qr vlllas of God, but also mini-villas, baby-villas, ruined or residuai villas,
rÁ-l
mobile, divorced, hairy villas, etc., and even "villas within villas"... A whole pan- Tl#t
wl
oply ofvariants is thus proposed, which offers scope to conceive of"conceptual ts{]
alternatives" to the standard models of the dispositive and to put forward a range
of new variants that will be able to regenerate, with materials drawn from its own
genetic code, an urban fabric threatened by decline. lna-nutshell, Ungers sees in
M
VILLAS AS FOUND AND PROPOSED
@
the urban villa an architectural organism that in and ofitselfsynthesizes the gene
Oswald Mathias Ungers et al,,The Urban V¡lla,
of urbanity, a microcity, a "city within the city," a precipitate of urbanism with Berl¡n,1977
which to imagine cities better able to ingest their suburbia and to withstand pres-
sures to simply dissolve into these. The urban villa is at one and the same time
the object, the instrument, and the model of a new dialectical contract between
the city and the countryside.
An intense seminar comprising twenty-four lectures is organized to accompany
this program. In addition to the German speakers (Sawade, Kleihues, Wewerka,
etc.), the entire avant-garde and rear guard of Rationalism, including Kenneth
Frampton, Bob Stern, Charles Moore, Peter Eisenman, Philip Johnson, Aldo
Rossi, Vittorio Gregotti, Alison and Peter Smithson, Hans Hollein, Rob Krier,
Carlo Aymonino, Massimo Scolari, and James Stirling, travel to Berlin to take
part. This input, which is intended to stimulate the students'work on the urban
villa, also feeds into the parallel strategic analysis that Ungers is developing, with
assistance from Riemann, on Berlin as a whole. However, it is during the ghost-
writer's visit that this reflection is really going to find its topic, direction, and style.
THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTER
DEMARCATION
When Koolhaas comes to join Ungers in Berlin for a few days, he has already
been back in London for nearly two years teaching at the AA with Zenghelis.
There, the two colleagues explore ways to bring about a reawakening of metropol-
itan architecture, and Koolhaas gradually exposes his students to the retroactive
manifesto he is writing as he assembles it, chapter by chapter. Through Zenghelis,
his studio in the AA maintains close links with Léon Kder's, although Krier's
slogan ("cities against megalopolises") is the exact opposite of the direction in
which Koolhaas is moving. In the mid-seventies, there are thus within the AA
"two cultural orientations on the theme of the design of the city and the metrop-
olis, stemming from the same critique against the urbanism of the CIAM con-
gresses, but pqoposing such different solutions that their protagonists were bound
to clash on the stage ofinternational events."50
In 1976, K¡ier worked on a competition project for the La Villette district in
Paris that attracted a fair degree of attention. He called it "A City within the City"
to spotlight his idea that a city is above all composed of relatively autonomous
neighborhoods, which must be designed like quasi cities, able to meet most of
their inhabitants' daily needs and structured by hierarchically organized groups
of open spaces and public buiidings.sl The project sketched out this ensemble as a
self-sufTicient neighborhood, clearly legible in the fabric of the city, with a park
offering vistas onto a number of landmark monuments (Invalides, Sacré-Cmur,
Eiffel Tower, Buttes Chaumont) that signaled the distant presence of other neigh-
borhoods. However, in order to underscore this autonomy and to emphasize the
function of neighborhoods in concentrating the city's urbanity, the final image
of the project portrayed this park metamorphosed into a vast natural expanse
from which distant monuments and their respective neighborhoods protruded
like reefs.
During the same period, Koolhaas also uses the expression "city within a city,"
but with reference to the New York skyscraper at the peak of its programmatic
congestion. He links the term in particular to the Rockefeller Center, which he
views as the apotheosis of Manhattanism: in addition to being an extreme exam-
ple of p*rogranrmatic compression, clamming several programs into one singie site,
-the ensemble comprises "an archeology of arc-hitectural philosophies," a superpo-
.s,ition of urbanisms.s2 In a nutshell, this idea of the "city within a ciIy" is funda-
mentally metropolitan for Koolhaas: an architectural congestion of the conflicting
components of the Gro/3stadt, nther than the ideal-classicai expression of the
neighborhood conceived as a minicity or as an urban village whose contradictions
are intrinsically resolved.
During this summer of 1971 , Koolhaas is immersed in assembling hisletroac-
",.{ye m-anifesto,
and is preparing a kind of prepublication preview that will be pub-
lished that same year in the journal Architectural Design, which devotes an entire
issue to OMA s work.53 Symptomatically, the notion of the archipelago crops up
in this preview to describe the "conceptual-metaphorical" project of The City of
the Captive Globe, which Koolhaas initially envisaged while he was in Ithaca as
a "square" within Exodus, and which he presents here as "a first, intuitive approx-
imation of the architecture of Manhattan, drawn before later research for Deliri-
ous New Yorkwould substantiate many of its conjectures."5a In this script, which
in his view synthesizes the grid's genius, the grid is described as "a dry archipela-
go where each block represents an individual'island'while the fast-moving traffic
40
COUNTERMODEL?
Top: "Panorama of the new quartier at an alt¡tude
of three hundred meters"
Bottom: "The promenade at dusk"
"lf, nowadays, the c¡ty park must st¡ll serve as
a substitute for distant nature, it will soon be the
cultivated landscape ¡tself, and not ¡ts ¡maginary
interpretation, that w¡ll have to form thé limits
of the urban quarters. One cannot resolve the con-
trad¡ction between town and country by spreading
the one ¡nto the other. One cannot destroy the city
without destroying the countryside, neither can
one build the landscape without bu¡lding the c¡ty.
The c¡ty w¡thin the c¡ty will also be the city with¡n
the countryside ... Looking from the vast loggias
of the quartier de La Villette, the v¡ew of cows and
of agricultural mach¡nes w¡ll soon be more familiar
to the cit¡zens than the village of Marie-Antoinette,"
Léon Krier, "Project for a New Quartier: A C¡ty
with¡n the C¡ty," Paris,1976
50 Roberto Gargjani, Rem Koalhaas/O'l,IA The Constructíon
of \4erve¡lles lLausanne, 2008), 53. Zenghelis also evokes
this rlvalry: "Rising above the mélée of the AA, Rem Koolhaas
and Léon Krier, aLready on the verge of settlng off on their
parallel yet radicallV opposed roots, couLd be seen as the rival
twins (even their names suggest this imaget Rem and Leo
Lea and Rem).Like Calvino's Cas¿/e of C¡ossed Destmleq my
studio became a school wlthln the school, a theatre of flgures
with contrasting characters, but who, on the whole, belleved
in the urgent need to endow architecture with its full force once
again." Elia Zenghe is, "Text and Architecture: Architecture as
fext," iil Ex¡t Utopia, see note 29, pp. 255-62.
51 Léon Krier "Projectfor a New Quartier (a city within the city)
ln the city of Parls jn the year 1976," in: Exit Utop¡a, see note 29,
pp.277-98.
52 Cl. Del ¡ r¡aus New york, (Rotterdam, 1994), p. 192 At the
t me, Koo haas also used the expression "city within a city" to
refer to Ol\,44's idealized project for the Welfare Palace Hotel
(1976-77).
53 Arch¡tectural Des/g¿ vol. 47, no. 5 ( London, 1977).
54 "The City of the Captive Globe" (1972), in: ibid., p.331.
55 lbid.,p.332.
that ensures their relative isolation corresponds to the water." Contrary to the
conlederation ol neighborhoods advocated by Krier. each island celebraies radi-
cally different values, "all in the reassuring certainty that the unity of the archi-
pelago can only be expressed and reinforced through the maximum heterogeneity
of each of the component islands." Indeed, this dry archipelago brings together
.-:.¡ i":.'f i
gn an allegorical plane "the ingredients of OMAs private Valhalla," and it is .,, \\'r:
no surprise to find that this collection includes-alongside the great highlights
\. ::
'( \':o
5\
r

of Manhattanism (the Waldorf Astoria, the RCA, the Trylon, and the Perisphere
flom the 1939 World's Fair), Expressionist or Surrealist references (The Cabinet
of Doctor Caligari, Dalí's Angelus Architectural), and Modernist architectural and
urban design manifestos (the Plan Voisin, Mies)-three contemporary references:
an homage to Superstudio right next to an evocation of the Berlin Wal1, and a
celebration of "architecture in the process of reproducing itself" that alludes to
Ungers's oeuvre, "generated by an unstoppable impulse of continuous trans-
formation, reinterpretation, and regeneration."55
EXTRAPOLATION: STRIP/G RID/ARGH I PELAGO
The six pages with the sober fiIIe Berlin: A Green Archipelago, which Koolhaas
brings Ungers at the start of his Summer School, can be read on two levels. In one
sense, they are the ghostwriter's ultimate contribution to the political-pedagogical
undertaking his colleague has embarked on there. Taking as its point of departure
the reaiization, shared with Ungers, that European cities are shrinking, the text
seeks to draw the design consequences lrom this, but transposes the strategy Un-
gers develops with the urban villa to a meta-urbanistic plane. By tapping into his
friend's metaphorical approach, Koolhaas reads and selects within the metropolis
distinct urban figures, metamorphosed into an archipelago of islands and ideolo-
gies, designated as potential receptacles for more or less utopian projects, once
imagined for Berlin or other cities, while envisaging all the green interstitial ocean
as a territory that can incubate and offer multiple iterations ola1l the "exteriors"
of the metropolis (ranging from highways and suburban projects right through
to farmland, parks, sports grounds, forest, and nature reserves). Kooihaas thus
provides lJngers with a scenario to use in reflecting on the future of the urban
condition in Europe, and with an exhibition concept; Berlin as an urban-design
theme park.
At the same time, this concept clearly continues Koolhaas's trajectory through
theory and the series of "conceptual-metaphorical" projects that the simulta-
neous discovery of the Berlin Wall and lJngers's pedagogical work had inspired
him to develop: Exodus and "The City of the Captive Globe." The collective mon-
uments of Exodus-having left London strung together like the coaches of a train
designed to cut right through the reality of the existing city-had, upon arrival
in Manhattan, disbanded in order to relocate on their respective podiums within
the fantastic incubator of the city's competitive grid, and to coexist within this
dry archipelago of granite islands. The "square" of the Captive Globe, at first con-
ceived as a simple link in the Exodus strip, had thus gradually imposed itself as
the synecdoche and metamorphosis olthe entire project, and as the script of its
relaunch in the shape of a retroactive manifesto for the American metropolis. In
the same way, Berlin: A Green Archipelago triggers a new transposition, corre-
sponding to the awakening of metropolitan architecture within the historic reality
of the European city. It can therefore be read as the fruit of a dialectic parabola,
r'
',ll --1 l'
:: ..r I É'" fi.':.\'
'.1. '/
¡
;oi\
-r<(
iF i.. t\" \\;
DRY ARCHIPELAGO AND VALHALLA
"At the time of drawing the Captive Globe, ¡t
seemed to me that the drawing was an exaggerated
extrapolat¡on of an essentially unconsc¡ous Metro-
politan landscape, ¡n which certain latent precepts
about Metropolitanism had been turned ¡nto
a man¡festo. But on c¡oser inspection it appeared
that many of NewYork's skyscrapers had in fact
ideological ambitions, to the extent that they repre-
sented in many ways the real¡zations of those
European avant-garde movements-such as Futur-
ism, Constructivism, Expressionism,Surrealism,
Soc¡al¡st Realism-that had each in their own way
been preoccupied with the invention and subse-
quent imposition of a completely new way of life.
But ¡n Europe, where they had been invénted, these
movements had considered themselves absolutely
incompatible and the¡r conclus¡ons irreconcilable.
Each of them therefore sought to ¡mpose the hege-
mony of its doctrines at the expense of the others.
But in Manhattan, where they lived '¡ncognito,' so
to speak, they coexisted within the gr¡d as if they
had always been intended as each other's neces-
sary complemenl without any temper¡ng of the¡r
truculence."
Rem Koolhaas, "The C¡ty ofthe Captive Globe" (1972),
Arch¡tectural Desrgn, December 1977, p.332
GREEN ARCHIPELAGO
Top: Oswald Math¡as Ungers in a sem¡nar at the
lnternationales Design Zentrum Berlin (lDZ),
during the Summer School,1977
Bottom: Rem Koolhaas g¡ving a preséntat¡on at
the IDZ during the Summer School,1977
.1 ,:
:j
"i.
THE GENESIS OF A HOPEFUL MONSTER

which comes into being in Berlin, makes its way through London (where the
metropolitan project is initially staged against the city), then via New York (where ,$."j'r{'üry**.
it finds itself realized in the grid), before finally returning to Berlin to envisage
the city's enclosed territory and its latencies as the test bed for a contemporary
relaunch of this project in the form of the archipelago. In essence, this scenario
was a way of repaying Ungers, with interest, for all the inspiration Koolhaas had
.l*rr
drawn from his work (and brought to fruition in his own way), while at the same
time teasing out the conceptual-metaphorical basis to pursue their collaboration
in Europe.

THE CITY IN THE CITY

This script immediately provides the thematic locus and the underlying concept
for the strategic reflections that Ungers has initiated with Riemann with a view
to giving direction to the project for a new Bauausstellung in Berlin. However,
his brainstorming sessions with Koolhaas, and subsequently with his assistants
during the Summer School, lead him to make a number of corrections and addi-
tions to the text. First of all, he changes the title Io Die Stadt in der Stadt (The City
in the City), reappropriating this notion, which he probably believes he has been
the first to defend, well before Krier adopted it. In Ungers's view, urban islands
are "cities within the city" or "minicities." The second change involves beefing
up the list of these islands and of reference projects that could be "realized" or
dw*r
-/::
*W?t< -..
ts
"transplanted" there. Whereas Koolhaas cited Leonidov's Palace of Culture (in ,: *W-
Kreuzberg), Magnitogorsk (along the Avus), Mies's angular skyscraper (in Kreuz-
-É:
":r,/.* ->'
berg), the expressionist completion of Speer's Olympic Stadium, the creation of
a linear park along the Wall (prior to reunihcation), and the development of the fr{! rar(¡! crrv ¡iit,
Tiergarten district as a "polemic against the ideology of urban reparation," Ungers
\
adds a whole series of ideas, blending Modernism (Loos's Chicago Tiibune proj- RESONANCE
Guy Debord, "Essai pour une tranposition baroque-
ect, Hannes Meyer's scheme for the Palace olNations, El Lissitsky's Wolkenbügel
influentielle du 'village défendu,"' in a letter to
design, and Le Corbusier's plan for Algiers) with much older developments (Cen- lvan Ghtcheglov, November 1953, and "Thé Naked
C¡ty: lllustrat¡on de l'hypothése des plaques tour-
tral Park, Royal Crescent in Bath) and contemporary undertakings (the twin tow- nantes en psychogéograph¡e," 1957
ers of the World Tiade Center). Finally, as the third major addition, he introduces
into the debate the local precedent ofthe Havel Landschaft, "the key and the es-
sence of the idea of Berlin as a green archipelago":56 basically, the project would
simply transpose the eclectic collection of architectural mementos assembled in
Glienicke Park into a collection of minicities right across west Berlin. This re-
vised and expanded text, along with Riemann's maps and drawings, is presented,
together with works on the urban villa, at the exhibition marking the conclusion
of the Summer School. The metamorphosis is, however, not yet complete.
Over the next few weeks, Ungers, keen to convince the political authorities,
redeploys the entire argument, in German, in a demonstration structured into
eleven successive theses, each accompanied by an explanation and a conclusion.
This official text, the only one that will be published, picks up on the essence of
the previous versions, but above all incorporates new developments ofa practical
and historical nature, which relativize the conceptual-metaphorical, or contem-
plative, dimension of the original. First of all, it expands the arguments on the
demographic decline ol cities, and particularly Berlin, and highlights the short-
comings of strategies for urban reconstruction or repair. Above all, it develops
a retroactive line of argument to demonstrate that the idea of the archipelago
is inherent in the history of a city that has always developed like a "pluralist" 56 Oswald l\,4athias Ungers, second version of the manifesto

42
 TANDEM
Oswald Math¡as Ungers and Bem Koolhaas,
Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, November 1982

confederation ol distinct Dórfer. In other words, the concept of the city as archi-
pelago, far from being a fantasy superimposed upon reality, would actually only
need to be reyealed as the city's underlying reality, and pursued. Finally, Ungers
brings the urban villa back into his argument, as if to emphasize that this strategy,
which is probably impossible to realize on the scale of an entire city, can at least
be deployed on the smaller scale of one "city within the city" (which probably
explains why this title is phrased in the singular). Indeed, it is of course a mini-
city-the devastated neighborhood of the Südliche Friedrichstadt-that he would
focus on in his third and last Summer School, which concentrates on the theme
of the Urban Garden (1978). On this site, the great champion olthe matryoshka
nesting doll approach would indeed be able to shift down-but without Kool-
haas-to a smaller scale, that of a microcosm of the whole, with villas assuming
tb_e,r_ole, gf i¡lands, while gardens would play the part of the interstitial ocean.
From this point on-even though their paths would continue to cross frequently,
notably to fight against the "critical reconstruction" of Berlin-the courses steered
by the two,i"n f*iro remained friends up until Ungers's death)would move in
significantly different directions.

' ti'

!1.

'1; "

t-
I

. rl.
(/.
\¡
''i
.,BUT MOST OF ALL, UNGERS'':
BERLIN STORIES
Rem Koolhaas
Nobody can imagine the excitement of discovering, in Berlin,
summer l971,-Ienyears after the Wall was built-the work
of Oswald Mathias Ungers. In a bookstore, I found maybe 15 to
20 cahiers-extremely modest publications in black and white
that were published as part of Ungers's seminar at Berlin's
Technical University. What Ungers had done was to take the
city-at that point an enclave, surrounded by the Wall, em-
bedded in East Germany-and declare it the single, obsessive
subject, for years, ofhis students: a degree ofinspired nar-
rowness unimaginable today. He had divided the work/agenda
into seemingly simple subjects-"parks and plazas," "archi-
tecture and highways"-and had been able to use his students'
architecture as an inventory of potentials. How can a building
relate to a park? How can a building relate to a motorway?
How can a piece of contemporary architecture be inserted
into an existing, damaged street wall? How can "average"
contemporary architecture coexist with Nazi ruins?
Other parts of the seminar were deadpan recordings-
almost like Ed Ruscha's books on L.A.-of Berlin's incon-
spicuous features. The blind firewalls exceptionally long
and tall-which once separated the Mietkasernen andwhich
still exposed the war damage that the city had sustained. The
Wal1 did not figure in Ungers's inventory. He had simply
ignored it and made the East as much a subject of his research
as the West. "One of the most exciting brochures was
a series of designs for Leipziger Platz that did not conform
to any of its past octagonal configurations, but simply
imagined a number of breathtaking shapes there-a very
thin slab, or a series of very complex villas. The booklet
on highways was perhaps most surprising: next to the
speed and noise of the infrastructure, the student-already
a mythical "genius" called Christian Meyer(?)-had imag-
ined an incredibly complex series of apartments-their
absurdly intricate detail and defiant obliviousness to the
monstrous infrastructure next to it an inspiring "moral
triumph" for what architecture could do.
What was, for that time, absolutely unusual was that there
was no reference whatsoever to guilt, or the war. No trace,
yet, of a monument or fabricated memory. The seminar
simply took the city as a given, including the evidence of
its monstrous history. The work seemed very German, or
rather, through the work, it became possible to become
excited again-for the first time?-by the German. A certain
softness combined with a passion for system and theory,
slipping immediately into extravagant romanticism, harsh
precision revealing private obsession, suffering bordering
on pleasure, an almost masochistic delicacy about decay
in a profession that can only move forward. When the poetic
potential of the city and architecture's tenuous contribution
to it were exhausted, Ungers's seminar went into a specu-
lative, visionary overdrive, taking Berlin as a template for
a futuristic overhaul, in which no site was too insignificant
not to be overbuilt by proliferating megastructures, insanely
ambitious institutions, megalomaniac universities, colossal
offices, housing clusters, entertainment nodes ... The project
was completely over the top, but still showed that Berlin
was a natural ground-perhaps through the very impossibility
of changing its character-for futuristic speculations;
IJngers's defiance of history's gravity showed his vulnera-
bility to histories' charms; or more precisely, how for him,
the connection between history and modern architecture was
a fully functioning umbilical cord.
When I came back to London, I shared this unexpected
and mysterious treasure with my astonished friends and tried
to find out more about this architect. Nobody knew about
him except people close to Colin Rowe. Their story was
that "Colin" had discovered "Mathias," too, and had been
intrumental in making him chairman at Cornell, but had had
a change ofheartjust before Ungers's arrival in the States,
because the formalist virtuoso had suddenly "embraced the
computer" in a competition for a new, definitive German
Parliament in Bonn. Apparentl¡ British Mentor and German
Discoverer were barely on speaking terms in the small
American village.
In I972,I won a fellowship that enabled me to study in
the States. Before deciding, I checked out Ithaca, met first
Colin Rowe then Ungers ... With the first, I listened to
an exiting monologue, with the second, I was involved,
from the first moment, in an exciting dialogue that resumed
every time I met him again as if there had been no real
interruption. Ungers was the most mesmerizinglalker/
thinker about architecture. Not as an intellectual discipline,
you felt, but as a body; his whole physical being thought,
felt, absorbed, imagined, and communicated architecture in
a way that was accessible, contagious, and almost sensual ...
From September 1972 to 19'73,I spent one year in Ithaca: the
unraveling of Vietnam, Watergate, Damish, Jencks, Foucault
... But most of all, Ungers. His seminar, a weekly bombard-
ment of slides, connections, intuitions, flashbacks, guesses,
presented whith almost orgasmic drive that left students
panting. But as Rowe's disapproval escalated into academic
warfare, the embattled private Ungers showed disbelief
and doubt*where to go in architecture?
I
I had never worked for anyone, but spent months with
IJngers, working on his competitions-usually for minor,
provincial towns in West Germany ... understanding
the subtle probing of Ungers's formalism, the resonances,
rhymes, contrasts, and repetitions, revisiting earlier work,
debriefing him about his career: detailed reports about
being a German architect in the sixties-the not-quite-part-
of-it status that his nationality then implied for CIAM or
Team 10; the Berlin career, ending in the ignominy of the 1968
student protests. Conspiratorially almost, Ungers showed
me his alleged surrender to the computer, the Bonn com-
petition: a weird, pixelated study in randomness-a field
of democratic, orange particles in search of a center . . .
or beyond center ...

For a brief moment, I could invest all my empathy and

enthusiasm in a reconstructive effort to restore Ungers to
himself. At the end of that year, we even worked briefly
on Berlin together: in the fragmented, sti1l divided metro-
polis. Ungers proposed a sequence offive separate land-
marks, modern fortresses that, like the individual stops of
a metro line, established a new order, invisible on the
surface ... It seemed that the year of living with doubt
was over ...

Back in Europe in the late seventies, I participated in an

almost retroactive seminar on Berlin again, which seemed to
"undo" his earlier speculations. After the utopian buildup,
the question now became how to "delete" Berlin ...

In a "green archipelago," we devised a strategy to "design

the cities' decay" based on raw, naked value judgments-
esthetic, political, social. In a city facing, like most of
Europe, serious depopulation, we tried to anticipate which
complexes to maintain, which undeserving parts to erase,
turning the city as a whole into an Arcadian landscape
of built remnants surrounded by a sea of green, in which
the infrastructures of contemporary life were hidden ...
Berlin as a colossal enlargment of Schinkel's Schloss
Glienicke...

This text firsl appearcd in Domus d'Autore: Post-Occupancy 7 (April 2006),

and was revised in February 2013 for this publication
PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

During the Summer School, and under Ungers's supervision, a large number of drawings,
sketches, and maps were made by Peter Riemann, who also collected numerous images
related to the transplantations proposed by the project and to the morphological process
of identifying and intensifying the urban islands. Some of those illustrations were even-
tually retained in the final version of the manifesto (D), but many more were included
in the handout that was circulated during the exhibition (B). And still others were repro-
duced by Riemann in his master thesis at Gornell (Urban Design Strategies for Berlin, with
a Gase Study on Berlin/Suedliche Friedrichstadtn January 1979). ln order to provide
the reader with a better understanding of the method, the toolbox, and the references
involved by "The City in the Gity," we are showing here a selection of those images.
The material is roughly arranged in three parts:

1. A series of analytical maps of West Berlin, stressing the different layers and elements
of the city's structure and urban fabric (and their interplay), and locating the "urban
islands" within them: here, a full-page reproduction of the colored final map of the archi-
pelago concludes this series.

2. A series of reference images showing different building designs or "social condensers"

(mostly unbuilt Modernist proposals) that the project intended to effectively transplant
into the urban islands of the archipelago.

3. And finally, a series of morphological sequences explaining precisely the process of

identification and intensification of the different islands (and their operative references).
Among all the morphological sequences that were thus produced (Kreuzberg-Górlitzer
Bahnhof, Friedrichstadtn Wedding, Bundesallee, Neukólln ln Neukólln ll, Gharlottenburg
Castle, Friedenau, Unter den Eichen), the reader will see here, in parallel rowsn the eight
that are most complete

S. M.
PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
Analytical maps: decomposit¡on and recomposition of West-Berl¡n

r lclr! na! of t-ó"lin . Eigh ¿ensity areas

Iown máp of Beilin High-density areas

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(ltilícitiesJ
. islais
lslands (Minicities)
 Isfaads ed streets
lslands and streets

Isleds ard objectF I€lands,'¡alre¡,ob jecb6 ¿nd sltr.eet s

lslands and objects lslands, water, ob¡ects, and streets
PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
C¡t¡es w¡thin the city
 References

-A¿@1a skfEc¡srr

Angular skyscraper

Skyhook on intersection Lenln lnstitute

Skyhook on ¡ntersection Lenin lñstitute

ff.oya1, Crescent, 3at1: Alger ?roject

Royal Crescent, Bath

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
Morpholog¡cal sequences: Unter den Eichen, Neukólln 1, Kreuzberg/Górl¡tzer Bahnhof, Südl¡che Friedrichstadt

i.:i.] t:o¡o .¡ ¡e:l!. &ar¿iid .r¡¡ctu¡e

Aerial photo of Berlin Plan of Berl¡n (Unter den Eichen) Building structure

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N

{.:i¡r th.t. oa ¡éulittta ¡:e ot Xau!611! ir:ldj:s cl¡ucá¡¡t

Aerial photo of Neukdlln Plan of Neukólln Building structure

luildiag €t¡rctn¡e
Building struclure

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Ie¡td thoto ol Eid:c:e &i.üiolsiadt P1& ot Bü¿1ic\ó ¡¡tdüic¡stdt

Aerial photo of Südliche Fr¡edrichstadt Plan of Südl¡che Friedrichstadt Bu¡ld¡ng structure

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"Unter den E¡chen" as a l¡near c¡ty (after the plan for Magni- Magnitogorsk l¡near c¡ty Aerial view of Magnitogorsk
toqorsk)

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Kreuzberg as Mini-Manhattan Manhattan, Central Park Axonoñelr¡c v¡ew of urban villas

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Südl¡che Friedr¡chstadt as a radial city Axonometric view of planned urban villas and villas
PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
Morphological sequences: Friedenau, Wedding, Neukólln 2, Schloss Charlottenburg

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Aerial photo of Berlin Plan of Friedenau Bu¡ld¡ng structure

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Aerial photo of Wedding Plan of Wedd¡ng (Müllerstrasse) Building structure

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Aerial photo of Neuk6lln Plan of Néukólln Bu¡lding structure

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%ffiffiffi

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Aerial photo of Charloltenburg Caslle Plan of Charlottenburg Bu¡ld¡nq struct!re

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The "Boulevard C¡ty" of Wedd¡ng- The urban boulevard (U¡ter den Linden)
a sequence of gateways to lhe East

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The "Gastle City" of Charlottenburg The castle and the city of Mannheim
BERLIN INFLUENCES AND RAMIFICATIONS
Florian Hertweck

'As the capital, this town of ours has had three international construction exhibitions.
In 1984, we wqnt to show an ideql example of how the inner city, the old town,
the city in its wider dimensions might be saved and presened, and not abandoned
to degradatíon, theformalion of slums, and exodus. I belieye that this problem's
releyance extends far beyond Berlin. We see similar problems in London, New York,
Paris..."
Letter from Harry Ristock, senator in charge of construction, to his party colleague and then chancellor,
Helmut Schmidt, in the fall of 1978

The major city on the Spree-which is such a well-loved city today-was chosen as
the primary focus of this book chiefly because of factors in civic politics. In 1976,
almost two deeades after the most recent construction exhibition-the Interbau
exhibition-a new event to provide the isolated half-city with new ideas and impe-
tus was on the agenda of West Berlin's government, the Senate. Over the course
of the following year, two protagonists and two concepts competed for control
of the architecture exhibition that later became known as the IBA.In a series of
articles in fllre Berliner Morgenpos¡, the first of which appeared in January, Josef
Paul Kleihues argued for the Stadtreparatur or "urban repair" approach. Oswald
Mathias Ungers, on the other hand, espoused a different strategy. As a professor
at Cornell University, he organized a Summer School at the Künstlerhaus
Bethanien, dividing it into two sections: while his assistants Hans Kollhoff and
Arthur Ovaska declined the subject of the urban villa with their American stu-
dents, Peter Riemann approached, from a graphic angle, the topic of the city in
the city, for which Rem Koolhaas provided the raw text, entitled Berlin: A Green
Archipelago and published here for the first time. At the same time, a number
of architects were invited to give lectures, including Aldo Rossi, James Stirling, ROB KRIER, IDEAL PLAN FOR FRIEDRICHSTADT,
1977
Alison and Peter Smithson, Peter Eisenman, Hans Hollein, and Rob Krier. On The expert assessment for the development of
September 23-aftq the results had been shown to the public in the form of an southern Friedrichstadt,comm¡ssioned in December
1977 by Berlin's building director, Hans Chr¡stian
exhibition-ungers presented the reworked version, converted into a set of the- Müller, exemplifies the urban repair approach,
ses, to the executive committee of the Social Democratic Party, which was re- Rob Krier pro¡ected a regular succession of city
blocks, streets, and squares on the bas¡s of the
sponsible for appointing the senator in charge of construction within Berlin's Baroque urban figure and 19th-century block struc-
newly elected state government. ture. ln an echo of Hermann Jansen's green corridor,
the scheme ¡ntegrated a green "culture r¡ng" ¡n
The degree of determination with which Ungers positioned this "urban plan- its southern section. The upper and lower halves
ning concept" against the approach taken by Kleihues is evident in the second of the plan at top represent, respect¡vely, the urban
cond¡tion before and after the destruction during
thesis: "In Berlin in particular, the consequences ofthe theory ofa restored city, World War ll.
in the sense of a historic reconstruction, would be the reverse of those expected,
since the inexorable depopulation process would only be camouflaged [and
all action taken to improve reality would be pointlessly deferred, to the conse-
quent disadvantage of the city.l"-which is why Koolhaas originally even argued
in favor of "exorcising" this approach. Ungers and Koolhaas thus implied that
urban repair carried with it a fundamental contradiction: that within the context
of demographic decline there is no demand for new living space. Berlin had, 1 The population numbersforBerlin fell onlyslightly between
in fact, been struggling with the effects of deindustrialization since the building 1961 -the year in which the Wall was built-and 1970 (from
2.187 million to 2.115 million), whereas the city lost approxi-
of the Wall. Industry, present in abundance prior to the war, had relocated to malely 2 19,000 inhabitants by the end of the 1970s. This
equates to a population decline of more than len percent. .
the Federal Republic's other major cities, and the resulting scarcity of employ- 2 Oswald Mathias Ungers, "Stadtprobleme in der pluralis-
tischen Massengesellschaft," in: Transparent 5 \1971)1 9.
ment prospects, together with the city's isolated situation, created a state of eco- 3 Manuscript of the presentatjon made to the SPD executive
nomic and demographic decline in West Berlin that was especially pronounced committee on September 23,1977 Ungers Archives.
4 Rem Koolhaas, "Architect's notes," inr Domus d'Autore 1
in the 1970s.1 This explains the admonishment in the hrst sentence of the mani- (2006); also published as "Berliner Geschichte(n)," ¡n: Erika
N.4ühlthaler (ed.), Lernen von O. M. Ungers, Archplus 181 / 182
festo: "Any future 'plan' for Berlin has to be a plan for a city in retrenchment." In (2006): 68. + see pages 44-45
contrast to the then popular school of urban restoration, derived from the Neo-
Rationalist theories of Aldo Rossi and from Léon Krier's dogma of the "recon-
struction of the European city," Ungers and Koolhaas saw Berlin as a raw material
to be approached critically, from which an alternative theory might emerge.
The authors' interest in the phenomenon of the shrinking city predates this
project by some years. In 1971, Ungers published an article on "urban problems
in a pluralistic mass society," in which he criticized the postwar consumerist
society, describing its effect on cities and landscapes thus: "worn-out roads and
bridges, run-down railway stations, abandoned farms, deserted villages and cities
that finish up as ghost towns."2 A year later, he and his family embarked on a two-
month journey through the US to collect material for a planned book on ghost
towns, which, unfortunately, he never wrote. Lectures given by him during this
OSWALD MATHIAS UNGERS,'STADTPROBLEME
period show that Ungers's theories were increasingly becoming influenced by the DER PLU RALISTISCHEN MASSENGESELLSCHAFT,"
phenomenon of thinning inner cities, which he experienced during his time in 1971
ln a departure from his work on the groMh
the US. The truth was that many major American cities had been witnessing scenar¡os of the sixties, on relocat¡ng to the USA,
Ungers took on the ¡ssue of urban decay.
a decline in population similar to Berlin's since the 1950s, which was then acceler-
ated by the oil crisis of 1913 and the subsequent economic crisis. At the same time,
late capitalism's ideal of unbounded growth was now being questioned: by critics
such as Vance Packard, who first attacked the excesses of American consumerist
society in 1960, by the pioneering Meadows rcporl The Limits to Growth, and by
sociological theses on postindustrial society. Prior to this, architects had barely
addressed this theme at all-and the originality of the Archipelago manifesto lies
above all in the fact that it provided, for the first time, an urbanistic thought
model to fit this new situation of economic and demographic shrinkage, whereas
all previous theories of urban planning had presupposed growth. The fact that
West Berlin was'already a perfect example of a postindustrial major city during
this period absolutely fascinated Ungers and Koolhaas-they expressed the belief
that this city had the potential "to achieve a prototypical'pilot' status that could
inject new models in a zero-growth Europe." This meant perceiving demographic
shrinkage not as a negative phenomenon per se, but as an opportunity to distill
a new city profile. For this reason, Ungers began his presentation to the executive
committee of the Social Democratic Party with a plea for the reevaluation of
a seemingly apocalyptic situation, quoting an aphorism of Ernst Friedrich Schu-
macher, the author of Small Is Beautiful: "The art of living is always to make good
things out of a bad thing."s
Ultimately, the choice of Berlin as the subject of this book is due, above all, to
the special relationship that both authors had with the city. In 1963, Ungers, then
thirty-seven years o1d, was given a chair at Berlin's Technical University, where,
until his move to the US hve years later, he developed an experimental curricu-
lum that-as Koolhaas was later to write-declared Berlin "the single, obsessive
subject of his students for years to come."a In their analyses and designs, his stu-
dents thoroughly examined all the components of Berlin's urban organism and
developed designs that were sometimes intriguing and sometimes peculiar, while
Ungers himself evolved theoretical arguments from the perforated city: Gross-
formen im Wohnungsbau, for instance, which constitutes an early manifestation of
Ungers's analytical approach of treating historic and Modernist typologies equal-
ly; or the examination of the quintessential symbol of Berlin's history of destruc-
tion, the Brandwiinde or "firewalls." The publications in which these speculative
ideas appeared-known as ttre Veróffentlichungen zur Architektur-wefe discovered
BERLIN INFLUENCES AND RAMIFICATIONS

by Rem Koolhaas in the summer of 7911 in a bookshop in Berlin during his first
visit to the city. He was so electrified that he took all the available brochures with
him back to London. To this extent, Berlin could be said to be the first point of
contact between the two "Rhinelanders." Although this is a theme that does
not figure in Ungers's writings lrom the 1960s, the Dutchman, who had no "previ-
ous baggage," was interested in the Berlin Wall, discussing it one year later in his
travel piece The Berlin Wall as Architecture and subsequently in his Architectural
Association School of Architecture graduation thesis "Exodus, or The Voluntary
Prisoners of Architecture." The suggestions in the rough draft of the manifesto
that is our subject here include the creation ofa linear park to absorb the "death
strip" in the event of political union and the dismantling of the Wall. In 1981,
Koolhaas incorporated this idea into his competition project for the Friedrich-
strasse's Block 4. Following the actual fall of the Wall, it was adoptedby Zaha
Hadid, Jean Nouvel and Norman Foster, without ever being implemented. In an
interview he gave to the magazine Archplus in the mid-eighties, Koolhaas made
the following comments about Berlin: "Since working on my project about the
Wall at the AA School, I have felt a great affinity for this city, which my contacts
with Ungers have served to reinforce. I find the coexistence of history, destruction,
and the reconstruction of the fifties and sixties in Berlin fascinoting."s
The two men would later get to know each other at Ithaca-as a scholarship
student, Koolhaas decided (as Hans Kollhoff and Peter Riemann would later OSWALD MATHIAS UNGERS,
vE RóF F E NTLIoH u Nc E N zal R ARoH trE KTU R,
do) to go to Cornell to study under Ungers, who was reputed to be a stimulating
"BERLtNER BRANDWANDE" (No. 2711969)
tutor. "His whole physical being," Koolhaas later wrote, "thought, felt, absorbed, The last issue of the Berlin series documents the
damaged, ¡ncomplete fabr¡c of the stricken half-c¡ty,
imagined, and communicated architecture in a way that was accessible, conta-
wh¡ch is typified in the motif of the f¡rewall. The
gious, and almost sensual."6 He, like Kollhoff and Ovaska, collaborated with Un- Dutch author Cees Nooteboom will later describe
Berl¡n's firewalls and bullet holes as the c¡ty's
gers on several competition entries: first on Rüsselsheim (1912) and Düren (19j3),
defining mot¡fs of destruction.
then the Landwehrkanal-Tiergarten in Berlin (1973), which initiated the idea of
a new building exhibition, and finally Berlin-Lichterfelde, Fourth Ring (1974).
These competition projects already acted out a number of ideas and thoughts that
would later form part of the Archipelago manifesto: in Düren and at the Landwehr-
kanal, a broad range of typologies in close proximity; in addition to this, a variety
of architectural islands inscribed into Berlin's damaged urban organism at the
Landwehrkanal. The urban villa idea was f,rnally put down on paper for the first
time in a plan for Lichterfelde. As Jasper Cepl aptly expresses it in his biography
of Ungers, the collaboration with Koolhaas allowed Ungers to find his way "back
5 Rem Koolhaas in conversatlon with Patrice Goulet and
to the old form" after years of research and conceptual imprecision.T Today, Kool- Nikolaus Kuhnert. "Die erschreckende Schónheit des 20.
haas considers himself to have acted in the capacity of a ghostwriter, helping Jahrhunderts," in: Archplus 86 ( 1986): 36.
6 Koolhaas 2006, p.69.
Ungers "to reinvent his goals." This collaboration was carried on in what might 7 Jasper Cepl, Oswald Math¡as Ungers. E¡ne ¡ntellektuelle
B ¡ og raph ¡ e (Cologne, 2OO7 ), 297.
be called a "telepathic" manner,e and the Archipelago manifesto should therefore 8 Rem Koolhaas in conversation with Patrice Goulet, "La
deuxiéme chance de l'architecture moderne," iil tArch¡tecture
be seen as a synthesis, born out of a fertile relationship between two extreme d'Aujourd'hui 238 11985)t 3.
versatile personalities. Before I delineate the ramifications of this manifesto for I Hermann Pundt, Schmkels Berln (N¡unich, 2002), 10.
lnitially in agreement, Ungers later distanced himself from
urban planning though, I would like to summarize some of the implications. Pundt's interpretation. Cf. Cepl 2002 p. 584.
10 Frilz Neumeyer, "Berliner Klassizismus: der entgrenzte
Stadtraum," in: Michael Nilónninger (ed.),
Das Neue Berlin. Baugeschichte und Stadtplanung der
GLIENICKE deutschen Hauptstadf (Frankfurt am lvlain,1991 ),103.
11 Jean-Frangois Lejeune, "Schinkel and Lenné in Berlin.
The landscape concept of Karl Friedrich Schinkel constitutes our first point of From Lhe Biedermeier Fláneurto Beuth s tndustriegrossstadt.'
in: Susan M. Peik (ed.), Karl Fr¡edr¡ch Schinkel. Aspects of
reference. Ungers was already interested in Schinkel's Glienicke work during hls work (Stutlgarl-Fellbach, 2008), 74.
his time at the Technische Universitát, and he continued to be so in his subse- 12 Friedrich Ostendoft,Haus und Garten (erster Supplement-
band zu den sechs Buchem vom Bauen) (Belin,1914), 84-
quent career, in his lectures, articles, and projects. While Schinkel is not men- 13 Oswa¡d Mathias Ungers, "Fünf Lehren aus Schinkels
Werk" ini Karl Fr¡edr¡ch Sch¡nkel. Werke und W¡rkungen, exh.
tioned in the rough draft, he is the principal reference in the first revised version: cat. ( Berli n: Martin-Gropius-Bau,1981 ), 248.
 KARL FRIEDRICH SCHINKEL, DESIGN FOR
A PALACE FOR PRINCE WILHELM,1832
Schinkel's second design for this palace makes
cléar how little Schinkel was concerned with urban
repair: ¡t calls for the Frideriz¡an¡sche Bibliothek to
make way for terraced gardens. Schinkel confirmed
h¡s radical transformative will in h¡s Sammrung
architektonischer Entwürfe: "By means of th¡s ver-
tical arrangément of the gardens in the m¡ddle
of the c¡ty, the principal floor of the palace assumes
the character of a s¡te on a mountainside ... The
dismal sight due to the h¡gh l¡brary building would
be transformed into a pleasant, cheerful one, and
the culminating feature of the l¡ght, arcaded hall at
thé top would completely mask the city behind
¡t, keeping the displeasing back-courtyard houses
and gables out of v¡ew."
Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Sammlung architekto-
nischer Entwürfe, second, expanded edition
of all texts and plates after the Potsdam éd¡t¡on
1841 -1845, Nórdlingen, 2006, p.189.
"The Havel Landschaft contains the key and the essence of the idea of Beriin as
a green archipelago."
At this time, there was no consensus among Schinkel researchers that the
Prussian Baumeister was fundamentally opposed to urban repair. For instance, in
his 19'72 study Schinkel's Berlin, Hermann Pundt (whose writings were well known
to Ungers) asserted that: "[Schinkel] constantly endeavored to respect the con-
text, to integrate his architecture in an organic manner, to allow a harmony be-
tween the old and the new to arise."e Since the nineties, however, a different view
has steadily gained ground: that Schinkel, driven by a dislike of the old city,
wished to transform Baroque Berlin into the cityscape equivalent of a landscape,
in which "every building would stand alone as a self-contained, coherent volume
and would function as a keystone of the urban plan."ro His urban plan is far from
being a composed sequence of roads, plazas, and blocks of houses-instead, it is
a scenographic "articulation and contraposition of volumes."11 As early as 1914,
Friedrich Ostendorf's disparaging verdict was that Schinkel derived his plans
"not from spatial concepts, but from physical yolumes," and that he therefore
"had nothing to offer to modern urbanism"l2-an argument that would later be
deployed by proponents of Stadtreparatur against modern urbanism. As a matter
of fact, Schinkel may have emphasized the archilectural body over the spatial
body, but he also conceived these structures in a symbiosis with nature-even in
the case ofprojects sited in the center ofthe Prussian capital. "Instead oldiscon-
necting themselves from nature," IJngers writes in the catalog of the large-scale
Schinkel exhibition of 1981, "his structures and designs combine with nature to
form a single morphological whole, so that they become a part of nature, and,
conversely, nature becomes a part of the structures."l3
Glienicke represents an ideai condensation ofthis concept oflandscape, which
was originally inspired by English landscape gardening. The plots on which Schin-
kel was to design estates for Crown Prince Friedrich and Prince Karl-Charlotten-
hof and Glienicke-were situated in the picturesque Haveltal, located between
Berlin and Potsdam. This valley's gentle slopes and combination of woodland
and water give it a Mediterranean character. The association with the Mediterra-
nean landscape had previously influenced Friedrich Wilhelm II's plans for the
Pfaueninsel in the late 18th century. It inspired Schinkel not merely to create
country houses integrated into nature, as described in the letters of Pliny, but to
create an Arcadian landscape with a wealth of architectonic typologies: a small
temple, the famous Casino, the greater and lesser Neugierde (curiosities), the
BERLIN INFLUENCES AND RAMIFICATIONS

Jágerhof, the Kavalierhaus, and the Schweizerhaus. Simultaneously, the archi-

tectural plan of this cultural landscape was linked to landscape-architectonic
typologies by Peter Joseph Lenné. It was subsequently filled in by his students,
among them Ludwig Persius. On the subject of this architectural manifesto,
Schinkel himself wrote that:'A number of idyllic notions were to be combined
within a picturesque style to constitute a group of diverse architectural objects
that blend pleasantly with nature."la It is not this interplay of architecture and
sculpted nature that primarily interests Ungers, but the conceptual reciprocity of
location and idea: the Havel landscape, which, for Schinkel, evoked an Arcadian
EDUARD GÁRTNER, cÁs/No u/vD GFossE
landscape, and the analogies derived from it, which in turn reshape the Havel
N E UG I E R DE I N G LI E N ICKE, 1848
landscape. As Ungers remarked in 1984 in a different context, this process-a pro- Gártner's painting shows a section of the ideal
arcadian landscape designed by Schinkel on
cess that was-morphological in the Goethean sense-meant that Schinkel was the banks of the Havel.
not imposing principles of order on the location at random in the form of axes
and symmetries. Instead, he gave the place its spirit by connecting the objects
subtly and sensitively. It is worth noting that Schinkel and his fellows brought
different cultures to Berlin, in order to represent "a whole universe ... in all its

úq .fit
multiplicity and diversity." 15
In other words, for Ungers, the complex around Schloss Glienicke functioned
as a miniature archipelago ofdifferentiated architectural events, or, conversely, as
Rem Koolhaas puts it, the Archipelago manifesto turned Bedin into "a colossal
enlargement of Schinkel's Schloss Glienicke."16 whereas the islands of the Havel
landscape are architectonic in character, those of the Archipelago manifesto con-
stitute urban fragments. As with the Entschede project, these fragments represent
both architectural bodies and spatial bodies, and their typologies are as diverse
as those of the Havel landscape: from block and single building developments to
linear, radial, and grid forms, from the southerly Friedrichstadt and rempelhofer
Feld to Siemensstadt. Ungers and his comrade-in-arms did not select the islands
for their aesthetic qualities, but because of the extent to which they*embody, in ^Il'tt
a pure and legible form, ideas and concepts, so that the history of architecture
would coincide with the history of ideas once more"-a concept that is both uto-
pian and highly sensory. This was of a piece with the seemingly bizarce call for
the islands to "receive their final architectural interventions." Koolhaas also imag- OSWALD MATHIAS UNGEBS, DESIGN FOF STUDENT
tf
HOUSING AT THE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF
ined the transplantation of retrospective projects-such as Ivan Ilyich Leonidov's TWENTE IN ENSCHEDE, 1964
"Palace of Culture" in an open area in Kreuzberg, or his Magnitogorsk project Ungers's attempt to reconc¡le tradition and
modernity can be seen in such early pro¡ects as
along the Avus. Implementations of Mies's high-rise project for the Friedrich- th¡s competition entry for the University of
strasse or of Taut's dome at the Olympic site were also considered. Twente in Enschede, which creates architectural
tension through its succession of spaces and
It is hardly surprising that ungers watered down these concepts of a "retro- bu¡ldings.
active" architecture for presentation to politicians and for subsequent publica-
tion. After all, texts or images describing what architects would understand to
be a thought model-along the lines of Superstudio's Continuous Monument
or Koolhaas's "The city of the captive Globe"-might create alienation if taken
at.face value. It is precisely in this fiction ofa "retroactive" architecture, however,
that a relationship with architectural history is expressed that would, at the time,
have been highly liberating. In contrast to the dogma of urban repair and the Post- 14 Schinkel, quoted in: Werner Szambien,Schinkel (Patis,
1989),93.
Modernist attitude to history in general, in the Archipelago manifesto, premod- 15 Oswald l\ilathias Ungers in conversation with Jan Pieper,
"Über Typus und Ort," in: Kuns¿forum lnternat¡onal 69
ern period models and classic Modernism are treated equally. If the proponents (1984):32.
of urban repair ultimately aimed to reconstruct premodern urban spaces, and pos- 16 Koolhaas2006,p.69.
17 Oswald Mathjas Ungers in conversation with Armando
sibly also to reverse the effects of modern urban and traflic planning, Koolhaas's Kaczmarczyk, "Reparatur ist reaktioná[ Die Stadt ist kein
Dorf. Fragen an Oswald l\¡athias Ungers," iil werk und ze¡t 4
and Ungers's contribution was to signihcantly expand the resources available for (1985): 3.
 HERMANN JANSEN, PROJECT FOR GREATER
BEBLIN: GREEN SPACE PLAN, 1909-1910
ln the early 20th century, Hermann Jansen devel-
oped a plan for a massive, branch¡ng system of
green space for Berlin's expanded urban terr¡tory
that would have created a great number of urban
¡slands.The perspective drawing of his proposal
for the Tempelhof d¡strict ¡llustrates the scale
of the pro¡ected green area, wh¡ch here has the
appearance of a river.

contemporary urban planning to draw on. Just as Goethe searched for the Ur'
pflanze (primordial plant), what they wished to do was to seek out the original
urban fragment structures in an open-minded, unprejudiced way. This approach
had previously made itself felt in fhe 1961 Paderborn urban planning study, and
had figured particularly heavily in the previous year's Braunschweiger Schlosspark
competition, in which Hans Kollhofl was also involved. Here, also, the various
urban fragments were excised from the urban figure and linked to historical anal-
ogies in order to "surgically remove" them from the surrounding structures. This
morphological process translates preexisting structures into the sphere of ideas
and imagines the city as a compendium of these original ideas, designs, and proj-
ects-an attitude also articulated by Ungers in his essay "Designing and Thinking
with Images, Metaphors, and Analogies," published that year. For Berlin, this of-
fered the prospect of turning a seemingly confused situation on its head: after all,
if Ungers saw Glienicke as his model, then from his perspective the path from
a city that was falling apart to an ideal city was shorter than might be expected.
If the process of shrinkage were to continue, it would not be a stretch to see the
city as a latter-day Glienicke. This dream may have first come to him in the 1960s,
when he walked through the Friedrichstadt, which "[seemed to him] like a land-
scape littered with individual, unconnected objects. Like a landscape with some
of its teeth knocked out."17

STADTLANDSCHAFT
Schinkel's landscape concept is not the only model or project from architectural
history that plays a role in the Archipelago manifesto. Some of the other influenc-
es are mentioned in the text, while others are implicit. The most obvious parallel
is with Hermann Jansen's winning design for the Gross-Berlin (Greater Berlin)
development, which was first presented to the public in 1910. This project deserves
BERLIN INFLUENCES AND RAMIFICATIONS

close attention, as it relates specifically to the Berlin situation and represents for
Ungers an important reference.lB
One striking thing about this competition process is that the area included the
last industrial sites and even extended beyond Potsdam. This considerable leap in
scale was due to the dramatic population growth around the turn of the century
and its effects on the polycentric arrangement of Berlin's urban area: it had led
to the various internai urban entities each developing their own economic and
social dynamic. Charlottenburg, with its population of over 300,000, was one of
the most prosperous towns in the Deutsches Reich, whereas Neukólln, with its
population of over 200,000, was a working-class stronghold. This had created
a situation offunctional and social dissociation that could no longer be countered
with an urbarr plan restricted to the old Berlin. At the same time, Berlin proper
ERNST MAY PLAN FOR THE CAPITAL CITY
was bursting at the seams. Following the transformation of the metropolis into OF BRESLAU,1920
a high-density city of tenements as a consequence of the Bauordnung (building Ernst May's project for Breslau also consists of
an urban archipelago with various islands separated
regulations) of 1853 and the Hobrecht-Plan of 1862, and the subsequent accelera- by a branching green belt,
tion ofreal estate speculation to exceptional levels, the expected sustained growth
was to be catered for by means of an alternative and more generous plan that
would be more expansive and hygienic. In his work on Berlin, Julius Posener
notes that: "If one could not destroy Megalopolis, or even apply a brake to it, one
could at least give its expansion a new face. The new areas of the city were
no longer to be the domain of tenements; instead, they were to be greened in all
areas, with a poiycentric plan."ts
Jansen responded to this context by proposing a branching green strip that
would encircle the whole region, completely infiltrating the new city districts
and petering out only in old Berlin. Jansen did call part of his green strip a "Wald-
und Wiesengürtel" (woodland and meadow strip), but the proposed pattern is
more like a green network. The individual "strands" were to be approximately
100 meters wide, allowing them to contain facilities such as playgrounds and
sports fields. This green strip was to be framed by public buildings such as schools, LUDWIG HILBERSEIMER, DECENTRALIZED CITY'
1932
kindergartens, or courts of justice, and the urban islands between them were Like h¡s high-rise city of 1924, Hilberse¡mer's
to contain both industrial sites and homes. The scale and pattern of Jansen's proposal for Berl¡n is a radical, schemat¡c
conf¡guration that divides the urban landscape
green strip is as radical as the urban physiognomy that he suggests is convention- into uniform islands.
al. It would have transformed the urban region into a gigantic urban archipel-
ago, although its islands, unlike those of Ungers's design, would have produced
primarily spatial bodies.
Jansen's plan lor Gross-Berlin is part of a genealogy that began with English
garden design and includes Schinkel's concept of landscape, Johann Anton wil-
helm von Carstenn's concept ol a villa landscape permeated by green spaces
extending from Berlin to Potsdam, and the "garden city" concept. In the 20th
century, these principles were taken further on a regional level: Eliel saarinen's 1B Cf. Oswald l\,4ath as Ungers, "Berlin.A l\/orphological
project to decentralize Helsinki (1918-1919), followed by Ernst May's plan to History." in: Urban Des¡gn lnternatlorai (September/October
1981 ): 245-49. Ungers not only presents Jansen's project,

expand Breslau (1920); Fritz Schumacher's Cologne "green belt" concepl (1923),
and also Rudolf Schwarz's urban landscape concept (1946), which he later re-
worked as a proposal for Cologne (1949-1950). The "Green City" design for Mos-
cow developed by the Soviet disurbanists (1930) is also part of this genealogy
ol the polycentric urban form, described by Walter Christaller in his theory of
but also pub ishes a large part of Koolhaas's first text of the
manifesto.
l9 Julius Poseaet Berl¡n. aut' dem Wege zu e¡net neuen
Arch¡tektur. Das Zeitaltet W¡lhelms //. (Nlunich/New York,1995),
245.
20 Cf.Goerd Peschken, "Scharouns Berliner Stadtlandschaft
und das Kulturforum," in: Bobert Frank et al.(eds.),Platz
und Monument. D¡e Kontroverse um das Kulturforum Berl¡n
1 980 -1992 (Berlin,1992), 3Z

central places in the 1930s. It is no coincidence that a specialized strand in this 2l Carsten Ruhl, "Hans Scharoun: Hauptstadt Berlin," in:
Carsten Krohn (ed.), Das ungebaute Berlin. Stadtkonzepte ¡m
history of ideas focuses on Berlin: Jansen's and the other proposals for Gross- 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2010), 157
22 Bernard von Brenlana,Wo ¡n Eurapa ¡st Beil¡n?
Berlin, Martin Wagner's radioconcentric green strip schema (1915), Bruno Taut's B¡lder aus den 20er Jahre, (Frankfurt am lvlain,1981 ), 100.

62
 Díssolution of Cities (1920), Max Taut's "star city" (1946), and-with different
form and content-the green spaces plan in Albert Speer's general development
plan. In 1932, Ludwig Hilberseimer presented his Dezentralisierte Staclt-a radical
schema in which the dichotomy of center and periphery is completely removed.
This history of ideas ultimately culminates in Hans Scharoun's concept for an ex-
tensively greened stadtlandschaft, on which he writes: ,,[The urban landscape]
makes it possible to divide something that is incomprehensible and that eludes
any sense of scale into sections that are comprehensible and to scale, and to ar-
range these sections in relation to one another, so that woodland, meadowland,
hills, and lakes interact in a beautiful landscape."2o In line with the Kollektivplan
(collective plan) of 1946 and its injection ofislands ofindustry into the redesigned HANS SCHAROUN ET AL., COLLECTIVE PLAN,1946
The "Collective Plan,' of 1946 calls for a decentral-
urban organism that had been liberated from the old structures by the bombard- ¡zed, green urban landscape made up of islands
ment, Scharoun's "Hauptstadt Berlin" competition project of 1951-/5g-in which that are connected w¡th one another v¡a a system
of freeways.
scattered objects and huge megastructures were positioned amid selected remain-
ing structures in the heart of what was once the most dense major city in Eu-
rope-represented the ultimate urban landscape configuration. His was not the
only competition entry design to suggest a polycentric urban form for Berlin;
..:¡i- --
$
in particular, the plan by Jarn utzon called for urban islands-some the same,
some very different-embedded in a park landscape. A final influence that might JORN UTZON, PLAN FOR THE'HAUPTSTADT
be mentioned is the concept presented by peter Smithson in1964, in which he BERLtN" COMPETtTtON, 1958
Like the other entrants in the ,,Hauptstadt Berl¡n,'
imagined Berlin as "a flowing park with individual large landscape chateaux.,,All competition, Utzon proposed a decentralized c¡ty-
these attempts to decentralize Berlin and to turn the city into a huge, green, .,ar- scape with urban islands, some of homogeneous,
others of heterogeneous form.
chitectonic landscape garden"21 were unlike the Archipelago manifesto in that
they were drawn up in the context of a real or expected growth in population.
They were manifestations of modernity, conceived partly as a reaction to extreme- OUARTT AR

ly poor living conditions in the tenement city, but also with the aim of imposing r978
a car-friendly infrastructure on the urban region. The Archipelago manifesto, *'-'il'íl*. -** .'
-. ro'ooo BA¡¡TANIs ,!--
by contrast, arose from an attitude to Modernism-which, for the proponents \)
of urban repair, appeared to be inseparably linked to the decentralization and
greening approach-that was critical, verging on hostile. Léon Krier's 1976 concept
submission "The city within the city," for instance, is fundamentally different
from the Archipelago manifesto. The Luxembourg-born architect envisaged
a confederation ol identical, self-sufficient city districts divided by boulevards,
each holding from 10,000 to 15,000 inhabitants, with the dimensions to be based
on the distance that a pedestrian would be able to cover.
;-)
PALIMPSEST
Although Jansen's Berlin ideas (like the other polycentric whole-city designs
trwffi#:/
. t&y/
,/./ ,,7/
named here) were never implemented, almost the whole of the erstwhile compe- l'. Y.-'-.tt/
tition area was incorporated into Greater Berlin with the administrative reforms l---l \
LÉoN KRtER, LUXEMBoURG, cAptrAL oF EURopE,
of 1920.with the administrative incorporation of eight previously independent 1978
towns süch as Spandau, Kópenick, and charlottenburg, 59 independent rural mu- As early as 1976, Léon Kr¡er presented his concept
of cities within the c¡ty, which proposes dividing
nicipalities such as Friedenau and Lichterfelde, and 27 independent estates such the urban agglomerat¡on into small, m¡xed distr¡cts.
as Dahlem and regel, the previous city area was expanded thirteenfold and now Two years later, he applied the concept to
Luxembourg,
comprised 65 x 878 square kilometers. It was also offrcially declared a polycentric
metropolis. Many literary voices attest to the fact that Berlin was also experienced
as an extensive, multipolar city landscape. Bernard von Brentano remarked with
puzzlement that: "If you travel slowly through Berlin in a car, you move from one
small town to another."22 The American author Henry urban also recognized the
BERLIN INFLUENCES AND RAMIFICATIONS

city's polycentric character, writing in 1901 that: "As a New Yorker, I find it partic-
ularly strange that there is no Berlin-only a mass of villages called Berlin."23 This
observation echoes the well-known comment of Berlin architect and future direc-
tor of urban development in Berlin, Werner Düttmann: "Berlin is many towns."24
Berlin's profile as a collage of very different city districts, however, is not due
solely to the amalgamation of disparate satellite towns and villages-it is also
a product of its political status and its exceptional historical development. In the
18th century, the idea took hold to inscribe the ascendancy ofPrussia, and, subse-
quentiy, the Deutsches Reich into the physiognomy of the territory's most signif-
icant city-an undertaking that reached its peak in Wilhelminism. In the 20th cen-
tury, the city was also subjected to widely divergent forms of government and
social models.' "Berlin has been transformed over the centuries by a veritable
bombardment of ever-new concepts and ideologies," writes Philipp Oswalt in his
treatise on Berlin, Stadt ohne Form.25 This state of affairs has set in train a history
of destruction not confined to the destructive Modernist impulses experienced
by other major cities as a consequence of industrialization.2o Schinkel did not
hesitate to adapt the existing city to his personal landscape vision, sometimes
removing buildings that disrupted it. Wilhelm II had, in his turn, a low opinion
of Schinkel, considering his work to be insufficiently monumental-for instance,
he had Schinkel's redesign of the Berliner Dom replaced with a completely out-
of-scale monument, creating a lasting breach in the urban proportions of the his-
toric Lustgarten ensemble. During his ru1e, Berlin endured what was to be the
most extensive destruction of the city until the bombing raids of World War II,
as well as its most massive transformation. "The Emperor, who loved his history
so much that he dedicated an avenue of statues to his dynasty, erased the like-
ness they had left in the form of a city. At the end, all that remains of his resi-
denceisaseaofhouses."2TThe GestaltgesetzvonBerlin2s (thelawoftheformof
Berlin), was to remain in force throughout the remainder of the 20th century.
Plans to turn Berlin into a global metropolis, with promising projects such as the
new Alexanderplatz, were swept away by Berlin's intended transformation into
Germania. Speer's plans for redesigning the city reinforce that a constant succes-
sion of initiatives to radically rebuild the city often resulted only in destruction
rather than new city spaces. Although the kilometer-wide strip required to create
a north-south axis was carved through the body of the city, the only part of the
23 Henry Urban,Dle Entdeckung Berlins (Belin,1901), 2.
complex ever to be built was a single group of buildings. In the postwar years, this 24 Werner Düttmann, " Berli n ist vle e Stádte," title of A¡chl-

"cycle of patricide"2e was continued by a policy of demolition and urban renewal
in the hope of generating a more efficient and better society by means of a new
urban plan and transport net. Although much new infrastructure and a number
ol residential complexes-such as the Gropiusstadt, the new Hansaviertel, and
the Márkisches Viertel-were built, the principles of the whole-area design by
Hans Scharoun and the other planners were now only fragmentarily applied-
even though the bombardment of 1944/45 had cleared extensive sections of
the urban area.
This constant cycle ofgrand overall designs followed by destruction and partial
rebuilding has produced a palimpsest whose folios contain architectural and ur-
ban planning features that are fragments of all the overall designs. The most re-
markable thing about Ungers's Manifest der Stadt in der Stadt is that it does not
seek to standardize this typological and stylistic conglomerate. Instead, Ungers
responds to it in a positive way: "The history of Berlin shows us the development
textbook 2 (1984).
25 Philipp Oswalt,Berlin,Stadt ohne Form (Munich, 2000), 39.
26 Cf. Hans Reuther, Dle grosse Zerstórung Berlin. Zwe¡-
hundert Jahre Stadtbaugeschichte (Frankfurt am Nlain, l985);
Wo f Jobst Siedler, Phoen¡x ¡m Sand. Glanz und Elend det
Haup¿s¿adf (lVunich, 2000), 54-70; Oswalt 2000, pp. 49-57;
Florian Hertweck, Der Berl¡ner Arch¡tekturstrel¿ (Berlln, 2010),
241 A2
27 Siedler2000,p.60.
2B lbid., p.68.
29 Oswalt 2000, p.49.
30 Wim Wenders, "The Urban Landscape," n: idem.,
The act af see¡ng: Essays, Reden und Gespráche (Frankfurt
am Nlain,1992),123.
31 Kenneth Frampton, "Das Projekt der l\,4oderne und die
spátmoderne Grossstadt: Berlin 2000," in: Vittorio lvlagnago
Lampugnani and Bomana Schneider (eds.), Em Stück
Grosss¿adl a/s Fxperiment. Planungen am Potsdamer Platz
ln Be¡ln (Stuttgart,1994),22 Frampton, one of the masters
of ceremonies during the Summer School, m staken y dates
the "urban archipelago" text to1972.
32 Cf. Julius Posener, "Berlin: Bemerkungen zur
P anungsgeschichte," in: Hans Ko lhoff and Fritz Neumeyer
(eds.), Grossstad¡arch¡te ktu r. Som merakadem¡e fu r
Arch¡tektur Berl¡n 198Z (Berlin,1989), 10.
of a city of many different zones. The difference and multiplicity of its historic
quarter express the importance of Berlin and are its main urban design feature."
This demonstrates, once more, Ungers's finely discriminating sense of history
and his belief in deriving something positive from preexisting structures, however
little they have in common with classical aesthetic ideals of beauty, regularit¡ and
homogeneity-in this, he is like Siegfried Kracauer, who recognizedin Berlin's
fragmented urban space the properties of a landscape. In Berlin's heterogeneous
urban space, Ungers saw Berlin as a Coincidentia Oppositorum-fhe coinciding of
opposites as defined by Nicholas of Cusa. He used this idea to justify not only the
urban garden and urban villa concepts and the union ofurban and rural territory
in general, but also the morphological design process itself. From this reading
of Berlin as a conglomeration of diverging city fragments, he developed the figure
of the city within the city, whose individual urban units were to make visible the
various strata of history in a pure form. While this thought was also applied to
social demographic profiles and legitimized with reference to the increasing indi-
vidualization of society, what we today perceive to be vastly more fruitful is the
mnemotechnical aspect of this thought model: not only does it make architectural
history available to architects in all its multiplicity, it also allows the city to be
perceived by all as the bricks-and-mortar result of a complex and sometimes very
painful history. Wim Wenders would later justify his choice of Berlin as his new
home by saying that it was an open city, "whose wounds teach history better than
any history book or document."3o This is probably the reason why Kenneth
Frampton described the Archipelago manifesto as "one of the most liberating
strategies" that has ever been presented-at least for Ber1in.31
NATURE METROPOLIS
The divergent and sometimes asynchronous development of Berlin's urban body
has produced gaps-in-between areas that, as, Julius Posener remarks, belong
to none of the city's various districts.3'z Jansen's plan for these in-between areas
was not to utilize them by means of a continuous development, but to give them
a landscape-architectonic form and to site a number of different activities within
them. This reveals the historical influence of Camillo Sitte, who experimented
with planted yards and with the green strip form in a number of projects around
the turn of the century-and it is no coincidence that this combination of archi-
tecture and nature in an open area within a major city puts one in mind of Vien-
na's Wiener Ring. Sitte introduced the concept of "sanitáres Grün" (healthy
green space), into turn-of-the-century urban planning discourse-as opposed to
the "decorative green" of the preindustrial city. Martin Wagner refined this con-
cept in his 1915 dissertation "Das sanitáre Grün der Stádte, ein Beitrag zur Frei-
fláchentheorie" (Healthy green space in the city: a contribution to open space
theory"). The role of decorative greenery is to improve the appearance of a me-
tropolis, whereas the role of healthy green space is to improve ventilation and to
compensate lor the unhygienic qualities of basement and backyard apart-
ments-the idea was to give the confined inhabitants of the city the opportunity
to amuse themselves and to engage in sport in the open air. In an era of increased
interest in health and the rise of the Kórperkult (cult of the body), Wagner called
for all inhabitants to have a minimum number of different types of open space
within a certain distance of their homes-children's play areas, sports areas, prom-
enades, parkland, and urban woodland. These urban open spaces were also "to be
"Berl¡n ¡s a young, unhappy c¡ty, a city of the future.
Her trad¡t¡on has a fragmentary character. Her
development has been frequently interrupted, and
even more frequently d¡stracted and d¡verted,
It has been at once held back and advanced, both
by unconsc¡ous errors and consciously mal¡c¡ous
tendenc¡es; driven foruard, as it were, by h¡n-
drances. lnvidiousness, ¡gnorance, and self -interest
on the part of her rulers, builders, and protectors
forge the plans, only to confound them before con-
fusedly carrying them out,The results-th¡s city
has so many and such quickly changing physiog-
nomies that one cannot speak of a result-are
a fast¡dious conglomeration of squares, streets,
tenement blocks, churches, and pa¡aces. An
orderly muddle; an arbitrariness precisely according
to plan; a seemingly purposeful aimlessness.
Never was there so much order on top of d¡sorder,
so much deliberation on top of incomprehens¡on,
so much method on top of absurd¡ty."
Joseph Roth, Das steinerne Berlin,1930
The h¡story of Berlin shows the development
of a c¡ty from many d¡fferent places. The d¡fference
and variety that manifest themselves ¡n ¡ts historic
quarters are what const¡tute Berl¡n's ¡dentity
and urbanist¡c qual¡ty. lt is a city in wh¡ch oppos¡te
elements have always found clear express¡on,
and where attempts at standard¡zat¡on under the
aeg¡s of a single principle have always failed.
Berl¡n has never followed one idea alone but has
proceeded simultaneously from diverg¡ng ideas...,
Theses and antitheses respond here to one ariother
like breath¡ng in and breath¡ng out.The plan of the
current situation is a book of events in which the
traces of h¡story have rema¡ned clearly v¡sible. lt is
not a un¡f¡ed image but a l¡ving collage, a collection
of fragments. From a historical po¡nt of view, the
simultaneous iuxtaposition of contrast¡ng elements
is the express¡on of the d¡alect¡c process in which
the city has always found itself and still does,
The concept of critical ant¡thes¡s and d¡vergent
multiplicity is the very essence and unique
character of Berlin
Oswald Math¡as Ungers, Die Stadt in der Stadt,1g77
BERLIN INFLUENCES AND RAMIFICATIONS

projected to dovetail closely with the predominating construction style."33 A few

years later, this plea by Berlin's future director for urban development for a city
shot through with open spaces designated for various pursuits was elaborated
by the landscape architect Leberecht Migge. In his "grünes Manifest" (green
manifesto) of 1918, Migge, who would later work on the Hufeisensiedlung devel-
opment with Wagner and Bruno Taut in the 1920s, demanded that "the hundred
thousand" disused hectares of the city be equipped with public gardens, ailot-
ments, model farms, and communal gardens.34 His intention was to generate "the
industrious, productive green" of sports parks, playgrounds, and youth parks,
rather than "wearying, romantic, decadent green." Migge believed that this urban
greenery should provide space for agriculture as well as for recreational space,
and should also be used as a catalyst for waste utilization. The allotments-of
which there were 137,000 in Berlin in 1921 , usually situated on the urban periph-
ery-were to be brought into the city: into the open stretches of wasteland, but
also into the yards ofthe housing blocks and even onto the roofs ofthe residential
complexes. With his concept of a "Landstadt" (rural city), Migge negated the
polarity of city and country, promoting the concept of an entirely colonized and
cultivated natural environment that would serve society.
The utilization of the in-between areas also plays a significant role in the Ar-
chipelago manifesto. The authors see demographic decline as an opportunity
to return to nature those city districts that no longer serve a purpose. The result-
ing grid of natural spaces could then be used to contain a series of landscape-
architectonic typologies-from park landscapes to dense woods to agricultural
production areas. Their ideas, however, extend far beyond the activities that
Wagner and Migge associated with "healthy green space." For instance, they con-
sidered the setting up of urban farms and "ecological preserves" with forests
and wild parks, which could potentially stimulate "new forms of tourism such as
hunting safaris." In addition to a fully developed highway system to connect the
islands, the natural space grid structure would also be capable of housing super-
markets, drive-in cinemas, churches, and banks. This shows the extent to which
Koolhaas and Ungers considered modern infrastructures and facilities to be in-
compatible with historic cities-a belief that Koolhaas was later to elaborate on
in his "Bigness" theory. Their green grid is like a flowing landscape with sections
designated for a number of uses, which can be traversed by animals and motorists
alike. This is extended to the idea that the natural grid also be used to contain
mobile services-"with mobile homes, Airflows, Fairs, Markets, Circuses, that
could travel for years on the coordinates ofthe nature grid, without ever entering
the city." This fiction reaches its height in the notion of new "tribes" of "Metro-
politan gypsies ... pensioners ... who do not benefit from a fixed location in the
city and whose existence would be stimulated by a more roving lifestyle." Just
as the completion of the islands is to be understood as a provocative thought
model, this transformation of the in-between areas into a surreal nature lagoon
with hunting safaris and mobile retirees is to be seen as an exhortation to evalu-
33 lvlartin Wagner, "Das sanitáre Grün der Stádte," PhD
ate these areas in a way that differed from the ideas of the proponents of urban diss., Berlin, 1915, 92.
34 Leberecht Migge,"Das grüne lvlanifest" []9181, in: idem.,
repair. It is remarkable that Ungers included these thoughts on open spaces lor Der soziale Gatten. Das grüne Man¡fest (Berlin,1999), 7-8.
35 Daniel Libeskind,"Die Banalitát der Ordnung," in: Gert
the city in his presentation to the executive committee of the Social Democratic Káhler (ed.), E¡nfach schwieilg. E¡ne deutsche Architektur-
debatte. Ausgewáh lte Be¡tráge 1 993-1 995 (Braunschweig/
Party, with only minor modifications. For instance, he points to the urban farms Wiesbaden,1995), 35.
conceived for a formerly densely populated residential area in Brooklyn as a re- 36 Rem Koolhaas and Bruce l\/au, S,M,L,XL {Rotterdam,
1995),200 f. Koolhaas mjstakenly dated the Man¡fest as
sponse to demographic shrinkage in New York City. This fictionalization of the originating from 1976.
 in-between areas makes clear how Koolhaas and ungers see the postindustrial
city: not as a structure isolated from its rural surroundings consisting of a homo- Das Neue Berlin
geneous succession of roads, house blocks, and plazas, in which nature appears
only in the lorm of avenues or ciearly delineated parks, but a natural metropolis,
dedicated to a new relationship ofcity and country, ofculture and nature, or, as it
is put in the rough draft (similar to Leberecht Migge's thinking), a locality: "whose
essence is to be an environment completely invented by men.',
i

RAMIFICATIONS
In spite of this, a diametrically opposed concept of the city became established
in Berlin. The IBA of 1984 to 1981 saw the urban repair approach split into two '.\''i
sections: the Altbau-IBA, directed by Hardt-waltherr Hámer and primarily con-
(r\\
,!\
cerned with renovating old structures "sensitive1y,,, and the Neubau-IBA, whtch t.J\
was dedicated to Josef Paul Kleihues's efforts to "critically reconstruct" the urban úi-14;rü,q
ground plan. The block became established as a functionaliy and aesthetically
differentiated urban form-like ungers's concept of the urban Block-and as the O. M. Ungers
preeminent urban planning instrument in Berlin's civic development. "critical
OSWALD MATHIAS UNGERS, "DAS NEUE BERLIN.
reconstruction," however, was not characteristic only ol the west Berlin of the STADTINSELN IM MEER DER METROPOLE",1990
Ungers's proposal for Das Neue Berlin, an
1980s; it would also dominate the reconstruction of the united Berlin in the 1990s.
exhibition at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum
under Beriin's senator in charge of construction, Hans Stimmann, however, "crit- curated by Vittor¡o Magnago Lampugnani,
returns to the essént¡al features of the urban
ical reconstruction" became an architectural doctrine of blocks rather like large arch¡pelago manifesto of 1977. For the unif¡ed
stone buildings, which were frequently uniform also in terms of their function- Berlin, Ungers proiects an aggregation of
"icons of arch¡tecture."
ality. Disappointment over the unimpressive architectonic results of the IBA led
to a strategy of building the image of an imagined l9th-century metropolis in
stone. Fortunately, this historical strategy did not succeed in homogenizing the
magnificent palimpsest of Berlin.
In the early stages of the debate on the rebuilding of Beriin following the fal1
'Wa11,
of the Ungers reintroduced the idea of the urban archipelago. In his 1990
contribution to the exhibition Berlin Morgen, entitled "Das Neue Berlin. Stadt-
inseln im Meer der Metropole" (The new Berlin: urban islands in the metropoli- !1.1.:i¡:j..\
{d..li:i.t rtirrl
.''i.a;
iJ \ii
tan ocean), he again presumes a future shrinkage of the city-in which, at least 1

until today, he was proved to be right-and reasserts his understanding of cities

"as a locus of continual formation and transformation of concepts". He insists
that Berlin should be seen as "a gigantieprtzzle," not as "an ordered and logical
whole"-just as, three years later, Daniel Libeskind would speak of Berlin as "a
many-colored urban mosaic."3s This contribution is in principle similar to that
of the Archipelago manifesto lrom the 1970s, except that Ungers has now incor-
porated the idea of erecting significant designs that were never realized, and has
also added other retroactive projects, such as Kahn's City Tower lor Philadelphia.
A perspective drawing by Ungers shows his vision of the unified Berlin: a collec-
tion of new, old, and retroactive "icons of architecture," with the block structures
OMA/REM KOOLHAAS, COMPETITION DESIGN
brought together to form huge masses. FOR BERLIN KOCHSTRASSE/FRIEDRICHSTRASSE,
1980
The idea of an "urban archipelago" was also to play a role in the further work ol
Three years after the Summer School, Koolhaas's
Rem Koolhaas, who reiterated the key ideas of the manifesto in S,M,L,XL.36 Three design for Friedrichstrasse plays retroact¡ve
variations on the architecture of Ludw¡g Mies van
years after the summer School, he presented an archipelago of retroactive proj-
der Rohe, Ludw¡g Hilberseimer and Erich Mendel-
ects to the IBA competition for Kochstrasse and Friedrichstrasse-Mies's high- sohn. D¡verg¡ng from the ,BA doctrine of ,,critical
reconstruct¡on," he conceived for Block 4 a hetero-
rise building again, along with Hilberseimer's business city for the Gendarmen- geneous structure that includes the attempt to
markt and a project by Erich Mendelsohn-the scope of which extended beyond integrate Modernist typolog¡es.

the territory of West Berlin. His design for the city island in the competition area

67
was of course directed against the dogma of urban repair, since this forms part
of the "negative sequence with which each successive generation ridicules the
generation that has gone before."37 Contrary to lhe IBA directive, Koolhaas also
wanted to integrate unpopular postwar buildings, which were a priori incompat- !t rr
ible with the block structure. For Block 4, he eventually developed a row of court-
yard houses in keeping with Berlin's shrinking population. In Koolhaas's view,
"the low density and low height" ofthe courtyard houses "anticipated the future
reunification of the two halves of the city,"38 for they would facilitate the transi-
tion to a linear park, which is what the death strip along the east side of the Wall
would then turn into. OMA/REM KOOLHAAS, PLAN FOR THE NEW CITY
In his plan for the new town of Melun-Sénart, south of Paris (1987), he increas- oF MELUN-sÉNARI 1987
Ten years after the Summer School, Koolhaas
ingly focused.his attention on the intermediate spaces, because what mattered further developed the idea of the urban archi-
here was not so much a question of "where to build" as "how to abstain from pelago ¡n a pro¡ect for the surroundings of Par¡s;
various green areas form urban islands of
architecture."sg His design concentrated on the delimitation and use of corridors differing sizes and shapes.
of open spaces, with the intention of creating an archipelago of residual spaces-
islands ofvarious sizes and shapes that Koolhaas did not elaborate on. Koolhaas
deployed some of these green corridors to preserve the existing landscape and
historic ensembles, others are to contain motorways, supermarkets, or company
headquarter buildings-as with the Archipelago manifesto. Four years later, in
his Grande Arche La Défense competition entry, Koolha.as also took on ideas
from the Archipelago manifesto. He annotated a soft-focus photograph of the
diffuse urban landscape that spreads out behind the Défense with the rhetorical
question: "How many of these buildings deserve eternal life?", answering him-
self thus: "This question is essentially forbidden in a Europe" in which "urban OMA/REM KOOLHAAS, PROJECT FOR MISSION
cRAND AXE, LA DÉFENsE, t99i
context is assumed to be something that should be presewed and respected, not ¡n h¡s proiect for La Défense, Koolhaas again
destroyed. In many cases, of course, that is entirely legitimate, but when we look takes up ¡deas played with in the urban arch¡pelago
man¡festo.The removal of substandard bu¡ldings
at these buildings... it becomes difficult to consider them part of Europe in a in the densely populated district behind the Grande
Arche would g¡ve r¡se to an archipelago of higher-
historical sense. They were not conceived with claims of permanence; they are quality areas.
a kind of provisional-short-term-architecture."40 For this reason, as in Berlin
ten years before, he suggested the demolition of structures-in this case, of build-
ings more than 25 years old-while preserving "buildings with merit" and "build-
ings with sentimental value." This demolition would have momentarily created
a green archipelago of architectural events before the filling-in ol the new open
space with a Manhattan-style grid.
Since the deindustrializalion-rclated spread of shrinkage to whole regions seen
in the 1990s, the Archipelago manifesto has again become part of architectural
discourse after decades of obscurity. "IJrban development planning," writes Hart-
mut Háussermann, must do its part "to enable orderly shrinkage." Háussermann, PAUL COTTER, GARETH MORRIS, HEIDI
RUSTGAARD, EIKE SINDLINGER, ULRIKE STEVEN,
an urban sociologist, claims that this entails "giving preference to the use of SUSANNE THOMAS, COW PROJECI INTERNATION.
wasteland sites and not designating any new construction sites. Additionally, con- AL IDEAS COMPETITION: SHRINKING CITIES-
REINVENTING URBANISM, 2OO4
cepts must be developed for vacant commercial sites. These need not necessarily Ph¡l¡pp Oswalt's research pro¡ect "Shr¡nk¡ng
involve a new commercial use-cultural and social activities should also be given Cit¡es" and the ¡deas compet¡t¡on bearing the same
name make clear that, by this t¡me, the shrinking
more of a chance."al This was the approach taken by the IBA Emscher Park 1989- or th¡nn¡ng process is be¡ng discussed widely. The
1999, which, also in the context of deindustrialízation, transformed a planning COW project demonstrates that thought ¡s also
being g¡ven to a partial renaturalization of demo-
area containing 17 cities into a sustainably interconnected natural metropolis, uti- graph¡cally shrinking c¡t¡es, a scenar¡o that the
lizing disused industrial sites for cultural and other activities. Thomas Sieverts, urban archipelago manifesto explored.

one of those responsible for Ihis IBA, formulated a theory for this that he de-
scribed as the "Zwischenstadt" (in-between city) theory. The Archipelago mani
festo is first mentioned in detail in Philipp Oswalt's research work on shrinking
 FINN GEIPEL, GIULIA ANDI, GRAND PARIS/
MÉTRoPoLE DoucE,2olo
Draw¡ng on the ¡dea of the urban arch¡pelago,
Geipel ¡nterprets the Par¡s metropol¡tan area
as a sustainably ¡nterconnected cluster of gray
and green islands.

FRANZ OSWALD, PETER BACCINI, NETZSTADT

cities, and it also played a role in the IBA in Sachsen-Anhalt, which took place DIAGRAM,1998
L¡ke the urban archipelago man¡festo, Oswald's
in a region with one of the highest rates of shrinkage in Europe.a2 Meanwhile, Netzstadt ¡s an attempt to understand urban
many other concepts and plans, such as the "network city" theory of Franz territories as an aggregation of ¡slands, or nodes,
and their connect¡ng-where possible, susta¡n-
Oswald, who worked with Ungers on the Grünzug Süd project in 1962, or Hide- able-inf rastructures.
toshi Ono's project Fiber CitylTokyo 2050, could be related to the Archipelago
manifesto, whose similarity to visions for a number of other major cities, such
as Paris and Shanghai, is striking. Finn Geipel, for instance, saw Paris's urban
area as an archipelago ofgray and green islands, which should be intensified and
interconnected still more closely with each other. After long years of Paris being
considered the model for Berlin par excellence, now Berlin seems to be serving
as a model for the most radioconcentric and densely developed of all European
major cities. Perhaps Berlin will be a testing ground for a zero-growth Europe
after all.

37 Koolhaas1995, p.259.
38 lbid. p.265.
39 lbid. p.977
40 lbid. p.1099.
4'1 Hartmut Háussermann, "Schrumpfende Stádte -
katastrophale Perspektiven?," in: Angelika Lampen and Armin
Owzar (eds.), Schrumpfende Stádte. E¡n Phánomen zw¡schen
Ant¡ke und Moderne (Cologne, 2008), 350.
42 See Jasper Cepl, "Oswald Mathias Ungers'Stadtarch¡pel
für das schrumpfende Berlin," ¡n: Philipp Oswalt (ed.),
Schrumpfende Stádte, vol. 2 (Stuttgarl, 2005), 187-95; Atexa
Bodammer and Roland Züger, "Form und Wahrnehmunq
der Schrumpfenden Stadt," in: /nternatlonale Bauaustellung
Stadtumbau Sachsen-Anhalt 2010. Weníger ist Zukunft. 19
Stádte - 79 lhemen (Berlin,2010),504*18.

69
THE CITY IN THE CITY

lmmediately after the end of the Summer School, Ungers, eager to promote the idea
of the city in the city as a possible theme and focus for a new building exhibition
in Berlin, deploys and reformats the whole argument into a fully fledged demonstration
in eleven theses, each scolastically accompanied by an explanation and a conclusion.
The manuscript of this third version (C) ¡s contained in a notebook bought at the
Gornell Campus Store, today in the Ungers Archives in Gologne. Under the title ',Berlin
lecture," obviously referring to the presentation that Ungers was to give before the
convention of the SPD in Berlin on September 23,1977,we first find a few preparatory
notes acting as a plan for this presentation, indications of visual materials to be
usedn and an entire page of quotes drawn from an English edition of Fritz Schumacherns
famous Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economícs as if People Mattered (1973), which
Ungers probably read, or reread, to substantiate his demontration.Then comes a rather
complete and fluent draft of the new version, with words and paragraphs crossed
out while writingn pasted excerpts from a typescript German version of B, and other
indications for the layout of visual materials.

This document was obviously the draft of the 48-page booklet (D) that Ungers laid
out himself with Peter Riemann's assistance-the publisher is the Studioverlag für
Architektur located in his own office in Gologne-and was printed in lthaca during the
fall of 1977.The text of this modest publication (probably 2OO or 300 copies at most)
is a slightly reworked version of C, completed by a few additions and select paraphrases
of B. Few readers have had access to this only "original" edition of Die Sfadf in der
Stadt, which has by now become a collector's item. Most people who actually read the
manifesto did so via the ltalian and English translations published shortly after in
Lotus International (no.19, 1978, pp.82-97) under the modified title of "Cities within the
Gity" (E). The inconvenience was not hugen except that some sentences, paragraphsn
and images were omitted in En and that the strict logic of the original layout was
inevitably compromised.

Fortunately, the original template of D is still in the Ungers Archives. We are thus able
to offer here a facsimile that will make Die Stadt in der Stadt - Berlin das grüne
Stadtarchipel nol only accessible again, but newer, crisper, and more legible than
it ever was.

ln the footnotes appended to the translation of the text-and whenever they seemed
to shed light on its meaning-we have quoted readings of the manuscript: words,
sentences, or paragraphs that were either replaced, reformulated, or suppressed in D.

S. M.
THE CITY IN THE CITY

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Page 9
THE CITY IN THE CITY

Page 10
 Die Stadt in der Stadt

The City ¡n the City

i:¡ 4. '

.;' :
 ,r3 $TA0? :S 3SX $?AD1

ñnñtn¡ nAs CIRlt¡tr s?AXARcItIpgt

llln s*aátr6r¡¡nlie!¡es Flanrragskonzept ftr die

züküngtlge Xntwicklung Berlins

bearbeitei und:rorsestellt
von

0. 3{. Ungere

The C¡ty ¡n the City

Berlin, the Green Urban Archipelago

An urban planning concept for the

future development of Berlin
rev¡sed and presented by
O. M. Ungers
 CIas Modell- der $tadt l"n der Stadt
vurde i:l selnen Gruadzügen v$hre:rd
der BerlLner $crmr¡er Ak¿denLe 19??,
veranataltet von dev eorueLL üni-
versiiy, {e:r $enator für 3au- uná
lfohnungsrregen, d.exl IDZ, und. dem
Künstlerhaus Betha¡Lea, koaaipiert.
Die Villa ¿l-g elne st6ütLsche I{oirn-
fom uld {1e S!s.¿t 1¡ der $t&dt
¡raren itle Yhemen etér $ow¡er Akadei:ie.
Dte $tudenten eley Architekturscbule
de:: Cor::elL Universltót haben ln
eineu aetrt¡r$clrigen Kursus dle Yor-
seklágr {tr dte st&dtlsche Villa in
Kü¡:sl:-erhaus Sethanlen in 3er1in
erarbel.tet. Dla Srgebnisse d"er
6omuer Akad.e¡rte verden ln eine¡r ge-
sondsrte¡ Sand ver6ffe¡tllcht.
An d"er Konzepilon und Searbeltr:.ng
des ?hemas der Staitt in der Stad.t
lra,ren belelllgÍ:
O.X.Ungers 3er).1n, Kél,nr
Ithac¿ $"Y.
ñen Koo*hs,ss London
Petev XLelann lthaec l!.Y,
Berl-in
The model of the c¡ty in the c¡ty was conceived
dur¡ng the Summer School organized in Berlin
in 1977 by Gornell University, the senator in charge
of build¡ng and housing systems, the lDZ, and
the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien. The villa as a form of
urban hous¡ng and the city in the city were the
subjects discussed at that Summer School. Cornell
Universlty arch¡tectural students drew up théir
proposals for the urban v¡lla during an e¡ght-week
course held at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien.
The results of th¡s seminar w¡ll be publ¡shed in
a separate volume.
Tak¡ng part ¡n the conception and elaboration
of the theme of "the c¡ty in the city" were:
O. M. Ungers Berl¡n, Cologne, lthaca, N.Y.
Rem Koolhaas London
Peter Riemann lthaca, N.Y., Berl¡n
Hans Kollhoff lthaca, N.Y., Karlsruhe
Artur Ovaska Cologne, Boston
llans Kollhoff lthsca S.Y.
Karlsruhe
&rthur Ovask¿ SJ-n, Soston
?ie vorl-iegende Verston ist elne
ergte tlberarbeitung der 1m Sonmer
ln 3er11n entrrickelten {iedanken.
Die Fevision erfolgte f.n CornelL lm
lfinblflk auf dle PregenXatton vor
den Aussch¿ss der $PD s¡l 23 Selrte:c-
be¡ lgTT in Berlin
Graphisebe Bearbeitung:
0.M.üngers, P. Rl":mar:n
Druek:
Arnol-d. Prlnting Ccrp. Ith¿ca ll.Y"
Verlag:
StudLonerlag für Archltekir:r
L. gagevs l{óln
Sachdrucke auch auszugsnel*e beá&rf--
en der Genel:mig¡rng durch dea Yerlag.
?rinted tn USA lthaca lf .i. 1977
The following vers¡on is a first re-elaborat¡on
of the reflections developed during the summer.
The revision was undertaken at Cornell in v¡ew
of its presentation to the SPD Congress in Berlin
on September 23, 1977.
Layout
O. M, Ungers, P, Riemann
Printed by
Arnold Pr¡nting Corp., lthaca, N.Y.
Publisher
Stud¡o Verlag für Arch¡tektur
L. Ungers, Cologne
This text cannot be reproduced, even in abstract
form, w¡thout permiss¡on from the publ¡sher.
Pr¡nted ¡n the USA, lthaca, N.Y.,1977
 In}raLtsverzel"e!:nls

flrese L Íhese 9
Eev8Lken¡agsr{lckgang in BerJ.l.n DLe franefo:m¿tion cler $tad.t durch
ille fleschlcbte
these ?
Krtttk der bl.sberl.gen Planungst!¡aorle Íhese 1O

K¡fterlen urd ZleLsetzr:ngea f$¡ dfe

lhege 3 Zukunft
Das Probl"ea der $chnnpñ:ng aLlgeueln
fhese Ll
These h ZeftXcber AbLauf unil Du¡chfübn¡ng
DLe dlfferenzl.erte Sts,ütgtn&tr¡r ln des Planu¡gsproJektes
SerLLn

fhege 5
Das lior¿ept iler Staét 1n iler Staiit
t
; Thege 6
Dle Ortsbestlumung dter $tailt-IngeLn
{
t
i
I Íhese ?
I Dag grüne St$iltearchipel 3erlln
l

l
llhese I
Die gtñdtfsche YlLl-a aLs etne urba¡e
1
I{ohnfoln
l'
t
t
{
t
b
f
t
I

Table of Contents Thesis 7

Berl¡n as a Green Archipelago
Thesis 1
Berl¡n's Populat¡on Drop Thesis 8
The Urban Villa as a Form of Urban Hous¡ng
Thesis 2
Crit¡c¡sm of Current Plann¡ng Theor¡es Thesis 9
Transformation of the C¡ty ¡n the Course of History
Thesis 3
The Problem of Shrinkage in General Thesis 10
Criteria and Def¡n¡t¡on of Ob¡ectives for the Future
Thesis 4
The Different¡ated Urban Structure in Berl¡n Thesis 11
Schedule and Realization of the Plann¡ng Proiect
Thes¡s 5
The Concept of the City in the City

Thes¡s 6
The Location of Urban lslands
 fbese L E?l¿uterung
VorLiegen{le $ehü.tzungen prognosliz-
ieren ei"nen SevtSlkerunger8,ckgang fn
3er1tn aLs :-0 Prozent von
um mel¡r
derzelt ru¡á zrel. auf L,? XllLlonen
ln ilen achtziger Jahlen.
$cl:L¿ssfclgerung
Jede zukünfttge PJ-anung für Berlln
¡rlrd sieh nlt d"em ?robl"en einer redu-
zlevten Sta¿t befs,sse:r müssen. Da
die OesantfLüche begrenzt lst unal aua
Gründen iier po3-ltlschen Real"lt&t vor-
L{uflg ved.er verkLeinert noch ver-
gr6ssert ¡rerdea kann, ürlssen Strkuafts-
strsteglen entvtckelt nerd.en, dle
elne ko¡troll"lerte Reilualeru¿g iler
st&,dtfsehen 01ch*e berückslehti gen,,
oh¡e ille allgeneine &¡altt8t de: ur-
banen Umrelt zu beel.ntráchtigen.
Thes¡s 1 quently tend to swing back to a somewhat higher
Current evaluations predict that Berl¡n, by the
1980s, w¡ll have lost more than ten percent
of its population, dropping from 2 to 1,7 m¡llion
inhab¡tants.
Explanat¡on
lf we start from the assumpt¡on that these
est¡mates are fa¡rly exact, then it must be borne
¡n mind that the real figures may exceed the
est¡mated reduction, because once the decfease
is in progress, it ends up by causing a b¡gger
effect. A certa¡n percentage of anxiety-prone in-
hab¡tants w¡ll be caught up ¡n the end by an exodus
psychosis, with the result that the population
w¡ll sl¡p below the est¡mated f¡gure.1 Experience,
however, has shown that th¡s figure will subse'
Wenn ms,n davo¡ auageht, dass dle
$chátzu:rgea eLalgerltassen zutreffen,
so lcuss doch áa¡alt gerechnet nelden,
dass d.le r¡irkl"lchen Zahlen die ge-
schátzte Schrrmpfuxgequote noch über-
steLgen, da slch, ¡renn der $cbnxpf-
uvrgsptozesg erst elnxal elnsetzt, e1ñ
'$lterdniáü?f
ec tbt¿It lta¡ñt :
tin gewlsser Prozeutsatz an übpr-
dngstlichen Stadtbeso!¡nern *lrd. in
elne Abve,nderungsneurose verfal"len o
sod"asg die Bevél-kerungeaahJ- ¿ua$chst
u*;;i¿ ses;trüte-a¡r;r; a*inkl.
Srfahrungsgemdssvlrd. slch itie Ziffer
epdter wieüer auf einem etv¿s b6heren
$lvsau einpenáeJ.n, Voralsgesetzt dass
g3-eicbzeltig eine Yerbesse¡utlg der
Lebensqnd.it8ten unil eln h6heres
Ati,rahtlvlt&te aagebot in d.er $tad.t,
d.ir. elae Reorg*nlsatf.on der urbanen
U:¡nreLt elnsetst. Ohne eLn ¡reseatlieh
verbessertes Algebot vlrd. nieqsnó
freLri}lig ln einer abgevlrtschaftete::
St¿dt blelben, geschrreige d"enn elorthln
zurückehren.
'1 C: "... so that the number of inhabitants will probably
level, assum¡ng that the qual¡ty of life ¡mproves go down to 1,500,000."
and the city becomes a more congen¡al place to
live ¡n after a reorganization of the urban envi-
ronment. W¡thout a rad¡cally ¡mproved offer no one
will want to rema¡n in a bankrupt c¡ty of his own
accord or, st¡ll less, go back there.
Conclusion
Any future planning for Berlin must therefore
come to grips with the problem of a c¡ty that has
shrunk. Since the total surface of Berl¡n ¡s fixed
and political real¡ty ¡s such that it can be ne¡ther
reduced nor increased, future strateg¡es must
be dev¡sed that w¡ll allow for a controlled decrease
in the population density, without jeopardizing
the general quality of the urban environment,
 Tbese ? [r1ñuterung
Dle z¿r Zei! vorherrsche;rale Mei.nung,
d.sgs historlsch gevac?:eene $tadt-
geblete )-edlglich dureh zug&tzliche'
uad. er¡¡ánzende B¿ut*ttgkeit erhalten
und sanlert se:d.en k6nnen, geht von
falsehen Prünlesea aus and lst des-
hatb i11t¡sionlstlscil.
Thesis 2
The opinion that prevails today, whereby the his-
tor¡c parts of the c¡ty can be preserved and saved
only through add¡tional and supplementary con-
struction,2 stems from erroneous assumpt¡ons and
¡s therefore illusory.
Explanat¡on
Two urban design tendencies must be avoided
on the theoretical and operat¡ve plane, due to their
¡llusory character: one starts from the assumpt¡on
that the c¡ty can be repaireds to its former historic
substancé and configurat¡on. Programs of th¡s
k¡nd are, al best, the result of a m¡sunderstood
wave of nostalgia. As stat¡stical forecasts seem
to ¡nd¡cate, future demand w¡ll simply not be large
enough to sustain them. The reduction process,
Zve{ 8ie}rtungen stádtebgul-l.chen Denk-
ens und Xandelns sind vegen ihres
i11uslonáren Charakters zu vermeLdev::
tirmal davon arrozuge!:eno éass die
Statlt la ihrer historisehen $ubstanz
und. Gestalt repariert verden kénnte.
Progra"me in dleser Richtung slná
bestenfalls ilas Ergebnis einer falsch
ver;tandenen $ost&Lgleve13-e. Wie áie
statistigehen Progiosen zelgen, reieht
hÍerau ganz einfach der in Zukunft
anfaLlende Bedarf nicht aus. Der
Prozess der Reduzlerung darf ¿ber
auch nl.eht üem Zufsü übe¡lassen ver-
d.en. Eine daraus zvar:gsláuflg sÍ.ch
ergebenáe ungeord.nete Sntvickluag
entbált nicht nur ehaotische SLe¡nentq
sondern rrürde sicb letztenillicb
stadizerstórerisch aus¡¡irken.
Die Real-isation d"er ldee r¡on der
Stadtreparatur, d.ie falgch verst¿néen
leicht in das Segenteil- der unge-
volJ-ten gtadtserstórung rusehJ.agen
kann, resuLtiert l¡ efnem un&us-
veichlfchen Zvang naeh mehr 3eu-
however, cannot be left to chance. The hazardous Conclusion
development that would inevitably ensue not only
spells chaos but would ult¡mately have d¡sastrous ln Berlin, the theory of urban repair, in the sense
consequences for the city. The realization of the of a h¡storic reconstruct¡on, would be particularly
idea of "urban repair," wh¡ch, if wrongly ¡nterpreted, detrimental, since the ¡nexorable depopulat¡on
may paradoxically lead, in practice, to the destruc- process would only be camouflaged and all act¡on
tion of the c¡ty, implies an ¡nev¡table thrust toward taken to improve reality would be pointlessly
an ¡ncrease in buildings, homes, shops, social deferred, to the consequent disadvantage of the
services, and so on.4 The postulate of urban repa¡r city.
den¡es an establ¡shed fact, namely, that most areas
have by now ended in ruins prec¡sely because, ¡n
almost all cases and especially in Berlin, the neces-
s¡ty to ¡ncrease their déns¡ty does not ex¡st any-
more. ln effect, recommendations of this kind
lead to a general confus¡on of real necess¡t¡es and
to a consequent outOurst ói k-itdCh produced in
the name of goodwill and good taste, because the
supp_g9-gq n999s9¡!y !9 ilt-sJ as contrived as ¡ts
ensuing results.
 volunen, lfohnungen, L6den, Sorlal--
elnrlchtu¡gea und ilergl-elchen. Dle
Anaebar¡ungen ?on eler Stadtrep*ratur
negieren dle fats¿che, üaas dle mels-
ten Geblete ln tlnordnur¡g geraten
stnd, retl die Sotnendllgkett
ebea
für elne reLtere Verd.ichtr¡ng in ilen

Berlln, nleht aehr gegebea sfnd..

f¿ts&chlteh fülxes üesh&lb gslehe
VorscltJ.Sge ¿u et*tf allgenelnen Kon*
fusLo¡¡ tl*r re*le; Scg*bentreltes xr"t
al"l- lbren Folgen {*r Produktlon roa
Kltseb Lu ñ*xea il*t gt¡ten lllll"ene r¡nd
Gesclnlocks o denn ele¡ Seilarf der zu-
grunde geleet rlrd. lgt ln glefcben
Sehl"ussfoLgeruag !{asse küngtltch vle ills Prodr¡kte elle
hlerdurcb erzeust ne¡d,e¡.
Serade ln Berlln rlrki elch ille
lfhegrfe vo¿ der Stailtreparatur Ln
Slnne der hlstorlschen llleilerher-
stell-ung aachtelllg aus, da elaa r:n-
¿ufbaltsa,me Froblen d.er Reeluzlerung
4er Subgta¡z ilsdr¡reh nur vereehl"e*ert
unil tandLungen ñ¡r Yerbessenrng áer
Real-lt8l unn6ilg il.b. ¿u¡r fiachtell
clcr Stactt hlnausgez6gert verd.en,

2 C ",.. that would allow one to restore lheir or¡ginal situation

3 C did not say here "repaired" but "reproduced": clearly,

it ¡s the theory of urban "reconstruction" or resloration that
Ungers criticizes here.
4 C added: "Forthis approach,this is a precondit¡on,
a sine qua non for the improvement of the urban structure."
 8!:ese 3 Erláuterung

Kürzllclr trafen eleh in Frankfurt Offensichtlleh sind aber d.ie tlrüniie

So¡LsLdmokrat i sche KomunaS"pollt lher
um d,ag P:abLen des 3e?ólkenmgsrück-
gergs 1n den Oroset$d.ten zu dlskutiern
und Segenmagsnab¡en zu er6rter¡. Der
Trenil, 1at l¡ clen melsten gr6sseren
Stddten Deutschl"ands rückl&ufi.g.
Auerlkanlseben Verháltaissen vet-
g1e*.cbbar nl"mt Jetzt auch lrler dle
Abvand.erungln dle R¿nózonen z:l" Dle
Folge des stllsillg zuaehnrenden *¡odrs
ist.-eine ¿llx3hltcbe Yeramrng und
auf weltere $lcht gesehen eln teil--
vei.eer ?erfal"1 lnnerst$d.ttgch,er
blete. ?er Sebn:npfungaprozess bat
ln elnlgen Grosstddten rle I{6Ln,
I'ran&furt und" BerLin, in St8*ten also
¡ntt hohen O*starbeitera¡telL, berelts
el"ngesetzt.
fürdl.e Stedtfl-uebt aucb das Ergebnls
eincs ver$*derten Lebensstils. Wie
efne neuerl"lche lJmfrage des Ingtituts
für Dmoskople in Allensbach f,eet-
steLlie, verllert di¿ Srossieilt 1@er
nehr an Xoluvert,
Dfe tlafrage zeJ.gt, dass ?h Froaent
der Eev6Lkeruag eine llobnuag auf den
Lande gegenüber einer $taltwohnung
bevorzugen. Das Lebeu auf dem Lande
gevfu:nt imer sebr an Attrg.ktivlt$t.
Das Auio unil das Fernsehen apielen
Ge- hlerbel eine rrlchiige ñolle. Di.e
Obersieillung auf das Lenal 1st eehoa
l$ngst ¡leht mehr eln Rüekzug arrs der
GeselLschaft. Durch dle verbessertes
KomunlkatlonsmLttel h¿be¡ gich go-
¡rohl" d"le r8rxLlehe, als auclr ále geis-
tlge Dls*snz rosentllch verrlngert.
Der $chn:mpfirngsproaese lst ¿ber aueh
keln spezlflscb Berllner ProbLsr,
Dle nelgten ]feLlmetropolen, nlt nur
renlgen Ar¡an¿bmen, eind vom glei"chan
Ptrñnomen betroffen. Seit l-9TO be-

Thesis 35 Explanat¡on populat¡on drop ¡n NewYork City has reached

ln Frankfurt, a number of Social Democrat¡c local
pol¡t¡cians met recently to discuss the problem
of the population drop in big cit¡es and to draw up
the necessary countermeasures. ln the majority
of big German c¡ties, the tendency ¡s regressive.
As in Amer¡ca, here, too, the m¡gration to the
periphery ¡s mounting. The consequence of this
constant exodus is a general impoverishment
and, ¡n a broader perspective, a part¡al decay of
the city center. The depopulation process in some
major c¡ties, such as Cologne, Frankfurt, and
Berlin,6 which have a h¡gh percentage of fore¡gn
labor, is already in progress.
Clearly, however, this fl¡ght from the city also
results from a changed way of l¡fe. As shown by
a recent survey by the Demoscopic Bureau
of Allensbach, big cities aré stead¡ly los¡ng the¡r
residential value.
Jh.e- gurvey 9h9ws that 74 percent of the popula-
t¡on prefer an apartment in the country to an
apartment ¡n the c¡ty. Country l¡fe seems to offer
more attract¡ons. The automobile and televis¡on
play an ¡mportant role in this respect. For a long
t¡me now, mov¡ng to the country does not anymore
mean flee¡ng from society. With improvements
in means of communicat¡on, both spatial and psy-
cholog¡cal d¡stances have been considerably
reduced.Th¡s process of depopulation does not
apply only to Berl¡n either, Most of the major c¡t¡es
of the world, with very few exceptions, have been
h¡t by the same phenomenon. S¡nce 1970, the
650,000 ¡nhabitants, and th¡s trend seems l¡kely to
cont¡nue. In some parts of the city, more than
70 percent of the ¡nhab¡tants have left, w¡th the
result that ent¡re distr¡cts have v¡rtually been wiped
off the map. ln their place, the city adm¡nistration
now plans to install agr¡cultural concerns, or "urban
farms." At present, more than 1,000 are scheduled
¡n a once highly populated district of Brooklyn.
Conclus¡on
Since, as the examples mentioned show, this
process of shr¡nkage ¡s not a local phenomenon but
rather a sign of a much more general tendency,
the future task will no longer be to plan the growth
of cities but rather to develop new proposals and
concepts for deal¡ng with this exodus by protecting
the better aspects of c¡ties. Faced w¡th th¡s ass¡gn-

Scblussfclgerung
D¿ eg slcb bei dem $chrunpfungepro-
zess *ie ille Selspiele zelgen offen-
eichtLich nic!¡t us ein Lokal"es Phá,no-
aea, sonúern e?¡er um Vorbotén elnes
aLlgenefnen Trends lrandel"t, l"s! es in
Zukunft nic]:t nehr dle Aufgabe für
óas Xaehstr¡m d,er Stád.te zu planen,
sondern neue Vorscbl&ge r:¡d üed.a,r¡ken
ftr eLaen Seduzierungaprozess unter
Xahntrg iler st6d.tlschea Q¡aLitát ¿u
ent¡rlckeln. Dleser Aufgale stehen
ilie Stñitteplaner t¡eute uayorbereitet
gegeatber urd k6nnen sf"e auch nit cle¡
bisherlgea Instrumentarlum nlcht
L6sen. Berll.n ist *agen des extre¡ae:r
und tdeosynkretLsche Charakters be-
so¡ders geeignet in dieser Problen-
ailk elne Laboratorlupsfuaktlon
ubernenñen
ment, urban planners today are unprepared and
certainly incapable of solv¡ng the problem with the
means that have been employed hitherto. Berl¡n,
which has such radical and idiosyncratic features,
is particularly well suited to act as a laboratory
of th¡s set of problems.T
tr5,gt Bev$lkerüngsyerl"ust ron
d^er
$e¡r-York-City 650 0O0 Elnvohner und
der Yevlusttrelrd nllnt noch stá*dig
¿u. Ir: eLnzelnen Stadtgebleten rind
es mellr als ?0 Prozeat, 'sod&ss g&nsa
lfohngeblete praktiscb vom Erdloder¡
ve¡selntr¡aden sind. A¡ llrrer SteLLe
pJ.ant die Stadtvem*llung Jetzt J.and-
rirtschaftl-iehe Betrlebe: eog¡ iurban
fa::r¡s t
. Etva L000 solclrer Fa:men
slnal zur lel.t auf einen ehemal¡ iticht
besie8el"ten l{ohngebiet in Brooklyn
norgesehen.
¿u
5 C started the presentation of thesis 3 as follows: "The
problem of c¡ty shrinkage is not that of Belin only. The
phenomenon occurs in almost all the industrial¡zed countries,
where cities have developed in a measured and controlled
6 C qave Munich as an example here,instead of Berlin.
7 cr "Berlin could also-as it already has done several times
in its history-assume the prototypical status of a pilot project.
On the example of Berlin, new paradigms for the global
problem of a zero-growth Europe could be introduced and
developed in an experimental and illustrative way."
 ?hese l+
Grosstádte siná charaktrerlsfert,
dursh d.l"e $berlagerung vlel-er un-
terschiedllcher, sich gegenseitig
ausehl"lesgender uná divergferender
Frinzlpien. Dayin 3-iegt ihr Unter-
gchied. zun Dorf, zur Sledlun&, zluu
Qus.rtier unil zur kLeLneren unit ::nl.ttel-
gro$se¡ $tactt. Xier drückt sleh d.le
Oharakteri"stik in der Oomlnan¿ elnes
oder renlger sich gegenseitig er-
gánzender Prinzlpien &us. Id.eal ¡ráre
el:¡.'Stadigebi)-áe zu R€nnen, in áen
sowohl eine Xinhelt, a1s gleichzeiiig
a.uch elne Atrnospháre iier überscbau-
barkelt besteht.
Thesis 48
Large cit¡es are characterized by an overlapping of
many mutually exclusive and d¡v€rgent concep-
t¡ons.This is what d¡fferentiates them from v¡llages,
housing developments, urban districts, and small
üi méd¡um-size tówns. Here,'the chief characteristic
is éipressed iñ thé'piedominance of a s¡ngle basic
principle or, if more than one exists, complementary
pr¡nc¡ples.The ideal would be to find an urban con-
f¡guration in wh¡ch both un¡ty and an atmosphere of
clarity éx¡st.
Explanation
A structure loses ¡ts functional capacity in the
measure ¡n wh¡ch its monol¡thic character increas-
es, be it in the economy, pol¡t¡cs, nature, or the
urban environment. When, for example, General
Erl8r:teru¡g
Sine Struktur ve¡liert i!:re Funktlon-
f&blgkelt in gleichen ldasse wie ibr
monolithischer Charakter runimt, sel
es in d"ey lüirtgcbaft, im Staatsvesen!
der i{stur oder ln der stáát,ischen Um*
¡re1t. A1s 2,8. Ceneral MoNors zu.
gross und d¿ilurch unüberschs,ubs.r vurd.e,
entgchloss sich elas Management zur
Un¡randlung {es Proiluktlonsbetrfebs in
elne Féderatlon veraünftig gtosser
Sinbeltea, Als d.er grésste Inóustrie*
betrleb E\ropas, d.er Srittsh Xatf onat
CoaL Soard., einen nieht *.ehr vertret-
bare Gr6sse erreichte, vurd.e der
Monolith in eine gut koordlnierte
Vereinigang von halbautonoroen Ein-
belten aufá'i*,!{rf; J::,ie nif elsenen
Aufgaben uná Motivationen.
Mit der S!¿ilt verhá,1t es gich ni.cht
andevs. Obwohl eg schrllerig lst d.ie
vernllnftl"ge Gr$sse einer $taó! zu be-
stimrnen, so rtrd es d.oeh Lwer klárer,
dags elne n$nsehens¡rerte Orüsse bei
etwa 250 000 8Ínrohnern liegi. Stá,d.te
rie Zürich, Florenz, lrier oder Fref-
Motors became too b¡g and ungovernable, the problems, and end up ruin¡ng the human envi-
management dec¡ded on a transformat¡on of the ronment, Today, we suffer from a sense ofj¡niversal
product¡on f acilities into reasonably-sized' units.
JggpeCJ for.gjantism,
perhaps because we think
When Europe's Iargest ¡ndustrial complex, the that what ¡s b¡gger must be better. Real¡ty has
British National Coal Board, reached a no longer instead shown that reduction and diminut¡on also
functional d¡mension, the monolith was div¡ded make for better quality, and not least ¡n the quality
into a group of sem¡-independent units, each with of life itself. For this reason, small and legible
different tasks and motivations.9 units ought to be created. Th¡s appl¡es to produc-
The s¡tuation is no different in the c¡ty, Although t¡on, the way of l¡fe, and any other component of
¡t is difficult to establish what constitutes a reason- our environment.ll
able s¡ze,.fo_le,city, ¡t is still clear that a convenient
size is lomewhere around 250,0óO inhabitants.
Zurich, Florence, Tr¡er, or Fre¡burg are places ¡n Conclus¡on
which the human atmosphere outwe¡ghs the hustle
and bustle of the b¡g c¡ty,These examples show These considerations suggest that, with¡n the
that an increase in size does not mean an ¡mprove- context of a selective program for the reduction
ment in the qual¡ty of life. ln Tokyo, New York, or of urban overpopulation, or even of a part¡al
London,lo the mill¡ons of inhab¡tants do not raise demolition of those districts that are superfluous
the effective value of these cit¡es, but create and work badly, the reduction of the populat¡on
instead enormous technical and organizational in Berlin might prov¡de an outstanding opportunity

Schlusgfolgerung
Aus dfeger Erkeantnis heraue
überlegen ob nlcht in Kontext einet
Frogramns iler selektf.ven Retluktio¡¡ eles
stáátlschen Drueks, Ja sogar eines
teilvelgen Albaug gchlecht ñ¡nktioa-
lerentier u¡á überf1üssLger $tad.tteiLe,
Ferl"Lns 3e¡rólkerurgsrfckgang nlcht
eine el::üaLlge Ch¿nce bi.elet, 0ebiete
su berel.nlgen, dle dea erford.erLlchea
technischen, sozLa)"en u*d siruktureLLen
Ansprüebe:r nicht nehr genügen. 0l-eich-
zeit{g sol"lten erhcLten¡nerte CIebiete
ldeatlfizlertund fhre Chs.rakterlsti.k
entveder bestñttgtn ocler ¡orreit sle
r:nvol-l.st$nd.1g tst konpletlert
Die so aus der a3.J-geaalnen stédt-
ischex Anon¡rnitát herausgel"6*en nn-
klaven ¡rürden d¿nn euasl a1e befrelte
Stadtl:lseLr¡ eln $t8d.tearchipel iu
einer grilnen [aturlagune bllden.
to redevelop zones that are no longer satisfactory
on the technical, social, and structural levels.l2
Simultaneously, those zones that deserue to be
preserued should be ¡dent¡f¡ed, and their character-
ist¡cs be either underl¡ned or, ¡f ¡ncomplete, com-
pleted.These enclaves liberated from the anonymity
of the c¡ty would ¡n the¡r qual¡ty of quasi islands
fofm a green urban archipelago in a natural lagoon.
burg glnd eben Pl-ñt¿e in áenet die
aenschliche .Atxospb*re gegesüler de!
tektlk und" Gesclráftigkeit übervtegt.
$slche Befsplel"e nact¡en ileutllch, dass
úle nlchts f.abezug
Zuna!:se an Or6sse
auf óle Verbeseetung de: Qualitát
bringÍ. In Tokio, l{e¡¡ lork oder [,on-
ist zu don tragen dle Millfonen nlebt zu üst
rl.rklicben !{ert der Stadt bei, si.e
sebaffen ledlgltch erorne teehnLsehe
uad o:ganlsatorische ProbLeme und
produzieren ilarüber htna,us einen Yer-
fall- der menschlichen Umrelt. Wir
Leid.en heute an el.ner u¡irerseLlen
Yerherrl-ichung ües Giganiignus und
nehmel cn, dass d.as ¡ras gr6sser auc?r
besser lst. Die RealLttt zelgt Jedoch
d.ass Eeschr&nkung und 8e4:¡ktj.on aueh
efnen Verbesserüng der Qualitüt nicbt
zuletzt der tebensquaHt&t bed.eutet.
DesbaLb solLten ror allem klel:le und
¡rerd.en. übe¡schauba¡e Elnbeiten gerebaffen
¡rerden. Das gi:-t eorohL ftv d.le Fro-
duktlon, dle lebensfo::¡r oder lrgené
einen aaderen Eereich d.er U¡a¡relt.
I C: "The inevitable process of city shrinkage, understood a size nothing is added to the virtue of the city. ln places
as sound shrinkage-to quote an analogous term from the like London, Tokyo, New York, the mi¡lions do not add to the
world of economy-can be perceived as a negative experience, cities' real value but merely create enormous problems and
to be hidden behind manifestations of a fake vitality. But it produce human deqradation."
can also be seen as an experimental project that would alm to 12 C added "... arch ¡tectu ral. lechnical ..."
intensify through architecture and urban design the experience
of the city as a transformed urban environment."
9 This entire explanalion borrows from Ernst Friedrich Schu-
macher's famous book,Small ls Beaut¡ful: A Study of Eco-
nom¡cs as íf People Matfered, published in 1973. C contains, in
its preparatory notes, a number of quotes and excerpts from
an English copy oJ ihis book. ln fact, Ungers literally paraphrases
here one of those quotes: "The monolith was transformed
into a well-coordinaled assembly of (lively) semi-aulonomous
units, each with its own drive and sense of achievemenl."
10 To these examples, C added that of Milan.
'11 Here again, Ungers paraphrases several quotes or informa-
tion from Schumacher's book: "Today, we suffer from an a¡mosl
universal ido¡atry of giantism. lt is therefore necessary to insisl
on the virtues of smallness.... Take the question of size of
the city. While we cannot judge those things, it is fair to say the
desirab¡e size of city would be probably something of the
ordet of V2 million inhabitants. lt is quite clear lhat above such
 flrese 5 Xrl$uteru*g
Dle ldee d.ey r3tadt !n d"er $tadtt
1st die Gnnillage für ein zukünft-
iges stadtráunaLicbes Mod.eLl in 3er-
l-in. $le drüekt slch ln 8i!d von
3erlir aLs eineü: grünen St6d.tear-
chLpel aus. DL* urbanen tnseLn e¡-
baLte:: elne ihr gen6sse dureh üe-
schichte, soziale $truktu: und 16r*-
l-Lche Q¡¡a1ltát 6ep:&gte Identiiát.
Dle Sesasrtheit d.et Slaitt bileiet elne
F6d,eration sol"eiter unterschiedl"i.eh
strukturlerter, berrusst antithetiscb
geetal-ter $taátefnbelten. Xasageb-
Lieh f{r dle Aus¡ru.hL sol-lXe d.Le ?at-
sache sein, bf.s zu relchem Gra&
Ideen und Kon¿epte in einer reine¡
u:rd erfassbaren Í'ora vorhand.en sinit,
Thes¡s 5
The idea of the city in the c¡ty ¡s the basic concept
for a future urbanistic model of Berl¡n. lt is substan-
tiatéd in the image of Berlin as a city-archipelago.
The urban ¡slands have an ¡dentity in keép¡ng with
their h¡story, soc¡al structure, and env¡ronmental
character¡stics. The city as a whole ¡s formed by the
federat¡on of all these urban entities w¡th different
structures, developed in a del¡berately ant¡thet¡c
manner. A decisive cr¡ter¡on for the selection of
these ¡slands ought to be the degree of clarity and
leg¡bility of their underly¡ng ideas and concepts.
Explanation
The first step to be taken ought to be to ident¡fy
and select those d¡stricts of the c¡ty that
possess clearly ¡dentif¡able features likely to
Der erste Scbritt zu Verwirkliebr:ng
nüsste dle ldeatifihation und Selek-
tion soLcher $tad.tgeb{ete seln, óle
identifizlerbare Sigenschaften ej.ner
Qua1it8t besltzeno dte etne ErlraLtung
r¡nd Verdeutliehr:ng reclrtf*rticen.
Dlese eogenannten fde¡tlt$tsrüuee
sol-1ten nlcht suf der 8as1s eines
besond.eren Gesehsacks oder nuy auf-
g:und Ssthetlscirer Cestchtspünkte be-
stlmt'rerden."
Der z¡reite $chrl*t zur Seuordnung
lst dle Konpl"eltl€rung der zu er-
baltenden Fragnente, die i¡ d.iesens
Prosesg lhre enágültige architek-
tonlsehe und stádtebaullche Fo:ar
erhalten. Dieser Ansatz filhrt zur
Entvieklung elnes Repertoirs von Xr-
g6narngseinrichtu¡gen nlt betont u:r-
pathetisches Charakter. In Oebieten
hoirer slbdtebauLicher Dlcbte solLte
der vorb¿ndene Druek d::rch die
$chaffung von Frel.yá.rmen wie Stad.t-
parks, SffentJ-lchea Anlagen und
Plá,tzen verrlngert lrerd.ea, wá,hrend
¡ustity ttreil p-reservation and accenauu,'on. -** of wh¡ch it was f¡rst chosen. lt is essent¡ally a mat-
so-called "id.enlity-spaces" sbould not be chosen ter of establishing, in a way, the "physiognomy"
on the basis of a particular taste or aesthet¡c of the part of the c¡ty ¡n quest¡on, and leaving one's
concept¡ons, stamp on it to such an extent that it finds its proper
The second step toward a redevelopment is the expression. Each part of the city taken ¡n ¡tself will
complet¡on of the fragments to be preserved thus receive an ¡dentity of ¡ts own that will funda-
that, in the course of this process, would rece¡ve mentally d¡fferentiate ¡t from the others.
their defin¡t¡ve arch¡tectural and urbanistlc form. More specif¡cally, therefore, the Márk¡sche V¡ertel,
This task requ¡res the development of a whole Westend, Kreuzberg, and Lichterfelde are neces-
reperto¡re of completive strategies of a clearly sarily ¡ncluded as components of the concept and
unemotional kind. ln quarters w¡th a high build¡ng should be regarded as complementary elements
dens¡ty, the exist¡ng bulk of building ought to with d¡fferent characteristics hav¡ng the capacity to
be diminished through the creat¡on of free spaces, raise the supply and hence the freedom of choice.
such as city parks, public gardens, and squares,
while districts with a low dens¡ty, such as Westend,
could be intensif¡ed by the ¡ntegrat¡on of social Conclus¡on
condensers.l3
The architectural and planning ¡ntentions for the The urban concept of the city ¡n the city, plural¡st¡c
future cons¡st solely in enucleating the true ¡n this respect, ¡s the ant¡thes¡s of current planning
conf¡guration of each urban ¡sland on the basis theory, which stems from a defin¡t¡on of the c¡ty

Schlusgfolgerung
Das 1a d.ieaea 9lnae p3.uraltstLsche
geplante Stacl.tkonzept iler Stattt Ln
dar $t¿ét let ille Antlthese zur bls-
herfgen $tuátbautheorle, dl.e von der
Deflaltloa iler elnleltllcben Stadt
anregeht. Es entaprlcbt dler beutlgen
Struktur éer Seee:.1schtfi, áie stclr
lmer mebr zu einer laillvl.du¿Lgesell-
l3 "V€rdichlungzentren" (densification centers) obviously
lransposes ¡n German the concept of "social condenser,"
which Koolhaas had used ¡n A.The whole ofthis explanation,
lacking in C, is jncidentally a more or less direct adaptation
of several passages of A in German.
Geblete gerLager lfbhnüf.chte, lrle tr.3.
l{esten&, dureb ilfe Integratloa vcn
Ye:cllcbtr¡ngszentrea zus$tzllch ln*
tenslvleri verden k6nnten.
Dle zu*ünfbl6en .Archltektur- unil Xnt*
nrfgfntentlonen begteben clnEfg und
aLlels ela,rin, ille elgenttlche Gestalt
Jed.er elnzelnen ñtailtl.*eel, dle el"s
soLche auegonthlt nard,e, b,er¿ue¿u-
arbeltea, Dabei geht es Lm regent-
Llcbcn darun, geri*serruassen dle
tPbysiognomler d.as JevellLgen Stsd.t-
tefl-p zu bestlnnen u¡d. so rett ru
pr5ger, dass er sefnen elgentlichea
^Ausdn¡ck erh8Lt. Jeúer Sladttel.l
ñr slcb genomer erb$Li seJ"ae nur
lhn genásse ldentLtát, ille sieb
resentJ-lch yon {er etr¡eg anóeren
unterscheidet.
Konkret geaprochen el,¿d go¡¡obL d.¿a
M8rhlrcbe ?lerteJ., a3.s ¿uch Xertend,
Itreuzbetg uait LlchterfeLile notrend-
ige:rrelse Bestar¡iltell.e iles Konaepter n
u¡d. alg gegenaeLtLge Erg$naungen nLt
u¡¡iergchl*ilLf.ehen Qtalltátea zu yer-
stehen, rtl.e ilas Aagebot uael el¡¡n{t
dle l{ablfreihelt er}r6ben.
 scbaft srit unterechledlichen *;r- Mlt d.er ladf.vLdr¡al-isierung der Stadt
sprüchen, !{ünechea uná Vorstellungen lst gleic?:zeltig aucl: die Frage der
entriekelt. Identifizierung des Bürgers nLt der
las Konzept beeleutet aueh dle Iniliv- $tadt angesproctren. Wd,hre¡d in el"ner
ldsal"fxierul6 der $tadt unit ilanit anonylr, nach ein'em einheitliehen
die Abkehr von d.er f¡r¡:teierr:ng und Prlnzip gestalteten Stadt zvangsS-áaf-
Verelnheit}lehung. In d.iesesr $inne i.g ein ldenttt8,tsr¡erl-ust unü d.a¡nit
tst elnerselts áie Offenheit und elne Sntpers6nLiehung efntritt, kann
a:¡d.erersel"ts d"1e Vlelfal-t zr verr slch der Belrobney in elnem offene::
steben. $yeien ftr den sej"nen Xü¡sehen und
Xierbei handelt es sich nieht nur url Vorstell'ungen estspiechend.en lden-
ein offenes $ts,eitsystem, in den tltü,tsraua entsebeiáen.
vie1e unterschieál-lehe 0rte ml"teln-
andetr etne vie1f6,l"tlge und koxaplexe
st$¡l?j.sche llmrelt bl.lilen. €s is*
auch politiselr u::d. sozial gesehen
ein pluralls*fsches Konaept, in dem
mehrere ldeolegiseh <l.lfferLe¡end"e
Ansicl:Nen r:.ebeneins.nóer ihren Pl-atz
beben.
Für d.en B{rger wlrd ále lln¡re1t l*ie*
der iiberselraub¿r unel gewinnt áa.nít
an ¡lenschLlcber &*1tf¿t. $enn es
nfirrl,tch z¡r pereénliehen lnltl.ative
und Beteiligung koxrt i.st d.1e kl-eL¡e
XLnhelt eln veltaus besseres 3etát-
lgungsfeJ-* al"s di.e Stedt al"e Ganzes.

as a single whole. lt corresponds to the contempo- With the indiv¡dual¡zat¡on of the city, the issue of 14 The entire conclusion is missing in C, except for this shorl
rary structure of society, wh¡ch develops more cit¡zens ident¡fying w¡th the city is also addressed. paragraph, which is completed by the following sentence:
and more as a soc¡ety of ind¡viduals with d¡fferent While an anonymous c¡ty composed along a unify- "The city in the city also allows one to reintroduce a human
scale, making personal contacts possible."
demands, des¡res, and conceptions, ¡ng princ¡ple provokes a loss of ¡dent¡ty and a loss
15 The three last paragraphs ofthis conclusion were omitted
The concept also ¡nvolves an ind¡v¡dualizat¡on of personality, the city dweller ¡n an open system in Lo¿us (E).
of the c¡ty and therefore a mov¡ng away from type- may choose the identity-space that corresponds to
casting and standard¡zat¡on. lt is in this sense h¡s des¡res and expectations.l5
that ¡ts openness, on the one hand, and its variety,
on the other, must be understood.
Th¡s concept is not simply that of an open urban
system, ¡n wh¡ch many d¡fferent places together form
a diversified and complex urban environment. lt is
also, from a political and soc¡al po¡nt of view, a plu-
ralist concept, ¡n which many d¡fferent ideolog¡cal
visions f¡nd their own places next to one another.
For the c¡ty dweller, the env¡ronment w¡ll be legible
aga¡n, and thereby endowed with a human qual¡ty.
For personal ¡nitiative and part¡cipation, the small
entity always provides a much better field of opera-
tions than the city as a whole.la
 Karte der Baustruktur in BerLin

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Map of the building structure of Berl¡n

 Pla¡¡ d.cr sel"ektlvetr Stadt-Inseln

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Map of the selective urban ¡slands

 Stádle ln áer St&dt

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C¡ties in the city

 These 6
Dle ?hase áer Ortsbestitmung der
rog. StadtL¿gel"n lat ln gleicben
Xasúe elne Progra¡mflndung uad -be-
----
scbretbr¡ng" rle elne folrns,l-e unil
stadtr5r¡nlLehe Sehandlung, Xtcht
alle neuen Srg8nzungen nüesen auch
aeu entrrorfen rrerd"en. $urcb AnaLo-
gleacbl{sse und uodellhafte Ver-
gleiche L6naen GestaLiungerkeant-
nlgse ger¡on:len r:nd tn t¡tologfscbea
$l.r::re nenr¿¡:ilt xerelen.
Thesis 6
The phase of select¡on of the so-called urban ¡slands
¡s as much a question of programmatic ¡dentifica-
tion and descript¡on as ¡t is a formal and urbanistic
procedure. Not all new integrations have to be
planned afresh. Through analogy and compar¡sons
with models it is possible to gain design insights
that can be transposed ¡n a typological sense.
Explanation
Upon prel¡m¡nary analytical examinat¡on, a number
of zones in the city stand out clearly, set apart
from the others by their qual¡ty and collect¡ve d¡s-
tinct¡veness. Areas of the city that are exemplary
through the¡r closed structure include the Südl¡che
Friedrichstadt, the Górl¡tz stat¡on, the Schloss-
strasse,l6 Siemensstadt, Spandau, and the area
Bei eLnern ergten n¡ralytlschen Durch-
gaag t:eten ein!.ge Stadtgebiele
d.eutl.lcb hervor, ille sLclt durc:¡ l.bre
Q¡rd"lt8t u¡d. koLlektive Pr6gnanz
gegeaüber andere:¡ Gebieten abheben.
Xxenplarlscbe $ta,iltgebleten ni.t ein-
er geschlossenea Struktur slnd. das
Geblet iler süillichen Fried.vlcbsta*t,
tier 63r1ltzer Sahnlrof, ilj.ü SchLoss-
stlasse, Sl.enenstadt, Spandau, dle
sog. Clty, aber s"ucb das Mdrkische
Ylertel, dle Gropiuestad.t, sovLe
solch ausgeprÉgte $led,lungen rie dae
Íenpelhofer Fel"dl, dle llu?eisen $ied-
lung, Onkel *ou's Xütte aber auch
elle XuLtuvlnseL an Kenperp3-atz' ále
eine RepJ.ika d.er hLstorLschen
tú¡setrmslnse:. alarstellt .
Dl"e angeführten Oeblete reprñsen-
tieren extrem unterschledLlclre for-
aale u¡il inhaltllch $trukturen. $le
e¡tbelten so¡rohl Bl-ock- rrie aueh
Sia¡e1beb¿uungea, Lineare, radlale
unil gerasterte Organleatlonefo::men,
offeaen und gesehlossene Systemeo
known as the "c¡ty," but also the Márkische V¡ertel, s¡tuat¡ons an<Lmay,haveeomparabletrypol,ogiml
the Grop¡usstadt, and such typ¡cal hous¡ng devel- fealures.-For example, the ideal project of Karls-
opments (Siedlungenl as the Tempelhofer Feld, the ruhe, with its rad¡al ax¡s, might serve as an example
Hufe¡sen S¡edlung, Onkel Tom's Hütte,17 but also for a conf¡guration of the Südl¡che Fr¡edr¡chstadt,
the cultural island of Kemperplatz,lB which offers or the proiect for Manhattan's Central Park be
a replica of the historic Museums¡nsel. transferred ¡ust as ¡t ¡s into the Górlitz station zone.
The zones ¡ust mentioned represent extremely The urban plann¡ng structure of the Schlossstrasse
different structures in content and form; they con- is identical to the Baroque structure of Mannheim.22
tain not only bu¡ld¡ngs in blocks but also single, Leon¡dov's linear des¡gn for M4gudtogorsk ¡9
radial, l¡near, and reticular urban layouts, open and s¡m¡lar f rom a typological po¡l_t -o-f yiew,t-o-l¡-e_!9.!t
closed systems, regular and irregular street net- structúre aiong ttré avenue.Unter.den Eichen,23
works, wh¡le also hav¡ng d¡fferent graphic,le spatial,
f unct¡onal, and social20 characteristics.2l
Conclusion
To establish the character¡st¡cs of the city, one
take nto con sid erat io n.a n ultletolljl|]jcaf
cou I d ¡
designed.at other times for other -
-cAses,thatwere
 reg¡rl8"e und irreguJ.ñ,re $tragsen-
rastet, lrte aueb ulterschiedl"iche
graphlsche, r&lallcl¡e, ftraktionale
rilil sosLale Qua,1tt6ten.
Sclrl"ussfoLgerung

Für d"te Begtlm¡ng d.er $tadtr$r:n-

Lieben Qualltet kónnten Mod.ellfálLe
herangezogen rrerden, dl-e zu eLnen
a:relere:: Zeltpunkt für eine andere
Oegebenhelt gepl"ant rnrilen uad ver-
gleicblare ty¡:,o].ogiscbe Xlger¡sctiaf-
ten haben. U.B. kdnnte cter ld,eel-
plan ron Karl"snüe m1t selnen .*
r¿d^lalen Acbsen als teltbild ñ1r ó.ie
Gest¿ttun6 der üüdlicben Frteilrtch¡+
staclt d,ienéno oeler d.as Konzept des
Central Parks ln Manhattal abalog
auf ilas Gel"8núe d.eg G6rlltzer Saha-
hofs Obertr.ge¡ werdea, Die St$cite-
baullche $truktur üer Schlosstr¿sse
isi lalentlsch trit iler Barockstruktur
Maanhelns. Das l"Lneare Starltkoazept
Leonldovs für Magnftogorsk entspricht
lypologlacb gesehen der Bebeuungs-
struklsr eniLan$ d.er $trasse tfu&er
den dlchen.

16 C adds "Westend" here.

17 C: "... or the We¡sse Stadt ..."
18 C. "... and perhaps the extreme case of the cultural island
of Kemperplatz..."
19 C says "topographic" instead of "graphic."
20 "social" is not included in C.
21 C: "Thetypological and morphological differencesshould
not only be preserved-nothing would be more detrimental
to the city than polarizing it on a single principle-but mosl of
all completed while taking the structure of the existing into
account, so that the true character and identity of each area
may fully stand oul. Cilies will thus appear within the city, wh ch
represent, by lheir type of groMh as well as by their form, all
the aspects ofthe human mind."
22 C: "Other projects would be the partial implementation of
a continuous building border, analogous to the Royal Crescent
in Bath, along the southern edge of the Volkspark."
23 C: "the redevelopment ofthe Tiergarten district into an
open urban landscape IStadtiardsc¡laftl."

101
 $tadt-Inseln - Stádte tn der Staát - hl"s*orisehe Seispiele

$ienens*febrik-$tadt 19@ XLtntk-$tadt Cha¡l-ottenbu.rg l-911

Zl"tadeLLe Spandau lür¡*er:rsinsel

Urban ¡slands-citiés in the c¡ty-historical examples

S¡emens factory c¡ty, lg00 Charlottenburg hospital c¡ty,

Spandau citadel Museum lsland

 ttadtr&rprllcher Strr¡ktr¡rvergleich siid.l-lcbe F¡iedricl:sts{t - l&r}sn¡he

Lageplaa süitL. frledrl*bgtad.t

\ -r'JFÉ1.
Tlli*'¡f
e.,,
É.J-j"
V'"-¡
"?.f't
?¿'-'

St*d.tinseL *üe11. Frledrichstadt Stadtp&an Kar*sruhe

Gomparison of the urban structures: Südliche Fr¡edrichstadt-Karlsruhe

Arial v¡ew of Südl¡che Fr¡edrichstadt Site plan of Südliche Friedrichstadt

Südl¡che Friedr¡chstadt urban ¡sland City map of Karlsruhe

 Statitr6wtl-Ícher $trukturverglelch Górlttzer B¿hnhof - Central-F¿¡k $e¡r York

luff aufnahme Kreuzberg LagepJ-a,n Kreuzberg

StacltlnseJ" Kreuz5e¡g* Stailtplan Uaab.*ttea S.Y.

Comparision of urban structures: GOrlitz station-Central Park, NewYork

Aer¡al v¡ew of Kreuzberg Site plan of Kreuzberg

Kreuzberg's urban ¡sland C¡ty map of Manhattan, N.Y.

 $tailtrár¡nl lcher Btrukturver gLei eh Str¿sse unter d.en Fichen - Leonidowrs

Luftaufn¿hne Li cht erfeLde tageplan L,chtorfelde

Stad.tingel Eater dc¡ Bleben $tadtplaa Xagnltogorsk

Compar¡sion of urban structures: the street Unter den E¡chen-Leon¡dov's project for Magnitogorsk

Aer¡al view of Lichterfelde Site plan of Lichterfelde

Unter den E¡chen urban ¡sland Leonidov's map for Magn¡togorsk

 fbese ?

Das Xonzept áer gts¿tt
beeiebenil aus elaer Kol"lage ver-
rclrledeaxrtlger Sta:cl.tefaheften, vlrd
antlihetlsclr erg&n¿t durch das Areal
z¡d.scben den $tadtl"asel-n. Xler
sol1te zugelassen *erden, ilass zr¡m
Teil *art1ose $trukturen sleh all-
sñ*r]'ich in $e,tur- und CrünLand zu-
rück venrandeLn bz¡r. auf eln trfied"er-
aufbau varzLchtet niril. Das be-
trifft ¡or al-l-em ilie
pLatz, G6rlltzer- uad
Sabatiof., sowLe zu e1¡sl sp6teren
Zelipuukt da* ler:pelhofer Fl.ugfelá.
Ole $tailtl¡geLu ¡*tirden also durch
Sgtur- und Crünstreifen voneiaaniter
getreant, wodurch itte Stn¡ktu¡ der
$tadt in der St¿{t definlert und dte
ñetapher der Steilt ¿Lg eta grünes
Archipel erkl-á.rt vtret.
ln iler Stadt, Dle arü¡en Z¡¡lschenrll*re bllden eln
$ysten noilifizlerter Eatur, und ent-
haltea el"nea lYponkatalog, der voa
suburbaren Gabieten über Parkfláeheno
?{aLd.geblete bis zur urba¡:lelerten
l-anár¡lrtschrftllchen Xut¿ung reieht
($chrebergárten). lie $uburbs k6nn-
ten von ünterscbiedll.cher Dlchte
seln r¡nd. be:eits vorh¿nd.ene $eblete
f.ntegrl"eren. Dle lanit¡rlrtsebaftLich
Oeblete Kenper- geautztea f1áchen kónnten al-Le ?eite
Potsd.amer der Staclt áurehrlehen und gleich-
zeltig el¡e zu¡átzliclre lndusirie-
und" Eesch&fligungsque)-J-e schaffen,
nie das berel.ts bet*pleliraft für Sew
York geplant ist. DLe s,l-s $atur-
schutzgebf ete reservierten ¡f&ld-
il&eben künnten ilu:ch }flldparks er-
gánzt rerd.en und slch stlnulierenü
auf eine Fom d.es l¡ternen louris-
m¡s aus¡rLrken.
lie Pola"itát svischen Xatur und.
Kultur, oóer l{atur und Metropolen
elie l¡eute 1n elen meisten },$llen
fehLto, od.er versehwomen istr €r-

Thesis 7 Explanat¡on would have to be fundamentally des¡gned-as

The concept of the city in the c¡ty, which proceeds
from.a co-[age-of differe-nt u-rban ent¡t¡es, will be
completed ant¡thetically by the space in between
thé urban ¡slands. Here, the structures, by now
valueless, ought to be allowed to gradually retrans-
form ¡nto natural zones and pastures, w¡thout any
rebuilding, This concerns ¡n particular the areas
of Kemperplatz, the stat¡ons of Górl¡tz and Potsdam,
and, at a later stage, the Tempelhofer airport.
Hence, the urban ¡slands would be d¡v¡ded from
each other by strips of nature and green, thus
defining the framework of the city ¡n the city and
thereby explain¡ng the metaphor of the c¡ty as
a green arch¡pelago.
-') LheOteellterspa.ces form a system of modified
latr{9r anq contain a repertoire of types that
r3!99!gn_+¡u$an.zq.nes !9.p,q¡f s qn! woe!land
to urban areas.put-to agricqltural use (allotment
ggrd-eis-). Suburbs could be of d¡fferent dens¡t¡es,
and ¡ntegrate ex¡sting d¡stricts.2j The surfaces
eaffiar,ked.for agr¡culture could penetrate all.parts
of the c¡ty and at the same t¡me create an add¡t¡onal
source of industry and employment, as is already
p_lgmerLJor example,¡n New-York- As for.the. wgqd"ed
areas des¡gnated as natural reserve, they could
be completed and stimulated by wildparks, and
encourage a form of inner tourism.2s
-.,The,.palarity between nature and culture, or nature
and metropolis, which has.been ggne-rally lost or.
compromi:-9qtgdqy-uo-uld,be g¡v.en a- new.impulse
byJhilóoncept, Since th¡s nature-culture system
a purely synthet¡c nature-its strong contrast would
¡ntensify rather than d¡m¡nish the exper¡ence of
the metropolis.26
The natural gr¡d ought also to ¡ncorporate the
infrastructure of the modern technolog¡cal age,
that is to say, beyond an extended motorway
network link¡ng the urban islands to one another,
it ought also to include supe.rnql!,<.eJ9, O,five'in
c¡nemas, drive:in banks, and similar automo.bile-
rélated services,-gs-.!relf q-s-.all. lhe othef 29!.h-
centurlLtypologies that rely not on space but €n-
mobil¡ty.27
Next to the suburban zones with d¡fferent dens¡-
ties, the wooded areas, shooting preserves, natural
parks, allotment gardens, land for urban agricul-
ture, and the infrastructural serv¡ces of the modern
age, the greenbelts should also be used to "park"

fn üen offeaea Zonen z¡rlpcben úen
Stgüti.nseln ssLltan ProJekte sub-
temporary mobile fac¡l¡ties.2B This would encourage
the emergence of a new type of city dwellers
whose main ¡nterest ¡s the employment of le¡sure
time and who show a predilection for l¡v¡ng ¡n
tent-houses and mob¡le un¡ts: new inhabitants who
do not remain attached to any fixed spot, but whose
existence ¡s ¡ndeed stimulated by a transitory way
of life.
l¡&!t d.urcb d.Lcses Konzept ei.nen neu-
en l-nptrJ.s. Da soleh ein ffatur..*
Kr¡ltar - Systen grtrails&tal"lch ent-
vorfcn verdcn u8ssien il.lr. rela syr:-
thetlscher IÍatur let, r*rcte es d¡¡reh
sel.nenrelcblaltlgen Oegensat¿ al¿s
ErLebnls iler Metropole eber f.ntet-
sivr.eren als berr,bnl.aüer¿,
Der fiaturraster so]-lte aueh ilie ln-
frastr¡rklur cles mod.ersgn techaolog-
Lsehea ?eitaLters auf:rehnen, d.h.
neben eL:ren *usged.ehxten Autostrass,
ennetz o d.as tlle Stailtinee:.n ulteln-
anrler '-terbind.et, solLte es Super-
nrñrkte, Drlve-l"n Kfnos, DrLve-Ln
3a¡k*n ¡¡¡d. thnl"Lclre automobltgebun-
d.ene Elarlchtrxgen sorie eJ-Le golehe
fn¡ologten des 2O. Jabrbuaclerts auf-
nehnea, elle nlcht vo¡ P1a,ta, Bonclern
von cler Mobtlttát ebhlngig sind.
Selea ve¡gehleilen illchte¡ er¡bu¡ba¡ea
Zoaen o lfdilgebleten, I{lldreseryatcn,
faturschutzgebLeten, Parks, Schre]er-
glrten, gt$ütl.seher tanil¡rf r"tschafb
uncllnflagtruktr¡:eLlen Slnrichtnagea
dee aoderaen Zellalters, solLte¡ dle
G:tnzüge auch genutzt rerdeno tur
24 This sentence was omitted in Lofus (E),
25 This sentence was omitled in Lofus (E).
26 This paragraph was omitted ¡n Lotus (E)
27 The three first paragraphs of this explanation are not
included ¡n C.
28 c: "... such as mobile homes, camp¡ngs, markets,
or popular fairs."
 urbaner *¡al"1l8t a&aLog blsher be-
kannter Yorschl3ge yervl.rkltclt rrer-
den vle:
- Dle Aal-age voa El.nfa¡al1lenbausge-
blete¡ nll gerlnger Dlchte ent-
e¡rrrchenil fllberselnerf s Yor-
sehl8gea f{r Chfeago.
- Dle Anlage von tenqrorlren ?lolrn-
gebleten ait ruoblle homest alg
Eraatz tür ilae in¡erstüdltt eche
lfohnen und sls Altern¿tlve*agebot
f8r itae Xobxgx ln Orib:ea uná {tr
e{.nen f¡elaelt orieltiertea
tarpor8re sobf.Le Slnrlshtr:ng€n au
?parkenf . Xlerrturcl¡ ¡rürile eln aeuer
lYpus el.aeg Stadtbex,obners gef6rdlert,
deggea Sauptinteresse auf dl.e Oesta.L-
tung der Frelzelt *usgerlcktet let,
u¡il üer es vorzleht in Zeltháuser¡
uail xobl}.e¡ Etuhetts¡ aa lelea. 3e-
:¡obner aLso d.le nlebt a¡ feetar¡
Pl$tzen h6ngen, sondern derea Xxls-
tena ebe¡ stlmliert rirel durch ein-
en tranraitorl.sel¡en Lebensatil.
Lgbens-

"t3.
- Die Anlage voa Sport-, Erlrol"ungs*,
antt.SreLsoLtel¡rlclrtungen, ange-
fangea von ?grk- u:iil Sptelfl8cbea
blg uu llililgehegen uad. k{l¡st}ichen
Landschs,fbea, rotl.e ünterbaltu:rgs-
la¡dscltaftea ln üalt Dlsney Sttl
unil [atur*ehutaparke für Xatur-
fter:náe,
- Dle "Anl"age vo¡ ?rod.r¡ktl.oast&tte¡ ln
StlLe eler tlnóuetrLa]. parhar Ln
anerlkanlaeben St$d.ten ¡nlt Srei-
zeltelnrl.c?rt:rngen f&r 8¡rte1 uncl
$¡:ort der Bel"eggchaft.

Conclus¡on - the setting aside of production areas ¡n the 29 C: "...closed on ihemselves,of the urban archipelago...
"¡ndustr¡al park'r$/e of American cities, with
ln the open zones between the urban islands,29 leisure t¡me, play and sport facil¡t¡es for the
projects of suburban quality, similar lo proposals workers,
already known, should be realized, such as:
- the building of low-density detached ¡ndividual
housing, in accordance w¡th Hilberseimer's
recommendations for Chicago
- the build¡ng of complexés of temporary rés¡den-
tial areas with mob¡le homes as an alternative
to city-center living, wh¡ch would stimulate living
¡n the open and a way of life or¡ented toward
leisure t¡me
- the building of sports, rest, and recreational
facilit¡es, beginn¡ng with park and play areas
and extending to shooting preserves and
art¡ficial landscapes, and to amusement zones
of the D¡sneyland type and National Parks for
the friends of nature
 $utzungsstruktur des !{atu*¿sters

Freibad lfannsee Zeltstad.t a¡r !'lannsee

fnfrastrukturelle Xinrichtunge¡ des Künstll"che landscheft in Kreuzberg

Autonobüzeitalt"rs

Uses of the green grid

Open-a¡r baths on the lake in Wannsee Tent city ¡n Wannsee

lnfrastructure of the automobile age Artificial Iandscape in Kreuzberg

\. t .r."

¡,
r
| ,L")
ir" ;
{l' li:i"
,. .i
1.: :
 5'hese I iBrJ-üuterung

Der blsherlge *lohnungsbau beseby$nkt Ia áen Let¡ten Jairren bat dsr ?rend
slch lm allgeneinen auf ¿¡rei Xohn- 'zr:m Slnfa:nlLienhaue rerlp"ok zun An-
ungclypen, d.*s 8infalslllenheus und r¡ae!¡sen óes Wohlstaneles zr¡genoamsn.
dle Etagenwohnung. Abgesehen von Xlerbel ¡¡erilen unter ümstá¿áen erheb-
de: Abvanell"ung des Slnfs.nilLenhauses Llehe Unanneh¡¡LLchkeiten, r'ie hdbere
zun Reihenbaus bLetbt es Lm wesent- Koste:r, lange Verkehrsvege und &ang-
liebe:r bel ellesen beiden {ypen. " Da- eLnd.e Yersorgung lotl i¡ Kauf geno$tne!!.
bel rlrel Ln zuxebmendes Xasse dte OLaicbaeitig rerilen aber au¿h wert-
Sbagenwobnung a1s eln Verzieht auf volle ürholuagsfl4chen begonéerg an
dss Sinfa&ilienhaus betrachtot. dar Peripbe¡ie der Stüdte ¡nii 8ln-
Vergeilleóe:le Untersuchungen haben fa¡rlLlenh&usern babaut unii áa*1t für
ergeben, ilass eiva ?0 Pro¿ent der imer dem l{utzen der Al,3-ge¡neLnhei*
Bev6lkarun6 eln Einfs,nlLLenhaus ge- entzogea.
genüber elner ltagenrobnung bevor- Das elgeatl"iche Motiv für den ?rend
uügen würden. zr:n eigenen Xaug let venlg€r r¡on
rlrtscbaftltehe¡ Oberleguagen be-
stlsrt, a3"$ vlel-nehr von d"em Xunseh
naeh lJnsbh$rgtgkeit und freler Ent-
fd-tu::g der Pers6nllchhelt, mlt a:r-
deren !{o¡ten von efner zunehmend"en
Indlvtáus,lislerung r¡nd Yerbesserua&
der Lebensqtal-lt&t. Diesem tr{ungch
kann die Sbagenwobnung kar:n ent-
sprecbea, d.a sle in maneher lillgicht
dw 3e*ohner Zvánge auferl-egt und

Thes¡s I costs, long commutes, and disrupt¡ons in supplies.
Residential bu¡ld¡ng ¡n general has h¡therto been
limited to two types of bu¡ld¡ngs: the detached
dwelling and the apartment block. Leaving as¡de
the transformation of the detached home ¡nto rows
of houses, we are left essent¡ally with these two
types. Jg_.an ev_er-¡ncreas¡ng sxtent, lhe a¡iarir¡{ent.
block is seen as a renunciat¡on of the detached '.
dwelling. Var¡ous studies have shown that nearly
70 percent of the population prefer a detached
home to one in a block.
Explanat¡on
ln the last few years, the tendency toward
detached homes has r¡sen ¡n step with ¡ncreased
affluence, even ¡f th¡s potent¡ally meant accept¡ng
considerable ¡nconvenience, such as h¡gher
litg, moreover, valuable recreat¡onal
{t-!tt__",_".e¡-n-g
areas, part¡cularly on the outsk¡rts of the city,
have been colonized by detached houses, thus
+ermanently stripping the local community of
a further benefit.
The actual reason behind this trend toward
own¡ng a house ¡s determined less by economic
considerations and much more by the desire
for independence and the need to freely develop
one's personality; in other words, by increasing
ind¡v¡dual¡zation and improvement ¡n the quality of
life. Apartment blocks cannot fulfill this wish be-
cause they ¡mpose certain obl¡gations upon those
who live in them and restr¡ct their liv¡ng space,
And so it is no coincidence that the build¡ng of
A.pariment blocks is continually d¡minish¡ng to the
advantage of detached homes.The question,
therefore, ¡s whether, between these two ext\me
ri
.., r.,'... i'.\t"
\ \,
$rpes of dwelling, there ex¡sts a form of hous¡ng . -
that offers the advantages of the detached home
while avo¡ding the disadvantages of the apar-tment
block. The answer ¡s that the type of home that
evidently f ulf ills th¡s f unction istháirtitle-ñteitiiilla/
It is a type of house conta¡n¡ng four to e¡ght apart-
ments of d¡fferent ground plans. On account of
its relatively limited volume and resulting adaptab¡l-
ity to the part¡cular w¡shes of ¡ts occupants, th¡s
type of house allows for ¡ndividualized des¡gn.
ln its outward appearance, ¡t resembles the fin-de-
siécle type of v¡lla, and comes closer than any
other known form of hous¡ng to fulf¡ll¡ng the des¡re
for ind¡v¡dual¡zation. Furthermore, it offers essent¡al
advantages ¡n terms of urban plann¡ng, s¡nce it
has a character that creates an urban atmosphere,
as can be seen in thé resident¡al areas bu¡lt at the
turn of the century.30
rr

, !;.t'
i\,
I

t rle¡ tebcnsrarür eluacb:$¡lkt. Desbelb

II lst es auch kel"u Zuf*llo ilass üer
Sbagenrrolmurgrbau auf Kostea iles
I
lmer
Baus r¡on Elnfanll"lenhü,usern
t
nehr zu:{ekgebt. Die Frage gte}lt
l slcb aLso, glbt eg svi.sche¡ ilen bef-
*en extrexen llolnungotpex elne
llohnfor*, dle tlle Vortetle iles Si¡-
fam{llenhaüses bletet und dtle X¿cb-
telle dcr trt&ger:wohnung verxeld.et?
Die Antrort auf úl.ese frage lrt,
il¿ss der *ypus der aLten Xietvllla
offensichtllch dlosen ?rech er?{Ll1t.
ñlerbct banüelt es sl.eb ::¡a einen
ttaustyp ntt L-8 llobnuagen nnter-
schled-llcher Orund¡lssfo¡m. llegen
des rel"ottv gerlngs¡ YoLuuens utrd
iler cla&ureh gegebenea Anpa*sb*rkelt
in besondere llüneche erLault el.n
eoleher Xaustyp elne l"ndivld.u*11e
Gest*'ltu¿g, Er komt Ln geiner
dusseren Xrechel.aung <[en Yll1-e*ty¡r
ScbLusEfoLgenrng iler Jalrrbunücrtread.e na,he unil ent-
spricht viel eher dea l{r¡nsqir aach
fx eoll-te vielmehr als
l{ohu:rgsbau Inálvlrt¡ra}lelerung ¿ls andere be-
blshor der lfaustyp der rt5tttLschen kannte llohnforxsn. Arch stñ,altcb*u-
Vll-la sle MletvllLa gef6rdert rer- Ll.ch gesebea hat d{erer Sauety¡r ve-

30 C: This last sentence was om¡tted in Lotus (E)

,,\ , -J

\
\"''^'-' ,1 \":i !
-l;JV
l#r
, \ ,,,-r- '' af
t./t
\.;>-t-'
(\A
\
'o {
: , i\i.

l,t'-, I r-i ,1;tr- i

 d.ea. Die bl.storischer
lln6n'd.erung sentltche Vortel.le, denn er besltzt
Yl.lLen ¿¿f den !¡estlgen reiluzlerten efnen tharakter der elne urbane At-
Be¡larf baben bevleren, dass dl.eser no*phtre gehafft, rLe es sLch 2.8.
üarstyp nl.cht mrr filr l'lobnzrecke ln den tfobngeblelen der Jal¡rhund"ert-
hervo*sgenil geeig¡¡ei Lst, soadern wenile zeigt,
el.ch ar¡ch an anilere !\rnkbionen le1cht
anpassen lásst. Er komt sovobL elex
lfr¡nscb dler 3enüt¿e: n¿sl¡ Incitvfdus'1-
lelerung d.er lJmreLt aLs a¿eh dem
All-geuel.ninieresse aicht zufet¿t so-
reit es dle Infrastruktur, untl d1e
sozlal-en Yerilfchtr¡ng betrifft, auf
lcleaLe lfeLge entgegen. Vtllenartige
lfaustypen nl.t elner gerLngen Anzahl
indlvletual-l- gestalteter lüoblungen
l¿sser sl"eb aueh relaltne leleht ln
el.ne hlstorLsch genachsele Staüt-
strultur efnfügen. !{*hrentl ille
Srrlchtung gr6seerer'lfohnbLoeks ln
Jedem FaLL el¡e 9l$ehens*aierung ait
alL den bekennten sozlaLen, ¡rtrt-
sctiaftLlcbe¡ und stáatteba¡¡liehen
Faclrte!.1-en zur Folge bat, rerilen
dlege bel den tausty¡t tter stáiltlsche¡
YlLl.a ve:mied.en, da es slch mehr us
eln ergánzendes a1s ell: ersetzendee
stldtebaullcbee Ble¡nent haaileLt.

Conclus¡on because they are more an integrative than or slabs

a substitutive urbanistic element.
ln the housebuilding sector, the construction
of town houses as rented villas ought to be
encouraged much more than it has béen so far.
The transformation of historic villas to meet
the reduced requirements of today has demon-
strated that this type of home is suitable noi
only for resident¡al purposes but also lends ¡tself
to other functions. ln an ideal way, ¡t sat¡sfies
the desire of those who wish to personalize their
environment, while also aecommodating public
interest not least with regard to infrastructures
and social density. V¡lla-type houses with a limited
number of ¡ndividually designed apartments fit
fairly easily into a h¡stor¡c urban fabric. While the
building of b¡g housing blocks3l in each case
results in a redevelopment of the urban fabr¡c, with
all the ensu¡ng social, economic, and planning
disadvantages, with urban v¡llas all this ¡s avo¡ded
 $tád.tisehe Yill"en

llobnhausentvr.lrf K.F. $chtnbel IT98 Yil-l_a Pflug vn¡ B. Ihoblaueh 1859

Ilaus Yietoriastrasse 9 von F.Xttzig 1858 Yl1la Sosenb¡rg 1902

lJrban villas

Housing pro¡ect by K. F. Sch¡nkel,1798 V¡lla Pflug by E. Knoblauch,1859

House at Victor¡astrasse 9 by F. H¡tz¡9,1858 V¡lla Rosenburg,1902

 MietviLlen der Gründerzeit in Berlin

Rental v¡llas from the Gründerze¡t period [1871-1919] in Berlin

 Vllle¡¿rehitektur vie vorgefunáen -. Berliner Venekulár , ...|

Villa architecture as found-Berlin vernacular

 3nt¡rr¡rfsbeispiele für stádtlsebe Mietvill*en

Yj"l1a nit Kaufpa$sagq

l$$

Eckvl"lla

Sample designs of urban rental villas

Villa w¡th commercial arcades V¡lla with inter¡or square

Corner villa Cross-plan villa w¡th pergola

 Stadtpark alt Funhttonsvl"llen a¡r 0órlitzer Bahnhof

Lagepl-an Isometrle

Bebauungsstruktur Grundrissplan

Urban park with functional villas in the Górlitzer Bahnhof area

Site plan lsometric v¡ew

Bu¡lding structure Layout plan

 l ._::::-...-..:@
Vlllenbtoekbeb¿¿ung südliche Frledriehstait

IagepLa,n Isonetrie

ü 7
r .\1,

t
1 $
{ üt
\
-1, il .ñ.

:á
& t, 1 ó t
t)
ü
it lr vl- 3rr

I t.|,f
Fh¡f F
q il
-!
tf
l-r
#s !b-
I

-*ffi&urins$sü'1ñtü
rr .i
Snradricaplan

Pro¡ect for a block of v¡llas ¡n Südl¡che Fr¡edrichstadt

Site plan lsometric v¡ew

Bu¡lding structure Layout plan

 Yerdicbtung d.er Ville¡$ebaüung in Lichterfelde

tagep1an -- &cüetite

¡
I
rt

I
l}

,
I

Bebauungsstruktar Grundrissplan

Dénsif¡cation of the v¡lla structure ¡n L¡chterfelde

Site plan lsometr¡c view

Building structure Layout plan

 ?hese 9 X:1S,ulerung

Die Gesclrlcbte 8er1i.ne zelgt die
htricklung elner $tad.t von r¡iel-en
Orten, lle Unterschied.lLcbkel.t und
Vlel-fattigkeit áie sich Ln iten his-
torlgcir gewacheener¡ Stadttel"len nai¡
nifestie:t, macht d.l.s Ber!"eutung 3er-
Ltns und. d.le gtád,tebaulicbe Quali-
t6t ¿us. 3s ist elne der Slad"t
slch ge6ens&tzllche El"enente yon
Jeher artlkuLlerten, und ln der Ver-
suehe der Yereinheltliehr¡ng unter
einen elnrigen Prlnzip erfolglos
bl-feben. Serl"in folele i¡rner scbon
nieht nur eLner ld.ee, sond.eru setzte
sic!¡ aus nahreren d.ivergiere:rden
Iáeer zuaEüm¡nen. fhese und. Antithese
entsprachen slcb hi.er rie das Eln-
und Ausa*nen"
Die Geschlchte BerLlns i.st die ge*
gehichte d.er 1r¿nsfor"¡nation eines
Staelttypus ln el.nen anderen. In
Laufe von ?00 Jahrea rra: Berl"ln hin-
tereingnd.er mehrere St6dte. Es be-
gann a1s z¡ret St6dte, Berlin und
K811n, dLe elne für !'ischer und. dle
ln andeve für Kaufleute. Bald ¡rar es
elae Marktstadto d.ana eine &esid"eac,
elne Xauptstadt und im spáten 19"
Jahrbunáert eine Induet:iestedt.
SehLlessl-ieh wurde e* Metropole und
a¡¡ 3nd.e wl.eiler eine ]oppe1stad.t.
Bereits tn 18. Jalrhundert setzte
sich Berlin aus 6 ve¡gehled.enen
St6dten ?usa.rrnen: 3er1-in, l$1ln,
Friedrlchverd.er, Dorotheeastad.t,
!'rleilrichstadt und dstliche Vorstadt.
Die Stadtteile hatlen elgene Ver-
val-tungen, urterschiedliche stadt-
r8unl-iche Strukturen und selbstán-
d.ige Funkilonen: 8er11n nar ále
Handelsstad"t, K6JJ-n die Ge.¡rerbe-
staátn Ftleárichverder d.le Ve:¡ral-
tungs-, Dorotheenstadt d"ie llohn-,

Thes¡s 9
The h¡story of Berl¡n shows the development of
a city from many different places.The difference
and var¡ety that manifest themselves ¡n ¡ts historic
quarters are what const¡tute Berlin's ident¡ty
and urbanist¡c quality, lt ¡s a c¡ty ¡n wh¡ch oppos¡te
elements have always found clear expression,
and where attempts at standard¡zat¡on under the
aeg¡s of a single pr¡nciple have always failed.32
Berlin has never followed one ¡dea alone, but pro-
ceeded simultaneously from diverg¡ng ideas.
Theses and antitheses respond here to one another
like breath¡ng ¡n and breath¡ng out.
Explanation
The h¡story of Berlin is the history of the transfor-
mation of one type of city into another. ln the
course of 700 years, Berlin has been several differ-
ent cities.33. lt began by being two cit¡es, Berl¡n
and Kólln, the one for fishermen, the other for trad-
ers. ¡t soon became a market3a city, then a resi-
dential one,35 a capital36 and, ¡n the lgth century, an
industrial city, Finally, ¡t became a metropolis and
ult¡mately, once again, a double city.37 As
early as the lSth century, Berlin was formed by six
diff erent c¡t¡es: Berlin, Kólln, Fr¡edr¡chwerder,
Dorotheenstadt, Fr¡edrichstadt, and the eastern
suburb.Theses different urban ent¡ties each
had their own adm¡n¡strat¡on, d¡fferent plann¡ng
structures, and independent funct¡ons. Berl¡n was
thé commerc¡al town, Kólln the industr¡al town,
Friedrichwerder the admin¡strat¡ve and Dorotheen-
stadt the res¡dent¡al town, while Fr¡edrichstadt
was the m¡litary town and the eastern suburb the
factory town. Together they formed a k¡nd of feder-
ation of towns.38 At the end of the lgth century,
greater Berl¡n was a network of towns, small and
med¡um in size, stretching over a w¡de area, The
invent¡on of the automob¡le, the emergence of
ra¡lroads, and industrial progress led to ¡ncreased
mobil¡ty among the populat¡on and prompted an
increase in the number of homes and workplaces
on the outskirts of the histor¡c c¡ty center. These
were either completely new outposts, or additions
to existing settlements. Districts such as Spandau,
Friedenau, L¡chterf elde, Siemensstadt, and Charlot-
tenburg are quite d¡fferent urban structures that
visually clar¡fy the modél of the "city in the city."
From a h¡stor¡c po¡nt of v¡ew, th¡s model also
transposes the project drawn up by Will¡am lV for
the Havel landscape between Berlin and Potsdam.
Here, in the lgth century, a human¡stic cultural
landscape was composed w¡th commemorative
monuments borrowed from different historic styles,
in which the romant¡c fragment of the Pfaueninsel
castle, the Neo-Classical Heilandskirche, the
 FrledLrichatailt ilte ütLtt8r-'
uail *le
6stllcbe ?orgtadt scbLl.essLlcl¡ rr*r
dle Proiluktlorsstá,ilt. Susameage*
fasgt blLtLeten sie el¡ren A¡t St&dte-
buail. Án *¡ile iles 19. üahrh¡nilert
rar Grosgberlla etn St8iltanetz, von
vl.elen kletnea uaü ultte3-grossen
6t8dten, d.ess stch ln dlle ñegfon aue-
dlehnte. lfe Erflnclung üee Átrtono-
bl.I.s, dlle Else¡bal¡n r¡ncl tler fndus*
trlelLe Portschrltt habe¡ rlle Mo-
billtet iter 8ev6lker¡¡ng bervorge-
br¿cht r¡nd üle &trtck]-u¡g l¡on Yohr-
rmiL Arbeltsplstaen anr cler Perlpheri.e
tles hfstoriaclrea lerns stt¡nallert.
Zrn 1ell lrarea ea r¡6LL1ge $eugrü!-
dur:geno ¿r¡¡¡ tefl Erg*aaulgen bereLts
besteheniter Ansleill-sngen. Orte rle
Spandau, frted.eaau, tl,chterfel"den
SLe$eassta t r¡nel Charl-ottenburg elnil
$tadtgabllite nlt *l1lg u¡terschLeá-
llcha Charakter und erk16rea sicbt-
bar das l-fodetr L cler Stadt ln d.er
gts¿t.
Cesehlchlllch gerelren trang for^nlert
ilas !úoalel"L ¡,ucb áae voa lltLbel-n fV.

32 ln C, th¡s sentence read as follows: "lt is a city ¡n wh¡ch

opposile elemenls always imposed themselves, and where
attempts at conformity, unity, and uniform¡ly under the aegis
of a single principle have always failed."
33 These two first sentences of the explanation are missing in C.
34 C: "...then a city of the Hansa league..."
35 C: "...then a fortified city..."
36 C: "... of Prussia ..."
37 C: "... a divided city..."
38 C: "... based first on the needs of defense and foreign
polil¡cs, later replaced by absolule monarchy.These ditferent
urban struclures, provided they have not been disfigured
or destroyed before or after the war, are still legible today in
the plan of the city."

Sc!¡}¡¡ssfo)-genrng
!1e &erLagenrüg von ldeean
Oatecheiitu¡gen, Zufá1len cnü ñeal-l*
tñten eus T Jahvl*¡nderten habes dle
heutige For.x d.ar Staett geprágt. Der
?1qn. itee JetaLgen Zustancles lst ei.n
?extbucir von Erelgnlssen in dem die
$pr:ren iler Oeschiehte festgehalten
sind. Xe lst kel¡ elnheitl"lches
811d, sonáern eln lebend.iges Kol1age,
elne Ansa¡ürrü-ung von fragnenten. Das
gLelchzeltige l{'ebeneinander von
Oegens8,taen lst geschiebtll"clr ge-
seben Ausdvack des ále'Lektlscben
Pro¿egses ln deu slcb d.l.e $t*tlt
i:mer befs.nal t¡nd noch
Konzept, der krltlsehen
r:nil der dLverglerenden VteLfaLt lst
d.er l¡baLt und ilie Sigengrt Serlins
entworfene Konzept für d.le XaveL-
land.achaft zvigche¡ Serll.n unü ?ote-
dan. ü5.er e:rtetanil 1a f9. ,tahr-
hr¡ndert eine hr¡ma¡lstisehe Elldungs-
l-andscl:aft ntt geschfchtLtcben Xv-
S.rnerungcst{lcken aus unterschiedllch-
en $tlLe¡mche, in der dag roüantlsche
$eblossfrq.geent cler 9fauenlnsol,
d.Le neoklassl¿lstLsehe lleiLand.e-
Oedankeno kirchen die an igl*rische Architek-
tur erlnnernde Landschaftsklrche
St. Peter u. Paul, dle k1ogsfzLst-
{sebea ObJekte d.eg Ollenieker Parks,
das neogotische Schlogc Ba.b&lsberg,
Stülerra i:rn ep€,tltalleniscbea 3t11
konzlplerte llofgE:tner u. Masehinen-
haus und gehllessllcl¡ die kl"assizlst-
lsctre¡ Denkl&ler in Potsd"a& als
spezlel-le Orte elnge!!"agert sind und
el.n Arclilpel voa Archltekturereig-
nissen bilden. Dle Oegtaltung iler
taveLlaniischaft euth6]t ilen Schl"üsseL
ltr die ldee von 8er11n a1s eluem Ar-
beflndet. Das chlpal vr¡u viel-en Orlen und P1&tzen.
Gegeneütze lTeben allea prahtischea und rationalea
Argunenlen lst cile Berl"ln
ld.ec auch
" der Ausdauck üer lrumarlsttseben fra-
dLtlon Obertragen auf <lle heutige Zelt.

country church of Saints Peter and Paul, rem¡n¡s-
cent of Islamic architecture, the class¡cist objects
of Gl¡enicke Park, the Neo-Gothic Babelsberg
Palace, Persius's house for the court gardener and
the machine house, conceived in the late ltalian
style, and finally the class¡cist monuments of Pots-
dam3s were all embedded as spec¡al places in
themselves, thus forming an arch¡pelago of archi-
tectonic phenomena. The configurat¡on of the
Havel landscape holds the key to regard¡ng Berl¡n
as an archipelago of many different s¡tes and
places. Beyond all practical and rational reasons,
the idea of Berlin as an archipelago is the expres-
s¡on of this humanist¡c tradition transposed ¡nto
the present.4o
Conclus¡on
The super¡mpos¡tion of ideas, concepts, decisions,
coinc¡dences, and real¡t¡es across the arc of seven
centuries has given the city its present form.The
plan of the current situat¡on ¡s a book of events
in wh¡ch the traces of h¡story have remained clearly
l¡.srb_le. lt-is {ot-a.ünifiecl.¡m_a-ge but a l¡v¡ng collage,
\a_e9!Lection..o-f fragnent_g.1] F?pm a h¡stor¡cal po¡nt
of v¡ew, the s¡multaneous juxtapos¡t¡on of contrast-
ing elements is the expregs¡on of the d¡alectic
prdeé-ss in-wh¡ch the city has always found itself
ald.still does.The concept of cr¡t¡cal ant¡thes¡$
and d¡vergent multiplicity is the very essence and
un¡que character of Berlin.42
39 C also mentions the Teufelsbrücke and the Garnisonkirche
n Potsdam.
40 This last sentence was omitted in Lotus (E).
41 C: "After seven hundred years, Berlin is again divided in
two halves: West Berlin and East Berlin. As with the historic
precedent of the double city, all the major facilities have
been duplicated ¡n the two halves of the city. The self-image
of East Berlin is the antithesis of that of West Berlin. and
the openness of West Berlin the antithesis of the East,"
42 C: "The vicinity of thesis and antithesis,or, in other words,
the justaposition of opposites, is, from a historical point of
view, not the weakness but really the force of the city, which
exemplifies the concept of antithesis and mulliplici'ty."
 IIisto¡lsehe Ent¡rtcklungsstufen

Doppelstadt 3erlin l* K61l"n $tá.dtekcl1age an Anfang ileE 19. Jbdts.

Regioaales $t€ütenetz ües Induetrleseitalte¡s Die getellte $tadt

Stages in the h¡storical development of Berl¡n

The double-city of Berl¡n-Kólln A collage of c¡ties in the early 19th century

A reg¡onal network of c¡ties ¡n the industrial area The divided c¡ty

William lv's concept for the Havel landscape
 Architektonisehe Erinnerungsstücke eingelagért tn aie X¡rYsnanAñItXY*

Sch].oss auf d.er Pfaueninsel von D. Brendel -

llell-¿ndsktrehe vori A- St&Isr*-

apark Slien nel u. Xasehi¡ea!¡aus l:t

K.f ,Scbinket I:fTéEf ¡Ee* YoñT:?e¡s1 us

Memorial arch¡tecture inserted ¡nto the Havel landscape

The castle on Pfauén¡nsel by D. Brendel The Heilandskirche by A. Stüler

The casino on the grounds of Schloss GI¡en¡cke The house for the court gardener and
by K. F. Schinkel the machine house in Gl¡enicke by L, Persius
 Íhese l0 8r1üuterung

Der r¡na.u*¡r*lebLlc!:e Zwan6 zar
ñeduzi.e:ung, dle Yerbesserung der
urbanen *¡aLltá't, die Srheltung der
hf.storlschen Subgt*nz, df.e Indlviá-
uallslerang det *rehitekturo die
ñr¡msnlsierung des stñüti-Lschen
Lebengrar¡mes so'rte d.ie Verbesse"ung
d.er lj*relt slnd andeut::ngs¡reLs*
fhenen, devea Sed.eut:¡ng l.n Zussmen-
hang nit dev Kekonstruktion der
Stadt dlskutieri, und für deren
t6sung Yorsehl*ge ent¡rlckelt rerclen
¡aüssen,
9ehlussfolgen¡ng
Das Koasept eles St8itte¿rchlpels
elne Aslvort auf eine ñelhe
stddtebar:l-ichen Grunclforilerungen wle
Die Frage stql]-t slch nlcht mehr
nach d.en 8nürurf elner votlstándi.g
::euen Um:eLt, sondern vteL:*e?¡r nacb
der Rekonstruklion der Vorhaad.enen,
Nl.eht d.ie ñrfinüung eines lreüen
Staütsystems, sondlern un {le Ver-
besserung des bestelrenden, nlcht ále
trbrtdeckung ñeue" Ordnungen, so:rdern
die tr{iedeveltd.eckung beráhrter PrLn-
zLpLen, .nicht die Konstruktlon neu.er
Stñd.ta, sóndern dle t!¡strukturlerung
der Al-ten lst üas Probl"en der Zukr¡¡:ft,
Was geb:auchi vlrá lst nicht elne
neue Utopleo sonüernider Sntvr¡rf für
efne bessere 8eaLlt8t. Das giJ-t
nicht nur ffr Berl"in *ond.era e,uch
für dte neisten andere:: Orosstsdte.
Berlin kdn¡te aber Iupulse ausstr¿hl-
en iie über den &ahnen de: eLgenen
Froblenatik hlnausgehen und. d.a¡nft
exemplari.sehen und unlversellen
Cbarakter annehen.
ist
Yon

Thesis lOas proven-prin-cip-le,s- not

The inev¡table drive toward réduct¡on, the improve-
ment of the urban quality, the preservation of the
h¡storic substance, the ind¡v¡dual¡zation of architec-
ture, the humanization of living space in the c¡ty,
and the improvement of the environment aré impl¡ed
topics that will need to be discussed w¡th¡n the
framework of the reconstruction of the city and for
whose solution new proposals must be developed.
Explanation
The ¡ssue in question ¡s no longer the des¡gn
of a complétely new environment, but rather the
rebuilding of what already exists. The task at.hand
¡s not the invention of a new urban system, but
.the improvement of what is already ther€; not the
d¡scovery of a new order, but the rediscovery of
lhe _cgl!_s!Iy_9!ion of new.
c!t!e.g, but lhe restructuring of the old ones-th¡s. is
-fhe real problem for the future. What ¡s needed is
.
:b not a new Utopia, but rather a blueprint for a better
real¡ty. And this is someth¡ng that applies not only
to Berlin but also to the ma¡ority of other large
c¡t¡es, Berlin might, however, prompt initiatives that
go beyond ¡ts own particular problematic and thus
assume an exemplary and universal character.
Conclusion
The concept of the archipelago-city answers
a series of fundamental urban des¡gn demands,
such as:
- finding a solut¡on to the problem of reduction that
goes hand in hand with improvement in qual¡ty, as
opposed to the loss ¡n qual¡ty that ¡s concom¡tant
to constant growth and unlimited expans¡on
- ¡mproving urban qual¡ty by offering var¡ed and
versatile spaces for living and activities
- creating a pluralistic system of unresolved
contradict¡ons, instead of a unitary and central-
¡zed system
- restoring identity in urban spaces
- establ¡sh¡ng a close l¡nk between city and country,
which means renewing the relationship between
culture and nature
- the intens¡f¡cation of places, along with the
preservation of collective memory and h¡storical
consc¡ousness, understood as a cont¡nu¡ty of
space and time
- the ¡ndividualization of arch¡tecture and, s¡multa-
neous¡y, an improved adaptabil¡ty to the wishes
and expectat¡ons of inhabitants
- the need for smaller un¡ts so as to create more
manageable liv¡ng and work¡ng areas at the scale
of the city, and that of individual buildings.aa
 - lte lósrmg ües ProbLens ¿¡¡t Re* - Dle Inél,viilrul"lsiernng (ler Afchltek-
I
I
i
durlenrng bei gl.elchzeltlger iur untl üa*tt glelch*eltlg {te
Q$allt&t¡verbegseruag la Oegen- begsare Aapasebarkalt aa ille lfünEche
6

s*tz zus et&ndllgen lfacbstr¡s unó r¡nd,Yorgte}luag*n der Beró:rne:

,'.....
u¡begreaater Ausilehau¡8 r¡nil eleu - Dle Ebtl¡endlgkeLt klelnerer Elnlrelt-
d¿.arlt varbr:¿denes Qsallt&lsverlugt en zur Seboffung übersebaubarer
Dle Verbesserung iler st*dtleehen l,ebens u. Aktlvltátsr&¡¡*s 1x Masstab
Qualttüt l¡¡ SLane elnes vleL- iter Stad,t ¿ls auclr iles Slnae3"ge-
geatal-ttgen uad ab*e&hgLungs:relch- b&udles.
ea Lebens- r:nd "lkttt¡ttÉtsrauües
Dlg Schaffung etaec pJ-uralist-
lselte¡ $yrtens gegenreittg qn-
aufgeL6ster lfLde*spr{che iu Gegen-
satz zu el,nen elnhettllch orl.en-
tlerten, zentralLstl.achen Statea
Dfe WleilerbersteLLung iler lilentl-
tet la St¿rltraun
Dle enge Verblnilu¡g rroa Stadt untl
L,anil, d.b. elne Erneuerr¡ng tlet
Bezlebunge¡ z¡rlschen Kultur und
Xatur
Dte lttensLfikatlon iles Ortes so-
rie ille Seva,brung iler koLlektLven
ErLnrer:ung und des gescblchtLlchen
BerrÉ¡stsel¡s l:o Sl.nne der Kontin-
utt8t von Rar¡m ¡¡¡{ Zelt

43 C: "From a historical point of view as well as from the

standpoint of reality, we may conclude that lhe model of
'the city in the city provides a solution to a range of problems
and ambilions that any ser¡ous urban plannlng will have to
deal with in the future."
44 This whole list is missing in C.
 Slnese 11 Erl&uterung

Dl"e ?La¡rmg sol-Lte si.cb
Stufen über ei::en lángeren Xel"tr¿rx:
erstreeken. Stufe I umfaset i.ie
fnbaltLi.cLe und. formal"e Beschreibung
d.er et&dtl"sehen eharskterlstiken,
Stufe 2 behandeli dte Entt¡lcklung
von Alternativ¡nodell-e¡. Slufe 3
beha::delt die Sewertuug der ver-
schiedenen Moüell-e uná óie Progra.mt-
fornullerung. Stufe l+ igt ále Xnt*
r¿rfs- und $tufe 5 d.le ñeallsatlons-
phaqe . Wenn u.an f8r Jede diese¡
Fh*ses etrra ein Jahr ansetz! er$ibt
sich fü: den Ablauf deg Gesa::rt-
pnoJekts ein ?eltr&ula von mindestens
5 Jahren.
in nelrrere Die Xrgebnisse der ersten ?hase, dle
ln de: Sauptsaehe aus einen Katalog
stáátischer Xlemente und $trukture::
besteht, sollten in efner Austellung
*ábre:¡d der Ba::woclren zur Dlskusslon
gestellt verden. Method.isch so11te
die üntersuehung a1s e1n $ystem von
morphologisehen Rel!:en aufgezogen
werden, áie offer¡ genüg eind, un Je
Jederzeit in Fortgang des Arleits-
prosesges zu ergñ.nuen.
DLe z¡relte Stufe, ól.e Sntwicklung
von Alternativnodellen, di"ent dazu
das ¿rebitektonlsehe und. stád.te-
baullche VoksbuJ-ar zu vertiefen.
Mñgl-icbe Zukunftsutoplen :ollten
vergleichend gegenibergesiellt
verden. lle Al"ternativen dienen
der ñntscheiüunsvorbereltung. Is
Popperrsehen Sinne sollten }{¡ryo*
thesen aufgestell,t unü i.n ne.ch-
folgenden Phasen duretr kriti.sche
Bewerlungen tnlt realisllsc!:en Krlter-
ien entved^er bestá.tlgt, nodlfiziert
oüe¡ ve:rrorfen werdea. Die Besert-

Thesis 11
The project ought to be carried out in several
stages over a long period of t¡me.The f¡rst phase ¡s
concerned w¡th the formal and content-related
description of the characteristics of the city, The
second phase deals with the development of alter-
native models,The third phase covers the evalua-
tion of the d¡fferent models and the formulation
of programs, The fourth is the design phase and the
fifth is that of the actual real¡zat¡on. lf we grant one
year to each of these phases, it will take at least
five years to complete the whole project.
Explanation
The results of the first phase, wh¡ch princ¡pally
cons¡sts ¡n catalog¡ng the elements and structures
of the c¡ty, ought to be presented in an exh¡b¡t¡on
and d¡scussed during the Bauwochen. ln terms
of method, th¡s research should be organized
as a system of fair¡y open morpholog¡cal l¡nes so
as to allow integrations during the work.45
The second phase, the development of alternat¡ve
models, serves to go more deeply into the archi-
tectonic and urban plann¡ng vocabulary. The possi-
ble Utopias for the future should also be compared
and contrasted with each other. The alternatives
serve to prepare the decision-making phase.
As Popper recommends, hypotheses should be put
forward that, ¡n subsequent phases and through
crit¡cal evaluation based on real¡st¡c criter¡a, are
then either confirmed, modif¡ed, or re¡ected,The
appraisal of these alternat¡ves would, for the ma¡n
part, be the task of pol¡t¡cal commiss¡ons, and
also of ind¡vidual cit¡zens.46 The results of the two
phases could later be d¡scussed ¡n public meet¡ngs
and then publ¡shed. After the formulat¡on of the
programs comes the phase of designing the urban
¡slands and the green zones between them. At
this stage, we ought to avoid show¡ng a preference
for a un¡fied arch¡tectural style. Rather, the rule
of maintain¡ng as w¡de as poss¡ble an architectural
spectrum should be adhered to.47
Conclus¡on
The punctual realization of prototyp¡cal examples
¡llustrating the whole concept might be the purpose
and subiect of a building exh¡b¡t¡on ¡n the 1980s.
Along the way, exh¡b¡t¡ons could be organized every
year, dur¡ng the Bauwochen, lo showcase the dif-
ferent work stages ¡n progress. ln a cont¡nuat¡on
of the first Summer School held in Berlin th¡s year,
certa¡n top¡cs from the overall concept could be
reexamined and theoretically reelaborated. lnter-
national architects should be invited4s for extended
stays in Berlin to work on these projects.ag An

$ehlusefolgerung
Slne punktueLLe ñegLlslerung ?on
protot¡llschen Be*splel"en des Sesant*
konaeptes k6ante ct¿s Zld" u¡rd" iler
I:ús1t eLr¡er EauausstelJ-uagln 4ea
acbtzlger Jabrea set¡. Auf clen l{ege
dortbln kóanten rñlrrend der tsar¡roehen
tn konsekqtlver Solge Jührllehe
AusgtdlSungen elar einzeLnen Bearbelt-
ungsstufea st¿ttflnilen. l¡ eLner
?ort;etzung der Ln eliegem *abr zru
erstenu¿l 1n Berltn vera¿gtal"teten
$o¡r¡:erakad.emi.e filr Architektr:r
h6nntea 3lnzel-theme¡ s,ug ilen Oesa,nt-
konplex aufgegriffen und tbeoretiech
bearbettet verilen. Intern¿ilonal-
beka¡r¡ie Arehlt ekt enpers6nl lehkelten
soLltcs lS¡ el.r¡en 1üngeren Zetl-
rar:m nacb Serlln elngeLaden nerden,
Fül ctta Orgo,nfsati.on der Planung
sol"l"te ein r¡nabh{aglges Serater-
greml,un geblJ-det r¡erd.e¡.
independent group of experts should be set up
organ¡ze the entire planning.so
ung aler Al-tern¿llven rráre in der
Hauptsaehe eine Verantrrortung der
politischen Gremien sorie des ela-
zelnen 3ürgers. Dle xrgebnisse d.er
.
beid.en Pl¡¡sen kñaatea in 6ffen}liehen
Verea¡vnlrmgen illskutlert uncl pub-
Llzlert ryerd.en. I{aeh d,er Progra.?ra-
fomr:lierung folelt dle Phese ¿es
8nt¡n¡rfs der Stad.tlnseLn und der
d.¿z¡rlschenllegeailen Orün¿o¡eu.
Dabel goLlte dte Bevoruugung eines
elnheitl-ichen archltektonigchen
Stils ve:nieden ¡rerden. 8s aisste
vlel"aehr tlle Regel ge3-tea d.ss ar-
chitektoal.sche Spektrr:n so brelt
vte n6glich zu ?¡altea.
rñ..
to 45 C is more precise on this first phase: "The description of 49 C: "sponsors could include not only German inst¡tutions,
the inherent qua¡it¡es of the city is mostly based on the analysis bul also, and above all, fore¡gn institutions, such as the Aspen
matter
of spatial and sociological structures. lt is above all a lnstitule in the United States, and even the state, which took
of identifying the places that have a specific character due to part ¡n the funding of the Summer School."
the¡r
their spatial singularity, their sociological identity, or 50 C: "... placed under the direct respons¡bility of the senator
h¡storic past. The definition of those places depends as much in charge of housing, with lull authority."
on chance discovery as on the rational analysis of componetts
such as the¡r built substance, their architectural dens¡ty, or
their functionality."
46 C: "For the appraisal of alternative models, small inter-
disciplinary teams, comprising architects,sociologists, histori-
ans, economjsts, and intelligent citizens ought 10 be brought
togethe["
47 C: "ln their expression, projecls should however corre-
spond to the character of each urban space. The greater
possible diversity would thus be encouraged. Once appra¡sed
by official political author¡ties, the development of the projects
ought to be entrusted to arch¡tectural teams who would
be significantly d¡fierent from one another The results of this
elaboration would define the basis for the last step, that of
implementation."
48 C: "... lhanks to research fundinos ..."
 &-;*ü-**-
lr
GHOSTWRITI NG
Rem Koolhaas in conversation with Florian Hertweck and Sébastien Marot
April2010
s¡,tt: The City in the City-Berlin: A was
Green Archipelago
probably the ultimate and most elaborate fruit of your
interaction with Oswald Mathias Ungers in the seventies.
On several occasions and in several texts, you have evoked
the importance of this connection in your own trajectory.
The very name of your offtce, OMA, launched at a time
when you and Ungers (OMU) were very close (1975) is in
itself clear evidence of this intellectual proximity. In order
to dig a little deeper into this, I would like to start with
a question about your attraction to Germany, which seems
to have been a rather early and provocative interest.Why
and when exactly did you start looking at things German?
GERMANY
nr: This is actually a question that I have asked myself
recently. There are a number of things to remember. I was
born in Rotterdam, in the winter of 1944. And this last winter
of the war was notorious there because the area south of
the river had been liberated, and only the area north of the
river was still at war: a very borderline situation. I remember
that during the first twelve years of my life the war was
a very important topic of conversation. There were still many
iraces left by the war-damage, ruins-even in Amsterdam,
to where my parents had moved after the war. To be com-
pletely honest, most of those traces were actually pretty
exciting. On my way to school, for instance, I would always
stay behind, play in the ruins, and find bullets. So it was
difTicult to share 100 percent this feeling that war was terrible.
It was also very adventurous. My parents would tell many
exciting stories about their life during the war-how they got
food, for example-and all of it sounded more like an
intensified life rather than a terrible lifle. My parents were
certainly not pro-German and, on the whole, the conver-
sation was anti-German. This was almost a generic position.
Subsequently, of course, it became very dubious whether
people were really anti-German or whether they felt that
they needed to be anti-German after the war to hide a more
ambiguous position during the war. I am not talking of my
parents individually here but of that "blank" that Germany
had become for the Dutch. Later, when I was eight, my
parents took me to Indonesia, and that experience was very
important for two reasons. The first was that Indonesia had
just become independent, which meant that we had to be
r-ery Indonesian, if only out olpoliteness. And the second
reason is that, for the first time, I was confronted with
religion. Because just as my parents were in a generic way
anti-German, they were also in a generic way anti-religion.
Whenever I asked them, "Is there something," they would
always reply, "No, there is nothing." That position may have
been more or less credible in Europe, and even in Holland,
but in Indonesia, which was Islamic, or in the case of Bali,
Hindi, it became totally incredible. I could actually see
that religion determined the rhythm of everyday life there,
almost a kind of elegance in most people's behavior, and
a sense ol the collective. From that moment on, I became
very sceptical not only of my parents' anti-religiousness, but
also of their anti-Germanness-maybe they were actually
part of the same zone of anti-ness. Then, when I was a little
bit older*twelve perhaps-I discovered another general
position that they also had: they were anti-abstract, abstract
art. And this was the first of their dogmas that I actively
overthrew, in the sense that I became, around that age, very
interested in abstract art. So basically, these three antis
(anti-German, anti-religion, and anti-abstract) are for me
one part of my parental background, but also a particular
aspect of Dutch culture at that time. But Indonesia emanci-
pated me quite effectively from my parents, and by the
time I was fourteen, nobody could tell me anything anymore.
I hence felt free to be interested in Germany ...
sM: ... &nd in religion?
nx: Well, yes. That, too.
Since you just mentioned your Indonesian experience,
srvr:
and belore we resume with your interest in Germany,
I'd like to interject something you said in another interview:
that Indonesia provided you very early on with a strong
idea or intimate notion of the archipelago.
nr: Literally, you mean? Probably, yes. I don't remember
where and when I said that, or in what context, but it's true,
I think, that that was when the archipelago established
itself, in my mind, as an implicit mode1. As a matter of fact,
while we were living in Jakarta, my parents took us, for
the summer, once to Java, once to Sumatra, once to Bali or
Celebes. They traveled a lot-big legs-and left us more
or less on our own to really appreciate things. So, yes, my
Indonesian experience was really an archipelago experience.
sM:Now, how did your paradoxical interest in Germany
develop when you returned to Holland as a teenager?
RK:When I was fifteen, I became friends with a guy called
Rene Daalder, who would later become a hlmmaker, and we
soon got into a kind of movie fanaticism; personally, I was
GHOSTWRITING
always more interested in Italian and German movies
than in French and American movies. So that was a further
reinforcement in my awareness of the values of German
culture. I read a 1ot at that time. I read all Russian literature,
but I don't know whether I actually read German literature.
I don't think so. I did that later.
sM: Were you already reading Hermans, who deeply ques-
tioned the anti-German position of the Dutch at that time?
BK: Yes, I read W.F. Hermans when I was thirteen or fourteen.
But that was Qart of modernity and abstraction. My father
was a writer-not a classical writer-but he didn't have any
affinity with that kind of thing, while I on the contrary had
a huge affinity with that. Hermans was, for that section of
my generation, a totally inevitable writer. Later, as a journal- r¡r: So it was while you were in Berlin to document the
ist, I met him and interviewed him, and he even wrote
a very enthusiastic review of Delirious New York.
srvr: Did he? I didn't know that!
BK: Yes, I went to offer it to him in Paris. He read it and
wrote a review of it for the Dutch dally Het Parool. And he
had used a beautiful phrase: "Koolhaas has a way of being
very enthusiastic that is combined with precision, and
is very rare."
su: So, to come back to your interest in Germany, you
saying that it was fed by your passion for cinema.
RK: Yes, although Fassbinder had not yet made any
movies in the early sixties, I cannot help remembering our
movie addiction as somewhat "fassbinderian." In this proto
Fassbinder mood, I wrote'a script (or wewrote a script)
and he made a movie-The Wite Slate-which was centered
on a good German who tried to be idealistic and do sustain-
able things in Africa. And in this movie, where the main
part was played by German TV actor Günther Ungeheuer,
we used Wagner's music. Now in 1969, a good German
plus Wagner in a film was sti1l beyond the acceptable. I'm
telling the story a little bit too linearly, but the taboo was
so intense that the filmmaker had to leave the country.
As for me, I had already left Holland a year before to study
architecture in London. So, in a way, my interest in the
Berlin Wall, which led me to this f,reld trip in 1971, was an
interest in the same things by other means, or related to
other subjects.
FH: Was it the first time that you actually traveled to Germany?
RK: Once, when I was a teenager, I traveled by car with
another family from Holland to Copenhagen via Germany,
and I actually remember going through Hamburg and
liking it. And Hamburg also played a role in this movie.
su: But lhe l9ll trip was really the first time that you went
on purpose, wasn't it?
RK: Yes, I think so, because no one of my generation
would have had parents who went on holiday to Germany.
No way!
UNGERS
wal1 that you discovered the publications that Ungers
had produced with his students at the Technical University.
Do you remember which of the publications you first
stumbled across? Was there a particular one?
RK: No. I basically saw one in a bookstore, was fascinated,
asked whether there were more, and came home with
the full set. So it was not one by one, but all at once. I then
that inquired where Ungers was and what had happened to
him, and discovered that he had exiled himself. The student
revolt in Berlin, which had gone directly against him, and
were the disaster of the Márkisches Viertel, all that had made
him leave Germany to assume the chair of architecture at
Cornell. So those pamphlets convinced me to check him
out in Ithaca, where the two olus interacted as exiles. It was
aperiod in which there were quite a few exiles.
su: But what was so fascinating about those publications?
RK: They were particularly fascinating for me because
I came from the AA. And for anyone with my history, very
interested in continental thinking, interested vaguely in
religion, interested in abstraction and in the German-Italian
segment of the sixties-rather than in the Anglo-Saxon
one-the AA was quite an interesting experience, but not
avery sympathetic one. There was a lot of hostility really,
from people like Peter Cook, toward me. But also from me,
in a way, toward them. Because I never felt that I could
really find anything there remotely like the kind of architec-
ture I was interested in. And basically, the simple kind of
repertoire that Ungers was trying to develop, the relationship
between history and modernity that he played with, all
of that fascinated me.

Ben[fin 1995
Oswald Math¡as Ungers,
Ve rófte ntl i c h u n ge n zu r A r c h ite ktu r :
"Schnellstrasse und Gebáude" (no. 4/1966)
"Grossformen im Wohnungsbau" (no, 5/1966)
"Be¡trag zur Planetarisierung der Erde" (no. l3l1968)
'Architekturtheorie" (no. 14l1968)
"Schnellbahn und Gebáude" (no. 2ll1968)
"Berl¡n 1995" (no. 25l1969)
So he was at the crossroad of many of your interests,
srvr:
abstraction, Germany ... he embodied a kind of possible
place in which to think.
RK: Yes, absolutely.
su: But architecturally, urbanistically, what was so
fascinating?
nr: It was to some extent more the man than the ...
slr: But you didn't know the man yet ...
nx: Well, no. I found it fascinating that he was envisioning
architecture as a way of thinking, or as a kind of research,
and that it was not simply a question of "OK, I have to do
this, and here it is." I remember very simple themes like
buildings and parks. I was also particularly impressed by his
reconsideration of Leipzi ger Platz. That seemed exception-
ally exciting, but also his insane utopian plan for Berlin ...
FH: ... and the number on the firewalls ...
RK: Yes, that, too. All of that was very compelling. But
the most fascinating aspect of that enterprise was its site-
specificity, the simple fact that Ungers had taken Berlin,
West Berlin, as a laboratory, or, to put it more precisely, the
fact that he had taken the enclosed nature ofthe city as
a pretext to declare it a laboratory. It was especially interest-
ing for me since I, too, in a way, had come to Berlin to
define that kind ofproperty.
su: In the piece you wrote for Domus d'Autore, you say
that when you came back to London after your trip to Berlin,
only the guys connected to Colin Rowe seemed to know
anything about Ungers. Who were those Rowe guys:
Zenghelis? Frampton? Boyarsky?
RK: No, I don't remember Elia ever talking about Colin Rowe,
and Frampton, as far as I know, had no particular affinity
with Rowe. As for Boyarsky, whom I met a little later that
year, I'm not sure I was aware at the time of his close connec-
tion with Rowe. My interaction with Frampton and Boyarsky
actually started during that last year at the AA, which
was marked by a big scandal: one of the chairmen was part
of a religious sect, based on the theory of George Gurdjieff,
but his idea was that there was only a certain amount of
knowledge in the world, and to avoid thinning it down to
almost nothing, this knowledge should not be distributed
GHOSTWRITING
equally ... only certain people were called on to know it. So
what happened at the AA was that certain people were
called and were pulled in by this sect, which led to nervous
breakdowns, or at least to a very divisive situation in the
school. So I was part of a group of students and teachers
that tried to get rid of him, or got rid of him.
sM: Despite your interest in religion ...
nr: (laughs) It's not an interest in religion, just a deep
conviction that to be anti-religious is stupid. For instance,
the incredible stupidity of people like Richard Dawkins,
writing those books whose only effect is that everyone gets
angrier and more misunderstood. Anyway, we fired the
guy. And then we organized elections. And in those elec-
tions, Frampton was one candidate, and Alvin Boyarsky
the other. Frampton I had met by chance at an exhibition
a few months earlier, and we had become kind of friends.
But it was really against this background that I discovered
Boyarsky, and he, as part of his campaign, gave a very
exciting lecture on Chicago.
su: So who were those guys in London who were associated
with Colin Rowe and aware of Ungers's exile at Cornell?
RK:I don't think I ever found anyone in England who knew
about Ungers, and at the AA, as far as I remember, you
were barely exposed to Colin Rowe. But there was, as I now
realize, one personal connection. We lived, my wife and I,
in an apartment that we were sharing with a Dutch woman,
who was Gerrit Oorthuys's sister or half-sister, and she went
out with Alan Colquhoun. So we became very close with
Alan, who was a good and intimate friend, and somebody
I really appreciated. Compared with the kind of barbaric
side of the English, he was an exceptionally smart and nice
person, and as a matter of fact I am still friends with him.
Alan must have been talking about Rowe at that time, but as
far as I remember, he was the only one, more than Elia.
EXILE
sv: So this led you to follow lJngers's and Rowe's tracks,
and to go to Ithaca.
nr: Well, I won a fellowship that enabled me to go to the
States for two years. And that was very luxurious because it
implied a kind of carte blanche to do what you wanted.
You didn't have to study. The only obligation was that you
had to travel for three months a year, and they even paid
for that. I had a vague idea that I wanted to do something on
New York, and a vague instinct that I should not go directly
to New York. Knowing that Ungers was in Cornell, it seemed
a very good way of spending the time, and to make an
indirect approach to New York. I think I officially went to
class, maybe for three months, but I wasn't really enrolled.
I just had permission to use the library and the facilities.
But before leaving for America, I didn't know where to go.
So around March of 1972,I went on my own to America
to check out a number of universities. It's a funny footnote.
Are you interested in footnotes?
SMAND FH: SUTE.
nx: I first went to Harvard, where my cousin Teun, who
also was a planner, had come with the same fellowship
I had. There, I met Alexander Tzonis, who basically told
me: "Don't come here. The reputation of your cousin is so
enormous that it will be bad for you." I then checked out
Columbia, where Kenneth Frampton acted a bit like a guide
as to where to go to in America. And I finally went to
Ithaca, where I met Ungers and Colin Rowe.
su: So, you decided on Ithaca, moved there with Madelon
in the summer, and started to collaborate with Ungers on
competitions.
RK: Yes. To be frank-I probably spoke about it somewhere-
Ungers gave unbelievably exciting seminars, but as an
architect at that time, he was basically very unfocused and
uncertain. And the trying confrontation with Rowe had
deepened his uncertainty. So, in his German thoroughness,
he explored a number of architectural alternatives, but so
thoroughly that he gave Rowe the perfect ammunition
to say: "He's gone uazy;he's now interested in computers ..."
sM: Yes, the Bonn competition.
nr: Right, the Bonn competition. We thus started to work
together, but I mainly collaborated with him as a ghost-
writer. And that is also how I considered it. I wasn't doing
my own things, but really trying to reinvent him for
his own purposes, or to simply explain what was good
about him.
FH: Jasper Cepl writes in his biography that you brought
Ungers back on the right track in a way.
nr: That was in itself a kind of beautiful situation. Today,
now that architects are so important, it's unthinkable that
anyone would ever admit so much vulnerability. No one
would be open to a younger person, and say something like:
"Look, I'm in a mess ... help me out."

su: Hadn't you played a similar role before, with Zenghelis,

before tutoring the mentor?

nr: Well, that was slightly different because he didn't

consider himself in a mess at all. He was a very exuberant
person, and it's more that he was basically seduced by
what I was doing. Of course there are similarities, but it
wasn't quite the same.

sM: Do you think that Ungers was in a somewhat desperate

situation?
Rem Koolhaas, sketch for Ungers's competition pro¡ect
RK: No. You know, he was basically an enthusiast. I don't for the Landwehrkanal-Tiergarten in Berlin, 1973

think you can say he was in a desperate situation. He really

eqjoyed America and was eagerly looking at America.
Also with Lo, he was looking at communes.
su: And he shared that with you?
RK: Yes, because we shared ideas, but also because, as
you know yourself, Ithaca is particularly interesting in that
respect, with its communes, the Mormons, etc. He was
interested in all ofthat.
rr: Cepl also mentions that when he came to Cornell, Ungers
traveled through the country for three or four months, and
that he planned to write a book on the decline of American
cities, but never did.
Rx: That's is very possible. Decline was the typical European
RK: Yes, a fair number. I think maybe three, four, or five.
And also in the following year. I was in New York already,
but I would come to Ithaca to work a little on those com-
petitions, and spend the weekend. I don't remember all the
names, but there was one for the Tiergarten, the Land-
wehrkanal, another one for the Fourth Ring in Lichterfelde,
and also one for Düren, which was really beautiful,
I thought.
sM: You said you were almost reinventing Ungers.
nx: Again, ghostwriting is a more modest und b"tt". t"r-.
But weren't you also reinventing yourself through
srvr:

kind of thing then. But it was probably happening there, too.
sttrz 1972, when you joined Ungers at Cornell, was the year
The Limits to Growth was published. Did you follow that
debate?
your interaction with him? I'm alluding here to that specular
OMA/OMU moment in the mid-seventies, the osmosis
project, which appeared in an issue of Lotus in1976, and in
which your two off,rces did a joint publication of your
respective projects. Was it serious?

RK: Yes, of course. But in retrospect, I think America RK: No, it was more a joke, I would say.
was really on the cusp: it was still a very creative country,
and really exhilarating in that sense, but also, already, Really? Because he once told me that you made moves
srvr:

the first signs ofdecay were very evident. toward having an office together, and that he shied away,
because, as he said with a large smile, "I would have been
you worked with Ungers, in Ithaca, on many
sru: So, eaten alive." So it seems it was something you talked about?
competitions. Not just a joke.
GHOSTWRITING

nr: Well, you're right. We were at some point planning to

maybe have an office together. Or to operate in tandem.
This would probably be a better term. But I'm sure Mathias
would never have been eaten alive. That's another typical
Ungers story.

MANIFESTO

So we now come to the Berlin archipelago in 1971.

FH:
F@:G;l My hypothesis is that you were more interested in
ñ-m w----, the in-between spaces, and Ungers more interested in
ffiF,,,F HE
f,-
ñtrr ¿-= the islands, in the minicities.
t-La.t..: , f-
cq,-ll !i? I
a\)t)
oi*' rÉ;==r nr: Well, this is the problem of this kind of academic
GC - Ulrlil:u
"¡r ll attention, that you have to make things explicit when they
actually were much more floating. And I don't think it's
entirely true, because Mathias was also very much interested
in the in-between. In America, we were in the in-between.
And of course he was also interested in form. But the big
F^+^'**,-'\ *-.a-. *nt@
EÉT
I
l\,/\\
I
lesson ofhis Schinkel reading is precisely that there is kind
ffi
?;\'
t,\\l
------
F-t of a straight line from decay and decomposition to the prime
or ideal state, with all the phases in between. So I think he
was able to appreciate the in-between as much as I was.
But he was less sceptical of architecture. That's the big thing.
W I was already then completely sceptical, and that worked
really well with the two of us.

ffi sM: So you became the sceptic.

¿r

D, RK: YES

srvr:

RK:
And he became the believer again.

Yes, the scepticism is what I have, what I got.

su; Could you explain the circumstances in which this

K^ original typed version of the manifesto, never published

Rem Koolhaas, sketches for Ungers's competition pro¡ect
for the Kuhgassenviertel in Düren,1973
and simply titled "Berlin: A Green Archipelago," was
produced? We know that the context was this Cornell
Summer School in 1917, devoted to the "urban villa," in
which Hans Kollhoff and Arthur Ovaska were lJngers's
assistants, and that Peter Riemann was there, too, producing
drawings and graphic analyses for his thesis on Berlin.
You were invited to participate, came to Berlin, and it seems
that you wrote this first integral text, or draft.

nr: Well, I cannot say that I really remember the whole

situation, but yes, Ungers had that Summer School, which
I visited. I think I wrote this text in a hotel, but on the
other hand it looks as if I typed it on my own typewriter
[in London].
FH: According to Peter Riemann, you had it in your suitcase
when you came to Berlin that summer.
RK: Ok. That must be actually true, yes. What I do remem-
ber is that my visit to Berlin was short, that I dropped
it oflthere, and was not responsible for its further dissemi-
nation.
su: In fact, we have here three versions of the text. We
have that first unsigned one that you wrote and typed, which
is a whole in itself, already contains the fundamental ideas,
and is simply titled "Berlin: A Green Archipelago." Then,
we have that second typed version, slightly revised and
expanded, that goes more into detail about the different
islands, and was apparently produced for a little exhibition
that took place at the end of the Summer School. This
second version bears the additional title "The City in the
City" on top of the existing one, and a subtitle ("A Concept
for Berlin as a Shrinking Metropolis"). This version is
signed by you, Ungers, and Riemann (in that order). And
finally, we have the third and last version, which significantly
expanded and reformatted the whole argument in eleven
theses and was obviously produced under the direct super-
vision of Ungers himself. It was printed in Ithaca in the
fall of 1977, in German, and subsequently publishedby Lotus
in English and Italian. It's the only one that people have
been able to read so far. It bears the same title as the second
version, but a different subtitle ("Ein stadtráumliches
Planungskonzepf fiJrr die zukünftige Entwicklung Berlins"
[An Urbanistic Planning Concept for Berlin's Future
Developmentl), and the collaborators listed, in addition to
Ungers himself, are you, Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff,
and Arthur Ovaska, in that order. This rather different and
much longer presentation is arranged as a demonstration
strategically organized into theses, as ifto convince the
political or planning authorities that the proposal could in
effect be implemented, in the space of five years.
FH: Yes, the kind oftheoretical support for the new IBA
(Internationale Bauaustellung Berlin), almost downplaying
the retroactive architecture a little, so as to make it
plausible for the politicians.
sM: Now, if we put aside the issue of the format, and focus
on the content, three other kinds of ideas and arguments
are developed in this last version that were not contained
in the first, but already started to appear in the second.
The first one is this idea that the archipelago is congenial to
the history of Berlin, that this city actually developed as
a progressive confederation ofvillages and discrete urban
entities, and that the proposed concept is therefore particu-
larly adapted to Berlin. The second is the reference to
Potsdam, the Havel landscape of Schinkel and Lenné, which
is claimed as a kind of landscape antecedent: a suburban
prefiguration ofa project that should be applied or trans-
posed to the city itself. And the third one is the urban villa,
the theme of the Summer School, which is retroactively
inserted into the argument as a kind of puppet. If you were
not involved in this last version, did you write the second
one, or participate in any way in the introduction of those
other developments?
RK: I'm not sure I wrote or typed the second version myself,
and if I did, it's quite possible that they asked me to make
those additions. [Scanning the paragraphs added in the
second version] "Pluralistic" is a word that I would never
use. No, this is an appendix that I probably didn't even write.
I think I wrote it up to ... here, and that those additions
were made afterward.
sM: Even in the main body of this second version, which
literally repeats your text, some minor corrections, changes,
or additions have been introduced that make me think that
you didn't type this second draft, and maybe didn't even
revise it. Here, for ínstance, the word "antithetical," which
you had used to insist on the radically different nature
ofthe facilities or social condensers to be inserted on the
islands, has been changed to "anti-theatrical," Whether it
was conscious or not, this looks very much like a misreading
that only someone who had not written the original text
could make. Otherwise, the other major insertion is the term
"minicity" to describe the islands of the archipelago and
justify the added title ("The City in the City").
¡¡r: Did you approve this new title?
RK: No, because that for me was an American concept.
I mean it was really what explains the Rockefeller Center,
which I was, at that time, precisely analyzing as such in
Delirious New York.I never saw the "city in the city" as
a district or anything else.
r¡r: Unlike Léon Krier, who, in 1976, ayear before you wrote
this text on Berlin, had used that very same expression
GHOSTWRITING

("a city within the city") to describe his project for
La Villette quarter in Paris.
nr: In 1976? This was a very dense period. You almost
to look at it month by month.
svr:That was the year Léon Krier curated his exhibition
on the European city in London and Brussels. Ungers and
he were very close at that time.
the sM: Right. I even think that, provided you invert its terms,
Rowe's caracterizalion of Le Corbusier could well apply
to you: a hedgehog assuming a fox's disguise for the purpose
have of public appearances. But anyway ...
RK: Yes, that's better for a book under your own
responsibility.
sM: Sure.

nx: Well, this is the point about Ungers. Ithink that he FH: To come back to the manifesto, three points are par-
experimented on himself by being close to many different ticularly interesting in this text. It's the first time, I think,
things, and many different people. Sometimes it seemed in the history of urbanism that architects envisioned
as if he was able to define himself only in relation to the problem of shrinkage, whereas all the other theories
something else. So that made him kind of sticky-you were based on progress. Of course, in the seventies, there
know the current expression of "stickiness." He was always was the Club of Rome, zero-growth Europe, the oil crisis,
extremely interested in people, had extremely intense and so on, which probably had an impact on it.
conversations, and that was simply a form of learning and
defining himself. nr: What I thought when I reread it this morning, what
I found reaHy astonishing is how aware I was of the condition
sM: Yes, I remember an anecdote you told me, that goes of Europe. But maybe that was also because I came from
back to that year you spent in Ithaca. Ungers had invited that kind of contrast, and because constant travel enables
several figures from the Team 10 to give seminars at Cornell, you to experience the relative pleasure ofdifferent environ-
and Jaap Bakema was one of them. You said that Ungers ments. But forty years later, I say it's still the issue.
and he once entered into a conversation that got so intense
that they fell on the ground together. FH: As a matter of fact, when you see what's happening in
Germany, the new IBA organized by Philipp Oswalt, and so
RK: Yes, from their bench. [laughs] on ... There hasjust been a big conference on the shrinking
cities all over the world ...
su: Since you mentioned the Rockefeller Center, which
you were analyzing at that time for your book on New York, RK: Yes, but I think we should use a totally different word.
I was struck when I first read the Archipelago manifesto- Cities are really thinning, not shrinking.
and even more so when I discovered your first version
of it-by the very strong similarity with Delirious New York, rx: This is actually what you emphasized about Bedin in the
or with "The City of the Captive Globe". Blocks becoming first paragraph of your text, that the wall ...
islands: Berlin as a matrix welcoming all the fantasies of the
Modernists and others, like boosters of its future identity. RK: ... conflot yield, yes, and that was really the important
point for me.
nr: Well, I think you certainly could write a horrible book
about my consistency. Because I have a reputation ofjump- FH: The second point is the figure of the polycentric city. Did
ing from one subject to another. But yes, you could write you know, probably from Ungers, about Rudolf Schwartz's
a horrible story of a relentlessly linear lack of imagination. proposal for Cologne?

slr: Oh, not lack of imagination. But you know Colin nx: I did, yes.
Rowe's distinction between the hedgehog and the fox.
Everybody would naturally consider you a typical fox, rr: And then maybe Eliel Saarinen's project for Helsinki,
but I believe there is a hedgehog ... and Soviet disurbanism.

RK: Yes, I was really into all that.

¡H: And that's very contemporary as well, when you see,
for example, contemporary projects such as Finn Geipel's
proposal for Grand Paris, or Hidetoshi Ohno's Fiber Cityl
Tokyo 2050, which explicitly refers to the Berlin mani-
festo. And the third aspect is the new dialectic between
culture and nature, at a time when the distinction between
the two, the townscape and the landscape, was very
popular.
RK: In a certain way, this is where it's interesting to
introduce the term scepticism. In that period, there was
a real luxury of embracing-not so much the enemy,
but the other side. It was basically Post-Modernism's coming
out: an incredibly reactionary version ofthe city, a terribly
regressive discourse. It was a diffrcult situation. All
you needed to do-you could say cynically-was to say
the opposite.
su: A word about Ungers's politics. You said that "pluralistic"
is not a word that you would use. In your opinion, what
did it mean-and what did the archipelago project mean-
to Ungers?
nx: "Pluralistic" ... Well, I don't mean this as a form of
intolerance, but any Anglo-Saxon word about politics is for
me completely useless. So "pluralism," I don't know what
to do with it. I think it is, in itself, a very debased concept of
multiplicity. Ungers had-and this is perhaps an important
issue-a very intense relationship with the country and
culture of America, but not with its language. I did. I mean
that my engagement with the language, with the English
language, is as crucial as my other forms of engagement.
And this is why I'm saying that pluralism is a word I could
never have possibly used. As for Mathias's political positions,
I would say they were influenced by a very strange aristo-
cratic default, even though he came from no aristocratic
background. But he probably met, at a crucial point, people,
teachers who gave him a certain sense ofculture, and
norms that he was emulating. Not unnaturally ... I mean
it came naturally to him.
sM: The thing that you probably liked and shared with
Ungers was this empathy for situations.
RK: Yes, exactly.
srvr: This "learning from" attitude.
RK: Yes, improvisation, too.
Right. So you obviously wrote the original version
srvr:
of this text on Berlin, but it's not by chance that it was with
Ungers or for him.
nK: No, it was really a deeply personal kind of resonance,
but with somebody who had that kind of resonance with
many different people.
So it had something very deep to do with him, with
srvr:
what he was actually doing. Would you say that you, in fact,
pushed further what he was basically after?
I don't know whether "pushing" is the right word.
BK:
And I honestly don't think so. I think there was something
slightly more generous and more ... let's say altruistic; also
it was maybe more "recognition" than "pushing."
su: I didn't mean to say that you pushed him, b:uf rather
that you furthered a way of thinking that he had particularly
developed. I'm thinking of early projects, such as Grünzug
Süd (1963), and especially of the way he rendered it in
publication, where the new design was presented as emerging
from the background, the existing, the as found, the
Bestehende... The idea ofretroaction is potentially there,
isn't it?
RK: Yes, but what do you mean? As a similar interest,
or thrciugh my ...
sM: No, I don't think it's exactly similar. But the quest,
the move looks very similar.
RK:Yes, but I think that maybe the most fundamental
similarity between us was that he and I both had a passion to
recognize what was there as the beginning of what is next.
svr: To "yield," you said once.
RK: Yes, but that was his specialty. I'm less capable than
him of doing that. And that was my point in that anecdote
I told you about him and Bakema falling on the ground:
by yielding, he kind ofprovoked the event. But I think-
and this is maybe something you cannot imagine anymore-
that in certain way it was the only option available to
a German intellectual at that time. Maybe now you can
become really confident, but at that time, there was
a kind of "isn't that too German?" feeling.
rn: It's still the case, even in my generation.
GHOSTWRITING
RK: Yes it's still there, to some extent.
But you also wrote that what was fascinating was that
srvr:
total absence ofguilt in his discourse. So he was special in
some way.
RK: Yes. How can I interpret that? I mean, this is the kind
ofweird contradiction at the heart ofarchitecture: that
you have to be totally interested in what exists, and totally
able to think away what exists, to ignore or replace what
exists. Very few architects have that first quality while many
have the second quality. But if you real1y look carefully and
if you take this as your criterion, I think that whole genera-
tions of architects don't have the first one: Jean Nouvel
doesn't have it, maybe Jacques [Herzog] has it a little bit,
Peter Eisenman doesn't have it. Ungers, on the contrary,
had it as his first language. Add I think that if you look at
German history like that, then it's more like a Günter
Grass situation: it becomes an incredibly fun thing. Günter
Grass also doesn't have guilt ... or does he?
rn: Günter Grass more than Martin Walser, I think.
RK:Yes, Walser even less. But I think Walser almost
exaggerates in the lack of guilt. No, but Günter Grass's novel
Cat and Mouse is a quite Ungers-like story, or sensibility.
su: I can't help asking: when you read the published version
of the manifesto, what did you think?
RK: Hmm, I was a bit ...
su: Deceived? Sad?
RK: No, not sad. I thought: real architects.
su: It wasn't a contemplative Utopia anymore.
RK: NO.
Did this text on the archipelago mark the end of the
srvr:
more intensive period of your collaboration with Ungers?
RK:Yes, I would say so. He was now back in Germany,
I was back in London, and we never had the same relation-
ship in Europe that we had in America.
sM: You weren't exiled anvmore.
Rr: That was part of it, although I still saw him very regularly.
But our interests started to diverge somewhat. I was very
excited by the projects he did in Frankfurt, massive build-
ings, those real bastards ofbuildings. Then, when he entered
his geometrical phase, there was no more basis for further
collaboration.
su: And after Ungers, did you have a deep relationship with
any other architects?
RK: No, but I certainly did with engineers ... and with people
like Hans Ulrich Obrist. So it was my last intense association
with an architect, and since then it has been, I guess, more
with other professions. But partnerships have been incredibly
important in my entire life. If you consider how an architec-
tural career works, in how many partnerships you work,
it would probably fill an entire roll of paper. This is another
thing that, in the public perception of me, is totally distorted
into the opposite image of a solitary work.
REVERBERATIONS
rn: I have two questions about the influence olthe manifesto
on your own work and more generally. I'm thinking of the
competition that you did for Friedrichstrasse/Kochstrasse in
the early eighties, when the unification of Germany and
Berlin was still quite unimaginable, which is why the IBA
was launched there. So it was really amazing that, anticipat-
ing its fall, you integrated the wall. Did you know that in
1991, ten years later, ZahaHadid, Norman Foster, and Jean
Nouvel presented the same idea of a linear park for the
Berlin Morgen organized by Lampugnani?
I'm not surprised. [laughs] That's basically bad timing.
RK:
My life is a history of bad timing.
rr: The ironie de I'histoire is that Ungers presented the
archipelago project to the SPD politicians as support for the
IBA, but he didn't want to become the director, probably
because he wanted to practice, to build. So Kleihues
came in, became the director, and that set up the basis for
Stimmann's critical reconstruction.
RK: Yes, there is a chain, but I'm not sure it was a basis.
The basis is as much Krier's kind of thinking.
OMA/Rem Koolhaas, competition project for the new town
of Melun-Sénart,1987
FH:Can you say something about your relationship with
Hans Kollhoff? In the eighties, you were both fighting
against the postmodern reconstruction of the city. In
1988, Kollhoffpublished a text called "Architektur contra
Stádtebau," and his project for Nantes.
nr: I think I met Kollhofffor the first timeas part of
a traveling group of European architects, something that was
organized by Andrew MacNair and the Institute for Archi-
tecture and Urban Studies. I think that Massimo Scolari was
also part of it, maybe Giorgio Grassi, but I'm not 100 percent
sure. So each of us would spend some time in different
architecture schools. In LA, it was UCLA. Hans and I went
to teach there for one or two weeks, and we got on very well.
Later, through Ungers maybe it was the other way round,
at some point we became reasonably good friends.
FH: Then there was his conservative turn in 199I, when you
quit the jury.
RK: Yes, but we've always been on really good terms. It
never affected our relationship. I think the last time we made
a serious effort to bond was during this unimaginable
weekend together in Switzerland, with Hans Kollhoff,Frilz
Neumeyer, Jacques Herzog, and Pierre de Meuron, where
we tried to create a kind ofnon-aggressign pact, saying no
more competition, no more manipulation ... but in the
end it came to nothing.
FH:May I ask you a last question on Berlin? It seems that
Berlin was the first city that you examined theoretically before
Manhattan, and my thesis is that there are tlvo genealogies
of urban planning in Berlin. A first one that tries to densify
and concentrate the city (Baroque Berlin, the Wilhelminian
era, and the IBA later on). And a second one that's kind
ofreactionary and clearly starts with Schinkel, goes through
Bruno Taut's utopia, Scharoun's collective plan, and leads
to the archipelago manifesto. What I find amazing is that, for
the first time, you put a new layer on the city, but a layer
that refers to the history ofthe city.
RK: Yes, but maybe there was so much history that you
had no other choice atthat point. Of course communism,
that last definition of it, made it impossible to not be
historicist.
FH: Yes, but it's an interesting interpretation of historicism.
It's not the conventional one.
GHOSTWRITING
Rr: I don't question that.
FH: Do you know the book Berliner Notizen by Cees
Nooteboom?
RK: YES.
p¡r:He talks like you (and like Wim Wenders) about
firewalls as the symbols of history and the holes that you
find in the walls, made by machine guns. In Berlin, you
acted without erasing its critical potentials and also without
transforming.the city into a pure museum. This is what
I find particularly interesting.
RK: Yes, I still think so, too. I think it's a kind of formula that
avoids a number of dead ends that we've witnessed.
rn: And did you hope, in the early nineties, that the mani-
festo could play a role in the reconstruction of Berlin?
Rx: No. It's not so much that I'm sceptical about the value
of architectural thinking or theory, or about attempts to find
intellectual solutions to architectural dilemmas. But it's
obvious, like in any movie, that any similarity between that
and the real world is at this point almost based on pure
coincidence. Maybe it happens a few times, but ...
FH: So were you disappointed at the beginning of the nineties
when the critical reconstruction came up again, with its
more conservative interpretation?
nx: "Disappointed" is really not the word. I'm more
laconic than that. And I am of course doing my own things,
which are often disappointing as well. So in that sense,
I'm careful not to be too disappointed.
svr: [pointing to an image showing Ungers and Koolhaas
sitting next to one another during the Charlottesville
meeting in 19821 Do you remember this? And what Léon
Krier said then: "You will all burn in hell!"?
Rx:Oh, yes! That was an amazing moment! But did you
ever hear the story olthe dinner afterwards?
sM: No.
RK: In later days, when Ungers and I had felt extremely
estranged from that kind of American architectural mentali-
ty, regardless of whether it was Stern or Eisenman, we
went to the Century Club for dinner, one of Philip Johnson's
famous diners, where an effort was made to recapitulate
what had happened. And basically, both Ungers and I felt
completely out of place in the face of all that triumphalism
and the lack of awareness that things were not perfect in
architecture. So I said that it was a little bit like in the movie
Night of the Living Dead, in which zombies walk on despite
having been shot at. And Philip Johnson said to Stern:
"What do you think he means?" "Philip, he doesn't like your
building." Which was a kind of efficient translation although
Philip Johnson's were almost the only buildings I liked
there.
su: Yes?
nx: Well, I think Philip Johnson is a much more interesting
architect than people say.
su: Yes? OK, that could be a good last word. [aughs]
nr: Wel1, no, I take that back. Don't make that my last word,
llaughs]just the last footnote.
slr: Alright, let me then ask you one last question. I f,rnd it
striking that many themes that you have been recently
exploring with AMO, such as the selective conservation of
buildings and urban structures, the issue of the country-
side, or the identity and diversity of Europe, were already
present and strongly articulated in this text written
thirty-five years ago. Don't you think so, too?
RK: Yes, I think so, too. I think that the current reading of
architectural work and careers is in a way so absurd. For
instance, my personal position has been interpreted as one
of constant change, always trying to outrun expectations
and introduce novelty, while in fact you could make an
equally strong argument that it has been horribly consistent,
permanently hammering on the same things, and investi-
gating things in depth. So I recognize many of those themes
and I think they always preoccupied us with different
intensity.
sM: So, when you're investigating those issues today, do
you still have this first manifesto in mind?
nx: No, not really, because of course many things have
actually changed in the intervening thirty-five years.
But it's really the things that have changed more than me.
I would say that I'm stil1 looking at the possible meanings
of those ingredients and their possible relationships.
But it's not because I think that now is the time to justify
or implement that manifesto. These are more interests
that I have and that never went away, and are constantly
revived partly by the way in which they transform.
AN EXHIBITION CONCEPT
Arthur Ovaska in conversation with Sébastien Marot
August 2010

COMPETITIONS in Lichterfelde. Rem, who was in the process of leaving for

New York, soon showed up. The first thing I remember
Arthur, in what circumstances did you come to
sru: meet about Rem is that whenever Mathias had a new competition
Ungers and collaborate with him? to do, and before Rem showed up, Mathias would clear
all the tables and put only little pads of blank paper on the
ao: When I grew up in Boston, as a teenager, I actually tables. Then we would have brainstorming sessions and
got to know Walter Gropius. When Mathias discovered this, do conceptual diagrams. I remember Rem using a white piece
he was strangely curious and envious: "How could this of paper for the first diagram for the Fourth Ring, which was
young guy know Gropius, when I never knew Gropius?" a sort of highway with fingers of villas attached that basically
It was really just a kind of accidental connection, because came from a reinterpretation of the context, an area of
I was working in an oflice in Cambridge at the time, and garden plots. Jeff and I were then left to continue the work,
there were some collaborative projects with Gropius's TAC. using his diagram as a basis.
As a young "offlce boy," I had to deliver plans, so I got
to meet and talk with Walter on several occasions. I think su: So, from what you remember, it was a sketch by Rem?
he wrote a letter of recommendation for me.
Ao: Yes, definitely Rem's sketch. Then the next competition
su: That was back when? we worked on was Bremen, Uni-Ost. Going through the
same ritual, we cleared up the ofTice, creating a clean slate
ro: This would have been about '6J-'68.I studied at Cornell, for a brainstorming session with conceptual diagrams.
starting in1969, exactly at the time Mathias assumed his That project was for the extension of a kind of sixties-type
professorship. I studied mostly under various Colin Rowe university. We basicaliy made a big circulation cruciform
disciples as an undergraduate student: Jerry Wells, Werner in the middle of the site. Since Bremen, not unlike the
Seligman, Lee Hodgden (I never had Lee as a professor, Netherlands, is a very low-lying area, we dredged out the
but I knew him very well), Colin himself, people like Klaus area and created four different water districts with the
Herdeg, Michael Dennis. Also Fred Koetter was around more important buildings located on islands. In one of those
at the time. But then there were also the English critics that quadrants we placed a miniaturization (Ungers uses the
Mathias brought in, like Neave Brown, Ed Jones, and Mike term "reduction" lVerkleinerungl inhis City Metaphors) of
Gold, and also the Team 10 people: Peter Smithson, Bakema, the urban island of Lindau on Lake Constance. This,
Shadrach Woods, Stefan Wewerka, and Reima Pietila. I think, was the first appearance of the archipelago concept.
It was aiso the one in which, along the edges, the urban
srvr: And that was just alter the student unrest, wasn't it? viilas appeared. So there was already an idea of wooded
landscapes, establishing fields that weren't built fields but
Ao: Yes, I suppose Mathias basically walked from one rather landscape fields, establishing built zones that were
student revolution (in Berlin) to another. But here it was less dense and interspersed with voids; in other words: the
about other kinds of issues: racial issues, the Vietnam urban villa. So in both of those competitions, the urban
War; during that time there were always police on campus villa was already a significant component, as was open space.
with tear gas, beating up students, and demonstrations, all Rem had been conceptually involved in that one, too.
those kinds of things. Classes were disrupted because of I remember telephone conversations with Rem, who was in
antiwar demonstrations and so on. So it was a very interest- New York at that time, about whether he liked the diagrams
ing time, and for Mathias, I'm sure, a kind of big surprise. and thought the project was going to work. I think the
You know, he probably came to the US thinking he was next competition we did with Ungers was Roosevelt Island.
going to have bit of peace and quiet... Anyways, when I was
in my last year as an undergraduate in '73, Mathias appeared su: A real turning point.
out of the blue one day and asked my friend Jeff Clark and
me if we would like to work with him-joining the graduate
program and also working on competitions for him. We MINICITY
didn't know Mathias so well at that time, so we both thought
about it and eventually said OK. We moved into his office Ao: Yes, the Roosevelt Island competition was actually
and started to work on the competition for the Fourth Ring very interesting to us because it wasn't in Berlin or Germany,

Competition project for the Lichterfelde Fourth Ring,
Berlin,1974
Competition pro¡ect for the Un¡vers¡ty of Bremen-East,
1976
Oswald Mathias Ungers (with Arthur Ovaska),
compet¡t¡on project for Roosevelt lsland, NewYork,
1975
but in New York. It was a big moment for Mathias to try to
establish himself in the US. Also, Rem was in New York
at this time, so now we were competing, no longer collabo-
rating. That was a big topic with Mathias, the competition
with Rem. There were also other things going on at that
time: Nixon had resigned because of Watergate. I remember,
if I'm not mistaken, that Louis Kahn had just died in
New York, and Mathias was very upset: the fact that they
found Kahn dead in the men's room, having just arrived
on an airplane, and Mathias was worried this could've
happened to him, too. Also, there had been the last Team
10 conference that Mathias attended, where he had the
big fight with Giancarlo De Carlo, and Mathias wore out
his welcome in Team 10. I think that moment established
a kind of new direction lor Mathias, combined with the
fact that Rem was working on what had begun as his
thesis at Cornell but eventually became Delirious New York,
so there was a very intense communication about what
Rem was doing with New York City. Mathias wanted to do
his own thing with New York City. These days, people know
the Ungers project for Roosevelt Island mostly for its
miniaturization of Manhattan and the urban villa typology,
a very powerful image, but what people probably don't
know is that we had worked for a very long time, two
months, on a completely different project: piers, parallel
walls, much more in the realm of, say, the finger buildings
in Lichterfelde, except they were pier buildings. We had
the plans completely worked out, but in a way it was a bit
boring, there was never any real compelling concept to
it. You know, pier buildings ... piers are all over New York.
One night, though, Jeff and I were looking at old axonomet-
ric maps of cities, you know, the Bollmann maps, and the
New York map, of course, was always very f4mous, with
all the windows drawn in the skyscrapers and so on. That
map had part of Central Park in it, and we started looking
at it, thinking, since Roosevelt Island is an island, and looks
a little bit like the shape of Manhattan, what if we tried
to put a Central Park on it, giving the island a new organiza-
tion. This island has no Central Park, right, Manhattan has
one. So we did a number of sketches and started thinking
about blocks around the park, and so on, then thought about
the idea of the miniature.What if we miniaturized Manhattan
and the blocks became buildings? I still have those sketches.
The next morning, Mathias came in-he was always there
before us, ofcourse-and saw those sketches lying around,
something completely different from what we had been
working on. As soon as we came in, you know, he was very
excited and asked: "What do you think? Can we do it?"
Of course, half the time for the competition had already
AN EXHIBITION CONCEPT

passed, but we just said yes, let's go. It was then a race to
get the thing done. I think of that moment as the f,irst
combination of the urban villa and the city in the city ...
and a real "creative leap."

svr: Island and urban villa?

Ao: Yes, where those two things ... really, like the Russian
do1l: the city in the city, and combined, then, with the
urban villa. In a way, it's a very clear statement of that idea.
THE URBAN VILLA
Eventually, I guess, when the competition jury made its
decisions ... neither one of us won a prize. Rem didn't win
a prize, and we didn't win a prize.It was mostly sort of
more of the same that won the prizes, and in the meantime
a1so, the UDC had gone broke, and in the middle of the
competition it was declared that it was not going to be
a realization competition but an ideas competition, so it
became much more about presenting ideas than trying
to build buildings. We had a joint presentation of the two
projects at Columbia, where Rem presented his, which
he had done with Elia, Madelon, and maybe also with
Columbia students, including Laurinda Spear. That was
actually a great presentation of these two compietely
different kinds of schemes. Rem dealt with the Manhattan
block as well, but it was a kind of transposition of the
block onto the island, also intensely working with the idea
of the place, but in a very different way. We might have Oswald Math¡as Ungers's Summer School tr¡logy:
The Urban Block (1976),The Urban Villa (1977),The Urban Garden (1978)
had the advantage, at that time, that we were more distant
from New York City, not in the city, and could look at
it more abstractly.
Ao:I was a graduate student, but I was also Ungers's
sM:Yes, the iconicity ... This is a very important moment, teaching assistant. I had some kind of very strange title that
because as you say, some of the ingredients of the manifesto he had given me, like "studio instructor for graduate some-
are already there. So you have that joint presentation. OMA thing" ... I was essentially Mathias's instructor teaching
is burgeoning. We're in OMA is created in New York,
1915. the graduate studio. So when Mathias wasn't there, I would
working with Ungers, having this idea of a joint thing, teach his graduate students, work with them on developing
and then, the year after, you have, in Manhattan also, the their projects and ideas, and so on. One ofthe graduate
first Cornell Summer School, which is devoted precisely students who came in from Germany at that time (fall 1975),
to the Urban Block. and who was actually one of my students at the beginning,
was Hans Kollhoff. We then did the Urban Block studio,
building upon the fascination with New York and urban typol-
URBAN BLOCK ogy-to study the typology of the urban block, and think
about that typology in relationship to rethinking New York.
Ao: Yes, the Urban Block studio was in the summer of 1976 ... The typological study of the urban block, with which Werner
so now I'm trying to think what happened between Welfare Goehner was also involved, was then combined with the
(Roosevelt) Island and the Urban Block. design component. This was a recurring pedagogical theme,
that there would be a typological study, that is, a research
one thing. You worked with Mathias on these
sM: Just component, and a design studio component, which, in this
competitions, but you were involved in his teaching as well. case, was "Gotham City." This was done with only a small
group of students: seven students, actually, a mystical
number. We took a strip through Manhattan, divided
it up into seven, and you do what you do, and so on. Of
course Central Park ran perpendicular to that. This was
the first of the three Summer School programs that
operated on the basis of two basic principles. First, the study
oftype, or typology, and the knowledge that could be
gained by that research, and second, the concept of"inten-
sification of the place," and how, through design and
creative thinking, latent qualities of a specific site, or location,
could be intensified in the design process in order to
produce creative solutions that, in Ungers's words, "could
not be any other way."
su: Is it fair to say that the main idea or message was,
for once, not to criticize the block, not to try to overcome
or change it, but to work with it, to work with the genius
of the block?
Ao: Yes, to work with it. It wasn't a criticism of the terrible
conditions in the backyards of Berlin's apartment blocks
as such; the idea was to learn from the type and to rethink it,
to find out what one could do with it.
sM: So afew people were brought in to give information,
and Rem was one of them. I remember your text in Gotham
City, where you refer to Raymond Hood, for example ...
So probably that was part of his input.
Ao: Yes, in looking at New York intensel¡ one began to
discover amazing projects, like Raymond Hood's skyscraper
bridges, hybrid things that were probably not so commonly
known at the time. They were somewhat obscure works
and people began to dig out these things.
sM: Even Ferriss wasn't that well known.
¡o: I think he was just sort of becoming known, because ...
what kind of phase had we just been in? The hot stuff, at
the time, had been, maybe, brutalism. The English architects
were hot in those days, Stirling ... Architectural Design was
the hot periodical ... anything that was going on in England
seemed to be cool at the time. I found it. amazing,back
then, that the work of some of the architects in the thirties,
like Raymond Hood or William Lescaze,was quite un-
known. Nobody had been looking at that period of modern
history very much, some of that "delirious" stuff ...
but then again, that time period in general was a time
ofrediscovery.
su: So that was really the genius of Koolhaas, and maybe
of the studio itself, to dig back into that.
Ao: Yes,well, I can't speak for Rem, but the fact that he
was looking at things like Coney Island was quite amazing.
In a way, that ties back to Ungers looking at Berlin, and
West Berlin in particular. We all know Rem's Exodus project,
the Voluntary Prison, which is a kind of a theme park. In
a way, West Berlin was also a strange and unique place:
it was a theme park, and a microcosm of the world, and
Mathias wrote extensively about the Havel landscape
at the time. To me, it's very interesting, when reflecting
upon it, that some of these concepts appeared much
earlier in the work of Ungers, for instance the Tiergarten
Museums Competition in 1965.
sM: Yes, Noah's Arks.
ao: The first real minicity, for me. The idea, in Ungers's
mind, that a building doesn't have to be a building, but can
be many buildings, or part of a city, was already there at
that time: Enschede, for example.
su: Or the Vatican Embassy.
Ao: Yes, the idea of the ensemble. Those are all projects
(or most of them) that Jürgen Sawade worked on with
Mathias around 1965, which would have been Mathias's
heyday in Berlin, and the formulation of his Glienicke
lectures. People sti1l talk about his Glienicke lectures today,
Peter Eisenman still talks about them, Jürgen, too, but
there was nothing like experiencing him talk about it in
the actual place ... but back to the story. Aftér The Urban
Block/Gotham City, we were doing more and more
competitions.
sM: So you were still at Cornell in 1916.
Ao: During the summer, yes. I left that fall.
sM: But Mathias was already in Germany, going back
and forth.
no: He was then no longer chairman, and he was beginning
to travel back and forth looking for new work. Actually,
already during the Roosevelt Island competition: we were
working at the oflice in Ithaca while he was in Germany and
Rem was in New York. Mathias would meet Rem at the
airport en route and then come back to Ithaca.
AN EXHIBITION CONCEPT
srvr: So the intense periods became the summers, right?
Gotham City in 1976. And then in'77.
EXHIBITIONS
no: Actually, still in'76, after the New York summer program,
I became unemployed for a while. I was done with the
graduate program, and all of my funding had run out. Then,
surprisingly, the approval came through for a grant proposal
that Mathias had submitted to the Volkswagen Foundation.
I had been involved in preparing this grant proposal, which
was to revisit the Siedlungen [settlement housing] of the
1920s and to reanalyze them. The title was to be "Siedlungen
ofthe 2Os-then and today": a re-presentation ofthe original
projects and how they had become transformed after fifty
years. That provided money for me to go to the offrce in
Cologne, so I went in late 1976. Hans, allhai time, was stil1
studying at Cornel1, and I was in the Cologne offtce working
on research and drawings for the research grant, and also
on more competitions. Mathias didn't have anything to build
at that time, but he was trying to reestablish himself again
in Germany.
I should probably mention thal 1976 was also the year in
which Cooper-Hewitt staged the exhibition Man Transforms,
a very important moment when we had created the City
Metaphors exhibition. The whole metaphor and morphology
direction intensified and congealed during that period,
and Simon Ungers and Laszlo Kiss were very involved in the
work on fhe Man Transforms exhibition, and that was the
first time that Simon began to work intensely with his father.
In the meantime, back in the office in Cologne, we began
to consider the idea of a new building exhibition in Berlin,
an idea proposed by Hans Müller, Berlin's director of
urban development. Müller and Mathias used to brainstorm
this building exhibition idea, not yet really doing preliminary
studies for what a building exhibition would be, but rather
thinking about it conceptually. I think this is when Mathias
came up with the idea of doing the Summer School in
Berlin on the urban villa, with the potential of a building
exhibition already in mind. This is important, because
we were thinking a lot about what an exhibition of buildings
could be, and Mathias, as a collector and exhibitor-after
we had just done this Man Transforms exhibition, which
was exhibiting cities ...
sM: So now it was going to be real size.
Ao: Yes, exactly, all ofa sudden this is potentially real,
right? Also, we were confronted with the question, or idea,
of "What is West Berlin today?"-a shrinking city. So,
the urban villa became a perfect way of building things in
a shrinking city on a very small scale, which would also
have the potential of being a building exhibition, like the
Weissenhof in a way, where you have Corb next to Oud
and Mies. In the green landscape, you would have different
individual architects building their villas ... Or, another
even better example: the 1931 building exhibition Deutsche
Bauaustellung Berlin, the theme of which was "Die Wohnung
unserer zeit," or, "The New Dwelling," essentially buildings
inside a big hall. There, one already had a container, and
different architects designed model dwellings inside the hall,
so you had the exhibition pieces inside the container. There
you have it, the building within the building. You have
the collection, the collective, and you have the Grossform,
the perimeter wall of the big hall . . . which is already not
so very different from the city in the city, you know,
or Rem's Exodus project... pretty simple really.
su: At the same time, I think in 1916, there was this com-
petition in Paris, on La Villette, the first one, about "can we
make a new quartier there?," and Léon Krier did a project
called "The City within the City." Of course this project
had nothing to do with what you just said, meaning the
exhibition idea, this conceptuai thing. It was more a quartier
conceived as a city within a bigger city. But then there were
those strange drawings by Leo, showing a green pastorai
landscape emerging from this area, in which you saw
the Eiffel Tower or Montmartre like the landmarks of many
villages standing in an ex-urban territory reclaimed by
agriculture. Many things must have happened at the AA,
where both Leo and Rem (who was back from New York)
were teaching with Zenghelis.
Ao: It was this strange period, when Mathias was also
working on organizing the Rationalists, "the Rats," and
bringing them to Cornell: Aldo Rossi, Léon, Scolari,
and Rem was also included atfhat time, so you had a kind
of group with very diverging tendencies. There was a
famous moment when Mathias was visiting at UCLA and
he brought "the Rats" to Los Angeles. They went to visit
Disneyland, and Léon evidently refused to go inside the
gate. He sat outside and waited for everyone else. So there
you had the theme park-the visit must have been Rem's
idea-and Léon sitting outside.
srvr: So that was the frontier.
Ao: Yes, evidently that was the borderline.
the next Summer School happens, on the urban villa.
svr: So
Could you tell me how it worked?
URBAN VILLA
Ao: There were something like twenty students from
Cornell, and the Summer School was in the Künstlerhaus
Bethanien in Kreuzberg, a former l9th-century hospital
overlooking the zone of the wall next to a park, I've forgotten
the name (Mariannenplatz) . .. But it was an incredible
building and space. It was in several old hospital wards that
we had the studios, and there was a certain zone in which
Mathias, Hans, Peter Riemann, and I all had our desks.
sM: You were in the same room. with Riemann?
Ao: Yes, and then there were two studios in the bigger wards,
so we were like the doctors in this l9th-century hospital.
And the division of labor was quite clear, right?
srvr:
You and Hans were on the urban villa.
eo: We were teaching the studio, yes.
su: And Riemann was on his master thesis.
Ao:Riemann was working in the one room where we all
had our tables. He was supposedly working on his thesis,
but "The City in the City" became kind of ...
su: A back room.
eo: A side room-a side nave to the main space, reall¡
a kind ofparallel project in a parallel space. There was a con-
stant stream of visitors coming through this space: Rem,
Eisenman, Rossi, Stirling, Aymonino, Sawade, Wewerka
(who was one of the most active with the students)-and
Rob Krier, too, I think. I vaguely remember their seminars
in the upstairs seminar area, Eisenman's, and yes, Rob.
I vaguely remember Rob sitting the wrong way in one of the
Mies cantilever chairs, the one with the big rounded front,
and tipping over. So yes, that was the situation, all of
those different things going on. Besides that, in terms of
housing, all the students were housed in the "Sportpalast"
building that Jurgen Sawade had just completed, the
unité-like housing that sat on top of a Nazi concrete bunker
that couldn't be demolished. The building wasn't occupied
yet, so we had bare concrete rooms with emergency
furniture from the Berlin emergency shelters. Everybody
had a bed, a mattress, a plate, and a cup, with a bare
lightbulb hanging in the center of each room. There was
a very interesting and strange atmosphere with the students
living in this minimal accommodation; not much enter-
tainment "at home," so they were mostly working all of
the time.
su: So Rem comes in. Do you remember if he was there for
a long time? Did he also do a seminar with the students?
Ao: Yes, I believe so. I think he was there more than once.
I think he was there at the beginning, and that he came back
again later on. But, as I remember, we had another brain-
storming discussion, at the beginning, about the "Stadt in
der Stadt," but not necessarily about the urban villa. It
was in the long nave room that this discussion took place,
doing conceptual sketches, and so on. I try to remember,
because these visitors were coming in and out, but I'm quite
sure Rem was there at the beginning, and this is when it
was formulated.
sM: Riemann says that Rem came to Berlin with the f,rrst
typed version ofthe text (on five pages) in his suitcase.
no: I barely remember that. But there are several things
I do recall about it that probably would be important. First,
as a studio group, we had the students go out into the
city-all over the entire city. We essentially divided up the
city and did urban reconnaissance. Every student was
to look for "accidental architecture," which rireant ruins,
the Berlin firewalls, and so on, and they had to find anything
that they could interpret as a villa and document it. That
kind of analysis or research phase was very important to the
idea of looking at the whole city.
sM: Yes, railway villas, or hairy villas ... (laughs)
Ao: Some of it was atazy,yes, it depended on what part of
the city they were investigating. It was important to collect
information about all of West Berlin, and we needed
a number of students to do that. It was something that took
numbers, like an army. Along with developing the villa
types, there was also the idea of how one makes urban con-
figurations in the landscape using the type. It was never
about just the villa itself, but always concurrently about the
collective form, or the group form, and the design of the
AN EXHIBITION CONCEPT
landscape in between began to appear as well. Of course,
that was when Mathias gave his Glienicke lecture, and
a personal guided tour of Glienicke. I believe this may have
been when Eisenman first saw the lecture, and he may
also have been on the tour. I remember Richard Meier was
on the Tegel tour, and was introduced to the idea ofhow
Schinkel created Schloss Tegel, beginning with the one
existing tower and then repeating it, an idea I believe may
have influenced his museum in Frankfurt.
POST- RATIO NALI ZATIO NS
Did the work being done on the cities within the
srvr:
city at any point mix with the urban villa? I mean during
the Summer School? In your head obviously, but ...
Ao: Yes, in everybody's head.
su: And there was this joint exhibition at the end of the
Summer School that also showed "The City in the City,"
with the first text slightly modified, and the drawings by
Riemann.
Ao: Yes, but it still wasn't finished at that time, while the
urban villa component was more thought through. The
students had to break their backs because ofthe deadlines
to get the work done, to have the exhibition, and to put
the book together. Riemann was the one guy doing all the
work on the "Stadt in der Stadt" and didn't have the support
in numbers to get it done as a product. It really was put
together later on, and in the publication, you can see the
difference between the numbers involved in the urban
villa and the little "Stadt in der Stadt."
su: But what happened then? When and where was the
f,rnal text (the one published by Cornell University, and then
by Lotus) pepared? And by whom?
ro: By Riemann.
sM: Yes, but the difference between the text that was
produced for the exhibition and the final one ... is huge.
First in terms of format: the final one is much longer,
structured in theses, eleven theses, and the title is different.
But also in terms of content: it includes a long develop-
ment about the history of Berlin, incorporates the idea of
the urban villa, and puts forward Glienicke as an archipelago
ofarchitectures whose concept should be extrapolated
at the scale of urbanism. Finally, it states that the
project would be practically plausible ... and feasible in
five years.
ao: So ... that's Ungers. That's a kind of post-rationalization
by Ungers. It's like: OK, now we have this thing, this
concept, and we know it's "something." We also know that
we have the idea of a building exhibition coming up, so
we now have to make this really serious.
sM: You meanlhe IBA?
ao: Well, it wasn't called the IBA yet,but ...
sur But it would eventually become that.
I think I was already back in the office in
ao: Right.
Cologne, and I was working on urban design studies for the
southern Friedrichstadt as a potential building exhibition
area.
su: That would become the Urban Garden.
Ao: Yes.Müller and Mathias were talking about the need
for an area of the city in which to investigate these ideas,
and the whole idea of the exhibition was becoming more
concrete. I think we didn't know at the time that Müller was
also talking to people like Kleihues. Mathias probably
did, but he didn't tell us. It was like another ongoing project.
Right after we put the book together for the urban villa,
I was already back in Cologne working on urban design
studies, and other things were coming along: more com-
petitions, Hotel Beriin, and so on. Things were picking up
more and more, but still nothing real ... The building
exhibition idea that was looming in the foreground was the
big "carrot." Mathias's big drive was to create the concept
and to be the organizer of this building exhibition, and
probably on Mathias's mind was that he would invite all his
friends to build in this exhibition, just as Müller had been
involved in the Hansaviertel exhibition as a young architect,
with Niemeyer, Gropius, Bakema, etc.
srvr: So it wouid've been a kind of reedition of that?
Ao: Yes,when seen in the context olthese other exhibitions,
but somethíng that would be specifically for Berlin, with
a shrinking population at that time, West Berlin, sorry.
For Mathias, it was always about West Berlin, while with
Kleihues, it was always thinking about reunification.
su: And for Rem? URBAN GARDEN

ao:I think for Rem, too, it was clearly about West Berlin.
I don't think that anybody ...
Although included in the proposal was an idea of a wall
srvr:
ao: I think, at least partiall¡ in the next phase, yes. It
was also part of a trilogy: the block, the villa, and the garden.
There were no plans for any more. It was those three.

park that would become a linear park once reunification sM: Are you saying that it was a plan right from the beginning,
happened. or was it just another post-rationalization?

no: Maybe, a linear park.It sounds familiar, yes, but I think
it was a dream at the time. Probably somebody threw in the
idea of "What happens if the wall comes down?"
su: Well, Rem had been quite obsessed with the wall for
some years.
ro: No, it was not a predefined plan. But I think it was
already quite clear with the second one that a concept was
beginning to emerge ... and the third, the garden, clearly
was a sort ofurban proposal for the southern Friedrichstadt
that became more concentrated: this was intended to be
the area of the building exhibition.

Ao: Yes, sure.
sM: OK. Wherever it's made, Ungers reformats the "Stadt
in der Stadt" with the urban villa, in this kind of post-
rationalization process. But what did you do in '77-'78 till
the last Summer School on the Urban Garden? Were vou
still in Germany?
Ao: Yes, I was in Cologne, in the office. There were other
projects appearing: Hotel Berlin, another hotel on Buda-
pester Strasse, the Marburg houses, the little double house
in Spandau, which I think is the greatest example of
Mathias's post-rationalization. Obviously, it was sited inWest
srvr: So it was really plotted, it became something really possible.
srvr: So what was thought on the scale of the whole city
in cities within the city would kind of ...
no: ... be consolidated in what would become one city
in the city. But it also would be a new concept lor a city in
a garden, in what was probably one of the most ruined
and fragmented areas of West Berlin. There would have been
no idea of doing something in the middle of Kreuzberg,
which was relatively intact, or in a green area, like the
Hansaviertel ... The southern Fridrichstadt would be like
a microcosm of the "Stadt in der Stadt."

Berlin near the wall, and obviously it was a commentary

on the wall, but somebody told him at a party afterward that Ao: Yes, but it was in the ruined city, working with the
it was like Pyramus and Thisbe kissing through a hole in existing fragments, not a "clean slate" approach like the
the wall, and then, all of a sudden, it became the Pyramus Hansaviertel or Le Corbusier and the Smithsbns' Berlin
and Thisbe project, after it had already been done. Actuall¡ proposals. The garden is also very important, and thinking
that was an interesting one: Hans worked on it in Ithaca, about the Havel landscape and Glienicke, that it's the
and I was in Cologne and we sent the project back and forth, garden that holds the individual architectural pieces together.
as we did for the Hotel Berlin. The projects went back and The garden becomes the exhibition ground, and that's
forth with Mathias, who was doing something like six weeks probably most clear in Glienicke.
here, six weeks there. Yes, it began to become more and
more intense. We started to get strange little projects offered su: I asked Hans Kollhoff: why specifically Glienicke?
by Müller in Berlin, like the strange Woolworth building Because there was all the rest of Potsdam. And he said, yes,
in Berlin-Wedding that needed a new facade, so we did but Glienicke was the only place you could easily go to.
a project for a green facade, starting to think about hydro- Potsdam was east, right? And Glienicke was that small part
ponics and the vertical garden. You could see the influence that still belonged to the West.
of the Green Party already beginning to emerge.
Ao: Yes, you had to make a special trip, you know, with
srvr: Is this what led you to concentrate on the urban all the border formalities of going to the East, dealing with
garden? East German state tour guides, and eating in those awful
communist restaurants.
AN EXHIBITION CONCEPT

s¡vr: And there's the famous bridge, where the spies were
exchanged.

Ao: Yes, Brücke der Einheit, exactl¡ that's at Glienicke.

But in the case of the Summer Schools with the students,
even when we did make trips to the East, because of
the students' different nationalities, they had to go through
different checkpoints, and then we had to reconvene in the
East. Because I was an American, I had to go through
Checkpoint Charlie, Hans and Mathias, as West Germans,
had to go through another checkpoint. Europeans and
Asians had to'pass other border crossings. Everyone had to
go through different procedures, and then we would meet
at a certain place, like in front of Schinkel's museum, on the
other side. Glienicke atthat time was also in a sort of wild
and mysterious condition, which was important to the way
one perceived it. I was just talking to Sawade about this
recently: they've now renovated the whole garden, and it's
all "nice" and "pretty" now. Sawade said he doesn't even
go there anymore. Some of the places that were part of that
landscape concept, like Babelsberg, weren't accessible at
the time. I went to Babelsberg for the first time just last year,
and finally got that famous view from Babelsberg to
Glienicke ... in the snow.

I think one has to see the "stadt in der Stadt," like the Havel
landscape, as an exhibition concept. The exhibition idea
is very important to Ungers and to understanding the context
of his work. The very perceptive research by Wallis Miller
points this out clearly in her article "Circling the Square."
I hope this helps to understand that context.
AN EXCITI NG EXERCISE
Hans Kollhoff in conversation with Florian Hertweck and Sébastien Marot
May 2009
Hans Kollhoff, could you tell us how you came
sM AND FH:
to meet Ungers and collaborate with him?
KAR LSRUH E/VI EN NA/CORN ELL
I studied architecture in Karlsruhe in the rather peculiar
¡rr:
atmosphere of 1968. I experienced there the last years of
Egon Eiermann, who made a strong impression on me.
But it was the time when students started to read books on
sociology rather than design buildings, and on the whole,
I was not very happy with what I was being taught. I hence
spent more time working in architects' offtces than going
to the university, and this is where I really learned the
basics of working and designing as an architect. Above all,
I worked with Gerhard Assem, who gave me the opportunity
to work on one building for several years and gain experi-
ence in constructing a building from the first sketch to
the finished structure. Assem was Viennese, and I sensed
that his cultural and architectural background would be
rather helpful for me. I therefore chose, before the end of
my studies in Karlsruhe, to go to Vienna for one year and
work with Hans Hollein. When I came back, I received
my diploma, but I didn't really know what to do next. By
chance I met a guy on the street, Werner Goehner, who had
studied at Karlsruhe and was now in the States, working
and teaching with Oswald Mathias Ungers. He sounded so
enthusiastic about what they were doing out there that
I immediately called Ungers and visited him in his offrce in
Cologne, where he invited me to join his Cornell studio.
sM: As an assistant?
ux: In fact, I had already applied for a scholarship in the
United States, but Cornell was not among my options.
Mathias had told me that I could work there with him on
projects. At that time, he had again begun to get commissions
and do competitions in Germany. So my position at Cornell
would be both of an assistant and a collaborator, and this
was particularly attractive to me. Eiermann also ran his office
in Karlsruhe with his teaching assistants, who were at the
same time his project managers. There was no artificial
separation between his professorship at the university and
his office. The split that we have today, particularly in
Germany or Switzerland, between what you do in the oflice
and what you teach at university did not exist. I sti1l think
that the administrative dichotomy between the one and the
other is counter-productive to our profession. So I very
soon became Mathias's assistant in his graduate program
at Cornell. He was in Germany most of the time, and as
the number of projects and competitions increased, he was
less and less present in Corne1l. In the end, he probably
came twice every semester to see the students, who were
ieft to my care in the meantime.
UNGERS
¡n: Before you went to Cornell, had you heard about
his work, and particularly about his teaching in Berlin ín
the 1960s?
HK:No, I must confess I had not. I discovered that later,
while working with him at Cornell.
sM: So you really didn't know much about him before you
met Goehner?
nK: No, I didn't know him. Goehner showed me one or
two Bauwelt publications. One of them, I remember cIearly,
was about the Fourth Ring competition for Lichterfelde.
I read the text and was absolutely fascinated. What stunned
me, was how he conceptualized what he did. The very
fact that someone was able to put the design process into
a theoretical framework was unusual at that time. It was
also lacking in the office of Hollein. Hollein was Hollein.
It was the cosmos of one person, whereas the intriguing
thing about Ungers was that you were able to translate what-
ever he did into something of your own. And you could use
it for yourself without being bound to any formal repertoire,
especially when it came down to morphological research
in design. That, even today, for me is his mbst important
contribution when you compare him with all the other
figures of his generation.
svr: What do you mean: his openness to all kinds of inputs
and references?
HK: No, it is not that simple. Ungers developed an uncom-
promising morphological approach, and this was how
we worked with him. If you take the Marburg houses or the
study for Braunschweig, both projects I was involved in,
he said:just start, produce something, design alternatives.
Then we talked things over, and began to sort out the
alternatives. Progressively, things changed from one concept
to the next, and the stabilization of the idea and the com-
munication respectively was thus somehow standardized.
Certain images emerged that were able to transport the
AN EXCITING EXERCISE
Oswald Mathias Ungers (w¡th Hans Kollhoff), Ritterstrasse housing
complex ¡n Marburg, 1976
Oswald Math¡as Ungers (with Hans Kollhoff), compet¡tion pro¡ect
for the Schlosspark Brunswick, 1976
essence of a certain concept. That made it easy to clarify
the strategy with him. He always thought and worked
in alternatives. This is what I still do today, both with the
students and in the office. We test alternatives in order
to approach what a thing wants to be. It is not at all about
having an idea and imposing it on something, but rather
a way of getting things to become what they want to be:
alternatives that you can suggest to your clients, so that
they may pick A, B, or C, or make a combination of D
and A.
But to talk rigorousl¡ very precisely about what is happen-
ing when you are sketching, you have to find verbal
expressions for what you are doing. You need a tremendous
repertoire. Images can help to make this process easier.
And you also need a sense for when and how things may
change into something else, as in Ovid's Metamorphoses:
Actaeon transformed into a stag with antlers. This is Ungers
at his best, and it is, I think, much stronger than the typo-
logical method that was used at that time by the Italians,
Aldo Rossi for example, and also much closer to architecture
than the approach developed by Rem Koolhaas, which is
more a kind of film script. Rem always wants to be a movie
director, but Ungers's approach was equally open. It could
go this or that way. The next morning the concept happened
to be something else. Working like that was extremely
exciting.
rx: So, what did he do specifically at Cornell?
You have to know that this was a rather short period of
time. And it dwelt on lJngers's experience in Berlin, where
he had already brought this conceptualizing approach
into architecture. The students in Berlin were able to draw
beautifully because they had a very good teacher, Johannes
Uhl. But the question was: How do you control your
sketches? Ungers taught them to reflect on what they were
doing, and this is why they were so intrigued by his
teaching and why some of them came up with outstanding
projects.
During his hrst semesters at Cornell, he experimented
with a variety of things. He tried, for instance with his
students, to build this house for homeless people, but
halfway through the process he found out that these people
were intelligent enough to solve the problem themselves,
better than anything he would have been able to contribute.
Then he started to do competitions and Werner Goehner
was involved in some of these early morphological projects,
such as Blauer See, Heiliger Stuhl, Berlin Tiergarten. Ungers
had already gone in that direction earlier, with Jonas Geist
for the Enschede project. The bias was more geometrical,
after the time with Sawade, which was rather repetitive and
technocratic. His entries for Rüsselsheim or Düren, which
he started at Cornell, were morphological projects, especially
Düren, where he took a map-and this is very close to the
Archipelago way of thinking-and just took what was there.
You see forests, a river, tracks ofhigh-voltage lines, and the
superimposition of these elements with topography. Alto-
gether, this established a sort of embryonic structure for the
design. He started to speak about a concept as found, or
a design as found, and finally a project as found: the project
is the interpretation of the material that is already there,
that happens to be there. You are not inventing the project.
You have to look closely at the situation instead, and the
closer you look, the more precise the project becomes.
ARCHIPELAGO
Going from there to the Archipelago is quite a different
story. You are not in the countryside anymore, with hills and
forests and things like that. You are in the middle of the
city. At that time in Berlin, the situation was quite similar to
what we have today in many German cities-not just East
German cities-where the population is shrinking and
where the authorities wonder what they should do with the
vacant apartments, houses, and quarters that are becoming
a problem. For Rem, of course, the idea of shrinking cities
was a fantastic scenario and Ungers was open to all kinds of
hypotheses. But you also have to test the hypotheses.
Hypotheses are just half the stor¡ however fascinating they
may be. Unfortunately, the second half of the exercise
usually just didn't happen.
And this, in my opinion, was the problem with the Archi-
pelago project. Because when you start looking at the map,
you see certain figures that stand out, and you tend to
preserve the most interesting figures. But you are, of course,
at the same time abstracting from important questions
such as: How old are those figures? What kind of architecture
do they belong to? Are these figures essential for the urban
development or not? Are they real figures or just stupid
mirages? You know, a figure can look fantastic in plan view,
but actually turn out to be a disaster when you take the
pain to check it out on site. It could bejust a storage place
that looked like a Baroque castle.
¡H: The Márkisches Viertel was a bit like that, wasn't it?
HK:Yes. This was the problem of this exercise. You were just
looking at the map, taking these figures and asking yourself
what would happen if you just preserved these, intensified
them, and let everything else be ruined, grown over, flooded
by a Metropolitan Spreewald kind of sea. Very exciting for
a movie, ol course, but a disaster in reality. In any case:
absolutely exciting as a teaching exercise.
MORPHOLOGY/TYPOLOGY
In the field ofurbanism and architecture, the seventies
reached the lowest intellectual level you could imagine.
There was the failure of the functionalist ideas, and the
land-use plan operations proved to be nothing but helpless
attempts to prevent urban decay. Urban design did not
exist. In Berlin, the most beautiful houses were destroyed
not by war but by planning and piling up these gigantic
satellite cities instead. It was the time when Aldo Rossi
started the Tendenza, the time when students like me
entered this debate. I was fascinated by the Italian contri-
bution. L'Architettura della Cittd was published in 1966,
and translated a few years later. Inl9l3, the Tiiennale
finally provided the basis for a new approach to urbanism.
FH:There was also Siedler's book on the destruction
of Berlin.
HK: Yes, but this was not even implicitly a theory; it was
a powerful, provocative statement. Rossi, on the contrary,
came up with an urbanistic theory based on tjrpological
permanence. And Ungers looked at the textures of the city
and interpreted them morphologically. I think he regarded
the Archipelago project as an interesting exercise, but it
was clear to him that it had no chance to be converted into
reality. But with this involvement in Berlin, he became
more and more excited up to the point when the IBA óis-
cussion started. Then, the morphological approach became
his strategic tool, whereas the Archipelago idea appeared
to be overly formalistic. It was not possible to envision
those forms and figures as types the way Rossi understood
them. In fact, the typological approach turned out to be
more adaptable to the current problems in the city. The mor-
phological strategy is more flexible but it tends to become
complicated. You have to talk a lot in order to convince
people.
AN EXCITING EXERCISE

., At some point, the question was raised as to who should

^':il,-
,j:l r i:,
-, .l ; be the director of the IBA?Klelhues or Ungers? Those were
C.
a,- the alternatives. Kleihues raised three objectives: first, the
ü Or-.
-' 'ia.- "ü plan of the city, then the volume, and finally the facades.
-i c It made me smile at the time because I was very much into
Ungers's morphological thinking. But today, I am absolutely
convinced that it was a piece of good fortune that Kleihues
got the job, because Kleihues more or less went back to
how the city developed throughout history. You organize
transportation on earth. You create private properties,
parcellation. When density increases and streets get too
long, they turn into a grid and define blocks. The individual
house faces the street, it needs a facade. You know,
Kleihues's logic was not a question of artistic interpretation
as with Ungers, but simply one of resuming the way
cities had effectively and successfully developed up to the
Modernist interruption. And I think this simple strategy
Oswald Math¡as Ungers (w¡th Arthur Ovaska), competit¡on today is even more successful than the morphological
pro¡ect for Hotel Berlin at Lützowplatz,1977 approach-if taken exclusively-and superior to the typo-
logical approach as well.

srvr: At that time, Ungers was decidedly back in Germany,

and involved in projects.

A HK: Yes, there were the projects I just mentioned, and

especially the Hotel Berlin competition that Ungers won.
\tii He was so happy to say: This will change our life. It did
not change anybody's life, it just did not happen. Then he

ffi
started to build his first project in Schillerstrasse, which
turned out to be a total disaster. He tried to realize in one
small project his whole cosmos of ideas, but was confronted
'rt1,f with the rudest and crudest conditions of social housing.
1&'
He was designing windows while the guys had already bought
windows somewhere round the corner. For him, it was
a terrible experience. And it is clear to me that this was the
main reason for the reductiveness of his subsequent projects,
their obsession with geometry in order to control every-
Oswald Mathias Ungers, res¡dent¡al building in Schillerstrasse,
thing and to make the design overly simple even banal: one
Berl¡n,1978-79 window format, square of course. It is a pity, because the
possibility ofenriching the project by developing layers and
layers of morphological interpretation from the urban plan
to the detail seemed to be a fantastic opportunity. The
obsession with the square undermined his previous artistic
conviction completely.
ROWE/UNGERS had started in Ungers's office fifteen years before. In the
late seventies, Léon Krier and Koolhaas were both teaching
sM: When you landed in Cornell, there was a pretty polemical at the AA. They were friends with opposite convictions.
situation between Ungers and Rowe. Incidentally, what they were doing was extremely relevant
to the establishment of a basis for a rational approach to
rr: Not only. You must not forget that Colin Rowe brought urban design and architecture.
Mathias to the States and Cornell. Obviously, Mathias
was offered projects there that did not maleúalize. So their sM: Among the people associated with the Ungers camp,
relationship was troubled by conditions that were unexpected. you were obviously the one that developed the closest interest
But when you look at the symposium that Ungers had in Rowe's ideas, and almost became a go-between, a bridge
organized in Berlin, and when you read the lecture that Rowe between their respective approaches. You designed the
had given there, you cannot but notice how amazingly close first image that appears in Collage City ("The City of Compos-
their positions were. After a short while in Cornell, I did ite Presence," together with David Griffin), and when you
not understand why there was this fight between a Rowe intervened at a symposium on Ungers's teaching at the
camp and an Ungers camp. Of course they came from very TU Berlin two years ago, you particularly emphasized this
different backgrounds, but they were extremely close connection.
in their criticism of Modernist opinions in architecture and
urbanism. I know that Rem did not see it that way. I think ¡r: Absolutely. I had a debate in Zurich with Werner
he hated Colin Rowe, because Colin was explicitly involved Oechslin, for whom Rowe is a rather dubious figure. Because
with history, whereas Mathias was discovering fascinating of their very different backgrounds, there was a clash
images. These images were charged with meaning and of cultures between Ungers and Rowe. Ungers was very
could somehow be reinterpreted. For Colin, the issue was rational, straightforward, very German. Rowe was the
less a question of reinterpreting history than developing English intellectual, distinguished, fascinated by ambiguous
it further, anaÍyzing an urban ftgure-ground plan and manip- thinking, never coming to the point, never deciding in
ulating it endlessly. I think figure-ground abstraction is favor of A over B. I was so much intrigued by his lectures,
still a very efficient tool today. Sometimes too abstract, of everything was kept floating in the air, whereas Mathias
course, because you don't know whether the building is one said: This is it! Together, these antipodes created a peculiar
story or fifty stories high. Mathias also used figure-grounds atmosphere. Some students might have had the feeling
at the time. But for Colin, it was a material to be treated, that their fight was rather unproductive. I think the opposite
changed, and developed further, whereas Mathias saw it as was the case. It was extremely stimulating when their
a field into which one could creatively project images in respective publications came out.
the same way you read the zodiac configurations in a starry
sky. The design was the hypothesis of what you saw. Colin tried to bring his Texas guys into the gchool,
whereas Mathias was much more interested in continuing
After a while, I got closer to Colin Rowe. There was a period his Berlin experience and leading it to the extreme.
of time when Mathias and Colin were also able to talk to That's why he enjoyed working with Rem Koolhaas. Looking
each other again, feeling that they had much more in common back, it was not only an exciting time but also one that
than their audience expected. They even made an attempt was very stimulating, a time when certain theoretical
to forget about the past, and about the situation that had threads became visible and which are still important to me
initiated this split in earlier times at Cornell. today. I now have a better understanding of what happened.
This whole Texas Ranger project was spiraling around
Later, during the IBA period, I met Colin again several Le Corbusier: the Maison Dom-ino as the new Greek temple
times. He was then much closer to Léon Krier (and Rob Krier that would allow modern architecture to become classical.
as well), because Léon managed to take his figure-ground Richard Meier has followed this strategy uncompro-
strategy and translate it into the third dimension. So Colin misingly until today. At that time, Colin had started to be
himself started to become intrigued by the possibility of increasingly concerned about the city. He began to adopt
pushing the figure-ground into the third dimension. That the city as an approach to architecture, and in his lectures
makes you wonder how the difference between what the and books he started to be rather ambiguous about
Krier brothers and what Ungers did came about. The Kriers Le Corbusier.
AN EXCITING EXERCISE
Coilage City,1978
su: Well, he is more critical about Le Corbusier's urbanism:
HK: Yes, but also about his architecture. That's why he
brought up Palladio. And that's why Werner Oechslin hits
him, saying that he stole it from Wittkower. You can,
of course, take Palladio in order to emphasize or somehow
support Le Corbusier's ideas, but you could also see this
recourse to Palladio as a criticism of Le Corbusier, and this
is why Palladio increasingiy became a decisive figure. In
any case, this strange move that Colin did from Corbusian
architecture to urban design and finally Palladio is something
one should think about more specificaliy. Nothing serious
has been written about it so far.
sM: Except maybe Alexander Caragone's book on the
Texas Rangers and their legacy. But anyhow, when you came
to Cornell, Rowe was aiready completely into Collage City,
wasn't he?
HK: Yes absolutely. He gave lectures aboutit. I remember
there was a typescript of it circulating at Cornell, not the
whole book, just a sort of handout.
SCHINKEUS BERL¡N
su: Then we come to the Summer Schools, and especially
to the one on the urban vilia, which took place in Berlin. You
and Arthur Ovaska were involved with Ungers in the
teaching of this program, and you wrote quite a substantial
text in the publication that gathered the work of the stu-
dents. During this Summer School, the Archipelago idea
was developed. The idea obviously came from Rem Koolhaas
and the results were documented by Peter Riemann. The
urban villa student projects were then woven into the final
publication that was eventually produced at Cornell.
HK: Yes, this is more or less how it happened. The Summer
School was a design course abroad for a limited number
of students. The "urban villa" was its theme. The students
worked in Kreuzberg, in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien,
and they got acquainted with the city and especially the
Südliche Friedrichstadt, walking around, making sketches
and photographs of everything that might be interpreted
as an urban villa. Slowly, the analysis turned into design,
aiming at a wide range of options. Then we collaged these
villas into one plan. Arthur and I were assistants, teaching
and working with the students in the studio. Once in a while
we had sessions with Mathias, Rem, and Peter Riemann.
Back in Cornell, we wove things together and produced
that book.
sM: One of the stunning ideas developed in this publication
is that the idea of urban islands is rooted in the past of
Berlin, and that it refers back to Potsdam.
nr: This is what Mathias was always fascinated with.
The landscape of Friedrich Wilhelm IV: Glienicke.
slr: Why Glienicke?
Hx: In those days in West Berlin, Glienicke was the place
you went to with your girlfriend to see the sun set behind
the Havel. It gave you an idea of width and openness
in a walled city. Glienicke was conceived by Schinkel and
Lenné as a park with significant objects that communicate
with each other over big distances and organize the land-
scape. Glienicke stimulated an urbanistic idea that allowed
the modern conception of the city in a park (which for
Colin had already become the city in the parking lot) to be
maintained, instead of preferring, like Colin, the center,
where everything is black in the figure-ground plan. Both
positions merged in Schinkel's idea of the Museumsinsel
(Museum Island). For Schinkel, the Museumsinsel was the
question of how far the urban texture can be fragmented
into isolated objects and still maintain the urban coherence
through spacial projection.
srvr:Right, but I was wondering why Glienicke played such
a central role for Ungers within the much larger Havel
landscape and Potsdam?
nr: Simply because Glienicke was the only part of that
landscape that was part of West Berlin you could freely go
to. Ungers was intrigued by this romantic idea of a city
that consists of a loose arrangement of artifacts, of culturai
footprints in nature.
¡n: When you view the urban history of Berlin, there are
two opposite approaches: the first one strove to centralize,
condense, and homogenize. Baroque Berlin, the Hobrecht
Plan,'Wilhelm's Berlin, Lhe IBA, and the Critical Reconstruc-
tion are examples of this. The second approach, diametri-
cal1y opposed to the first, sought to decentralize, de-densify,
and heterogenize. Schinkel's Berlin project, the Kultur-
landschaft of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, Taut's dissolution of
cities, Scharoun's Kollektivplan, and also your manifesto,
The City in the City, represent this approach. Would you
agree with this distinction?
HK: There is a certain kind of complexity that you shouldn't
'When
lose when you discuss this issue. you left the
Baroque center of Berlin and drove into the countryside
with your cartage, you passed through the villages of
Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf, and eventually Potsdam. In
between these settlements was not just nature but a highly
cultivated landscape. You passed the Tiergarten in a straight
line on your way to Charlottenburg, the castle, and its
park. This Baroque idea of organizingthe landscape with
axes changed during Lenné's and Schinkel's times into
something much more fragile and certainly more poetic by
opening vistas, rather than literally connecting these points
by streets and alleys. The landscape became an English
garden. For Mathias, this notion was extremely important,
and this image was used in several projects for the design.
It suggested a possible city, not just for the Archipelago
project, where green grows over existing structures. You
could in fact develop a new city like that. West Berlin
was cut offfrom its historic center: we weren't able to go
to the Museumsinsel, and large parts of the center had
been destroyed. Ifyou look at photographs ofthat period,
the late 1960s, Kreuzberg, this triangle ofthe Südliche
Friedrichstadt, was a landscape with ruins. You look at these
fragments, and during summer, when everything is green,
you say: hey, there's part of a block, a small block that can
be read as a tower, and another one that looks like a castle,
and so on. You know, when you have these images in
your mind, you may recognize similarities with Castel del
Monte and recall Friedrich II in Puglia, and then possibly
get carried away.
AND THEN...
FH: Twelve years after this Summer School, the Wall sud-
denly collapsed, and the city sought to rebuild the figures of
the Baroque extension. But with your hrst project lor
Potsdamer PIatz, if looked as if you wanted to build a new
island there. On Leipziger Platz, your project did propose to
rebuild the historical "Octogon," but on Potsdamer platz
it featured a cluster of towers that would have absorbed the
mega-program, while also allowing the Tiergarten, thanks
to their reduced footprint, to extend on the site. As with
your project for Atlanpole in Nantes, this proposal involved
large buildings subtly inserted into a natural landscape.
HK: Very different worlds met in Potsdamer Platz. On
the one hand, there was the no-man's-land with its sponta-
neous vegetation, and the residues among which Bernhard
Minetti walks in Wings of Desire. At dawn, from the highest
buildings in Kreuzberg, you could see it transform, as in
the paintings by Hoedicke, into a promising landscape lit by
the golden dinosaurs of Scharoun's National Library and
Philharmonic. This void was not just a consequence of
the Wall, since it had already terminated, long before, the
western tip of the Südliche Friedrichstadt's fanlike plan,
the first Baroque extension of Berlin. Our main motivation
was to save something of that void for the future, and to
positively recharge it as an extension ofthe Tiergarten. It
matched wonderfully with the "GroBstadt" fantasies that
have been produced repeatedly, on Potsdamer Platz as well
as on Alexanderplalz, resulting in frequently fascinating
projects of skyscapers. Why couldn't we propose a cluster
of towers at the threshold of the city, a kind of "burgus"
in the Tiergarten, which would have formed, together with
the octagonal space ofLeipziger Platz, a succession of
voids and solids, a Schinkelesque gate situation, which with
the accesses to the metro and the new train station gained
a stronger significance? We didn't believe then that an
ordinary urban fabric could be built there, with a sufficiently
extensive and closed structure, so as to connect Kreuzberg,
Mitte, and Schóneberg. Even before the war, this area
was a gusset between Potsdamer Station and the villas of
the Tiergarten, and today, it is neither a solitary ensemble
nor an urban structure. Our naivety was then to believe
that placing fancy stores on the ground floor of the office
and housing towers would be enough to ensure the eco-
nomic viability of the whole. We now know that in the current
economic conditions such urban projects can be realized
only through the implementation of a shopping and
entertainment complex: mass instead of class.
AN EXCITING EXERCISE

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Hans Kollhoff, morpholog¡cal stud¡es for Südliche Friedrichstadt, 1977
 FH:You initially formulated this oppposition between
architecture and urban design, during your own Summer
School in Berlin (1988), in a short but powerful text
called 'Architektur Kontra Stádtebau," five years before
Rem Koolhaas published his "Bigness." But you abandoned
this position in your second project for Potsdamer Platz,
which espoused instead Stimman's idea of "critical recon-
struction": a sequence ofstreets, squares, and blocks.
What led you in this other direction-the realization, as
you said, that Kleihues's approach was better?
HK: No, but with the fall of the Wall, everything changed
for Berlin. An unprecedented change ofparadigm happened.
Overnight, Potsdamer Platz was no longer located at the
periphery of the two halves of the city, but in the center of
a reunified community. From this point on, the task of
maintaining the old structures of the city, or at least what
was left of them, became desirable. It also served as
a reminder of the principles along which that city, and the
European city in general, had developed.
I immediately approved this generai political decision,
which I considered to be undisputable for the city center,
even though the specific situation of Potsdamer Piatz would
have justified our first project. Moreover, the enormous
need for usable spaces in terms of mass consumption cal1ed
for an extensive building structure that could be controlled
only to a certain extent by the principles ofconventional
urbanism. Such is the conviction that formed the basis of
our second project for Potsdamer Plalz.
FH: From then on, it looks as ifyour projects recessed and
fused into urbanism. Indeed, they're characterized less
by collage, or the staging ofcontrasts, than by an insertion
within the existing (Friedrichstrasse), or within new urban
fi gures ('Walter-Benj amin-Platz ).
Hr: At first sight, yes, but there's a gÍeat misunderstanding
here. Collage and the staging of contrast, in my eyes,
had meaning only as far as we dealt with the periphery into
which in the 1970s, of course, all the architects of my gener-
ation projected their hopes. This explains why we were
so interested in the industrial landscape of Moabit, which,
for us, held the keys for a city of the future. Architecture
could shamelessly launch into sculptural gestures and parade
into provocative postures against the old city. But these
autistic exercises in the periphery seemed to me, even before
the fall of the Wall, very unsatisfactory. Architecture cannot
just satisfy itself with a blink of novelty that soon flows
into the mainstream of the diverse and paradoxically,,all
the same."
When a building is forced to align with its neighbors and
form, with opposite buildings, a street, conceived as the
embodiment ola society, whose individuals gain a collective
form instead oflosing their coherence by gesticulating
into the landscape, then architects begin to rediscover the
primary and proper role olthe facade. This opened to my
eyes a new and fascinating world that is in fact very old.
To get back to your question, a building seems to dissolve
into urbanism for the ignorant gaze only. Convention
just provides the foundations on which architecture may
meaningfully and convincingly develop, in order to unfold
itself and prove its validity in the context of tradition.
ru: But in your opinion, how should architects and urban
designers meet the issues raised by the economic recession
and the demographic degrowth of cities? Musn,t they
change their way of thinking?
rx: What we're seeing today is the exact opposite of econom-
ic degrowth, and in cities, we cannot speak of demographic
recession. On the contrary, the demand for housing in cities
is getting bigger and bigger, with real estate prices rising
wildly. The real issue we should reflect on is totally different:
the wonderful cities of Europe, its villages and landscapes
were shaped according to principles that did not exclusively
aim at financial profit. These last years-and maybe the
worst is still ahead of us-we have seen that the United States
(which I have learned to appreciate) are following a different
path from the one taken by Europe, and that we Europeans
would be well advised to remember the values that have
shaped this continent are unique in this world, and seem
more precious with each day that passes. Obviously, archi-
tecture is not the least olthese values.
FH: You seem to interpret the concept ofsustainability rather
literally as the capacity of a building to endure, its perma-
nence, unlike others, like Werner Sobek, who consider that
recycling is the great issue ...
HK: In Europe, the very idea ofrecycling buildings is sick.
A SYMBIOTIC OPERATION
Peter Riemann in conversation with Florian Hertweck and Sébastien Marot
June 2012
sM: Peter, how did you come to meet Ungers, and to study
at Cornell?
en: Basically, at the end of my studies in Braunschweig,
I found myself in a kind of non-orientation. I wondered
whether what I had learned at the Technical University
was really all I needed to know about architecture. I had
the feeling that it was not enough and that there must have
been something different. Shortly before the diploma,
I found out that Ungers had done these publications at the
TU Berlin. A friend of mine who graduated from the
Kunstakadenlie Berlin came to Braunschweig to work with
Professor Ostertag. He made me familiar with the work
of Ungers and his teachings at the Technical lJniversity.
I subsequently ordered "Wohnbebauungen" [Residential
Developmenll, "Plátze und Strassen" ISquares and Streets],
and other compilations of student work. The most impor-
tant publication in terms of methodological teaching was
"Wochenaufgaben." It documented brainstorming for one
week, where the students were exposed to materials (such
as a mere brick building), to typological and functional
matters, but also had to deal with historic building types.
ANOTHER WAY OFTHINKING
I was very interested in this approach and found out that
Ungers had left Berlin for the US to teach at Cornell. I then
applied for a scholarship from the DAAD, which worked
wel1. I also gained admission to study at different American
universities. Since my father was living in Cologne, where
Ungers had his office, it was easy to call him up. He invited
me to come and we discussed everything. Finally, I decided
to go to Cornell because he told me that I could work as
a teaching assistant with the undergraduates.
srvr: So, you did your diploma, and then went to Cornell.
en: Right. My thesis design for "Airport Stuttgart"-a task
set by freshly appointed Professor Meinhard von Gerkan-
reflected somehow the end of megastructure and machine
art architecture, where buildings merely had to function.
It's interesting that some years later, von Gerkan, with his
own airport building in Stuttgart, ended up with tree-
structure imagery, indicating the shift away from the very
straightforward approach to "problem-solving."
su: What did you do at Cornell?
Peter Riemann, study pro¡ect for Buffalo,1976
pn: The first task was the Buffalo project in the fa1l of 1916.
The exposure for the Ungers group was to go there to see
a totally deteriorated city on the waterfront. You had
all these leftover pieces of industrialized buildings, and the
center wasn't really there anymore. You saw a city-structure
dismantling itself. It was a very strange experience for
me, because it was the first big city that I saw in the United
States in this status of "falling apart." Everybody told
you: "Beware of bums, don't go on the wrong side of the
street."
FH: So there was already an interest for cities in decline?
pR: Yes, but the exercise came from Oswald Mathias lJngers ...
nothing that we invented. For me, everything was rather
new, because I had not been exposed to any other architec-
tural way of thinking. It was like jumping into a new situa-
tion. At one point, it was rather terrifying, because, as a Euro-
pean, you have problems with this kind of city structure.
su: And what did you have to do in Buffalo?
pn: I think it's also interesting that Ungers didn't propose
an objective. You started working with the structure by
trying to understand what was going on, not in terms
of statistics, but in terms of people, business, and existing
building types. And you had to come up with a solution,
which wasn't a master plan for the inner part of the city. You
were not the planner making proposals on how to get more
business and offices into the city. You were the one who
was trying to replace the missing brick in a wall; you had to
paste, to repair the city. Not the overall structure, but in
certain areas where you felt that there were at least some
relics of identification. For me, it was the area of the Old
Post Office. I think half of the building was empty. You can
imagine that like all the other nice post offices, the historic
American block buildings, you have a space inside, there is
a glass dome, and you transform the building into a sort
of community thing. So you were forced to find by yourself
the starting point for urban activities. You know, it was not
the abstract idea of growth (anything you do in the city is
good, because it's getting more business and is getting
bigger). By doing so, the city wasn't getting bigger, you just
repaired it in certain areas.

sM: So you...

eR: Indeed, it was repairing the city.

sM: It was like using the lessons of an analysis on the

global scale ofthe city, and investing them in a special area,
Peter R¡emann, study project for Buffalo, post office,1976
almost on an architectural scale, right?

l
pR: I found out that Joseph Fenton had
Yes, later on
published in the Pamphlet Series (begun in 1911 by William )
Stout and Steven Holl) a typological analysis of American
block buildings. Chicago, for instance, is full of these
marvelous interior spaces and "hybrid buildings" within the
city-block structure. And it's interesting to note that when
you walk on a street, you are still able to experience each
of them as one homogeneous building.

sru: In fact, Ungers had just done this Summer School in

New York on the urban block.

pn: That was the easiest wayfor him. They had already
worked on that topic and handed it over to the next graduate
students.

r¡r: What did you do after the Buffalo project?

Peter R¡emann, study project for Freeville,1977

pn: The second-semester project was about the Freeville

landscape in the vicinity of Ithaca, which was included
in the Berlin catalog Learning from Ungers. The editor,
Erika Mühlthaler, selected it, because she was interested
in this totally different attitude. It had to do neither with
urbanism nor with landscape architecture, but oscillated in
between. I guess this is what Ungers was always doing:
"in-between" urbanism, urban design, and architecture.
There's a saying in Germany: "Wohnungsbau ist
Stádtebau." If you do public housing, you are-just by
scale-unavoidably dealing with urban design, thus
A SYMBIOTIC OPEBATION

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during the Summer School,1977
overcoming the artificial German separation between city
planning and urban design.
FH: Were there any lectures that you attended in Cornell?
pn: Not especially for the graduate students, but you know,
Cornell always had a lot of visiting people. Ungers didn't
give any lectures atthal time. He didn't even give seminars.
He gave only critiques in small graduate classes, and in my
case, within the first term, assisted by John Ruble, a partner
of Charles Moore. He showed us what they were doing
with Ungers at UCLA tn1974/15: hotel structures, block
structures with integrated traffic, similar things that Ungers
did with students when he was holding chair no. 6 at the
TU in Berlin, before he left for Cornell.
SUMMER SCHOOL
svr: So, during the academic year 1976-77 you were all
dealing in a way with what would become the themes of the
Summer School: the decaying of cities on one side, but
also villages and the countryside, right? What was your role
then in the Summer School?
pn: First of all, I went rather early with Ungers to Berlin.
Since I had a girlfriend there, I became quite naturally part
of the organizationfeam.I took part in meetings where
colleagues like Müller and Sawade helped Ungers to get
accommodation for the students. Jürgen Sawade with
Ruth's IBR organized a "raw-housing" construction that was
not f,rnished. So we had to organize everything, lightbulbs,
toilets, shelter beds from the City of Berlin, and so on.
At the same time, it was not hard for me to see that other
architects were sniffing what Ungers was doing. He was
already involved and promoted what later became lhe IBA
project. At this point, it was not very "official." Nevertheless,
Ungers's colleagues, "architectural friends," and city officials
were talking about the prospective "commission pie" and
were wondering who was going to get which piece.
When things were all settled, and the students arrived, my
"mission" was to work with Mathias on the urban structure
of Berlin, and to come up with ways of repairing it in the
same spirit that had inspired our Buflalo project. So again,
with the Summer School, as "camouflaged forerunner" for
the IBA, it was not a matter of proposing what should be
done with the city as a whole. Instead, we tried to identify
areas where tactical (rather than strategic) operations
could be undertaken: very specific and limited areas that
were already deteriorating and, after heavy bombardments
during World War II, in a state of decay, such as the southern
part of Friedrichstadt. In this case, you looked at the figure-
ground plan and you could tell that almost nothing was left
of the fanlike structure of the historic citv.
rH:The Senate started to think about a new International
Exhibition in 1916, and at the beginning of 1917, Kleihues
published a series of articles-the famous "Morgenpost
Campaign"-to support his approach. Was it also clear to you
that the archipelago manifesto was a polemic against
Kleihues's approach to urban repair?
pn: Not real1y. It became clear to me much later. What
Ungers was doing with the students and the way he
envisioned the city atthaf time seemed rather natural to
me. It was the reason why I went to Cornell in the first
place. As a foreign "reimport," I knew our Summer School
had a political implication, that it had something to do
with the IBA-this came up during the discussions-but
I didn't see it at that time as a struggle, because I knew
little about the things that went on rather officially in the
newspapers. We didn't cate af all. We were located on
our little island, the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, doing our
business. Only at the end of the urban design operation
with the Cornell students did it feel that it could be a kind
of milestone for things to come. And of course during
the design process, whether on the architectural or urban
level, people from Berlin were deeply interested. They
came to attend all these fantastic lectures at Amerika Haus
and in the IDZ, where the rather limited space was always
crammed full. For the younger Berlin students, it must
have been the same fascination that I had experienced
when I first discovered Ungers's publications.
sM:'Was it the lecture series that you organized?
eR: No, Ungers took care of that. I was doing more or less
the hardware, finding the slide projector...
sM: Sure, but I mean, these were the lectures that went
with the Summer School.
pR:Yes, Ungers organized this lecture series, together
with Helga Retzer, a friend of Kristin Feireiss, who was in
charge of Amerika Haus. Differenl otganizations like
iheIDZ plus the City of Berlin provided money and their
background knowledge and their network.
A SYMBIOTIC OPERATION
IMAGES
sM:You've explained your role in the preparations for the
Summer School, but could you explain a little more what
you did during the Summer School?
pR: I was working with Mathias, basically apart from the
other students, doing all the drawings for this research on
Berlin. It was like working with him in Cornell: we were
trying out things, and he gave criticism. Sometimes he was
glad with what I did, and sometimes, when I didn't meet
his expectatio.ns, he said: "No, this structure or image
is not strong enough." This kind of typological approach
was very interesting for me. You know: looking into the
building structure and seeing the Magnitogorsk plan-which
I couldn't see at all at the beginning-in the Avus exten-
sion, a very long, stretched street ... I then found out that
the one thing you have in your mind are these building
typologies, which are not only images. Because Mathias is
often criticized for doing only images ... in fact, the images
are nothing but the labels of tactical operations within
a certain limited area. They are like ideal figures, ideas, not
solutions to a problem. You don't really know what the
problem is, but you can identify its nature. It is all about
imagination.
su: So, you were applying to the analysis of Berlin the whole
approach that Ungers had illustrated, a year before, at the
Man Transfor¡zs exhibition, this idea of thinking through
images, analogies, and metaphors, and abstracting from the
city images of projects made for other cities, other places.
pR: I guess the "backbone" of the whole thinking is probably
that Ungers was forcing himself to get rid of the bondages
of architectural functionalism, to emancipate himself
from the things that he thought were too restrictive in terms
of architecture. Years later, my wife, who had a PhD in
philosophy, told me she found Ungers's approach very clear:
in her eyes, he was trying to establish a "working philosophy"
and not just an architectural theory. Something that tran-
scended the architectural thinking that more or less responds
to solving problems, buildings problems, functional prob-
lems. And I think this handout in Cornell, "Thinking in
Analogies, Images, and Metaphors, etc," had nothing to do
with architecture in itself, or with solving problems on the
urban scale, but was first of all his basis for stabilizing
himself, a "cordon sanitaire" against the aggressiveness of
politicians, other architects, art historians, and so on. This
is the kind of thinking that led to "The City in the City."
MAPS AND DRAWINGS
FH: Do you remember how you started to work, the first
map you drew?
pn: This I remember for sure. It was such a hard time,
a pain in the neck, and even worse. It was the whole West
Berlin map, as a figure-ground plan, which we then decon-
structed, layer after layer, starting with streets only, then
water only, objects, axes, and so on. The "philosophical"
approach was ltrst to decompose the city in order to reassem-
ble it later. If you don't know how a clock works, you
disassemble it, and then you put it together again; some-
times you'll have three pieces left over, and it works, and
sometimes it will not work, which stirs your imagination and
creativity. So the understanding is, also in terms of art
history, you analyze, you compare things, and you see analo-
gies to other things: city structure with city structure, not
city structure with strange ideas of something else.
pn: But in this process of decomposing and recomposing
the city in a morphological way, at one point you have to
find the analogies and metaphors.
pR: Ungers was full of analogies. He knew all the images, and
typologies. Cornell library, and Mathias's office, too, were
full ofbooks and copies ofall kinds ofurban precedents.
So you didn't have to find these analogies, they were already
there. And if you're very well educated in architectural
history or urban history, you know that this could be a piece
that looks like the regular pattern of Selinunte ... This is
how Mathias used to work and to think. So we saw " eeflatn"
things. For instance, if you look at the map of Berlin, you
see the "Siemensstadt fish," you see the Taut Horseshoe
Settlements, and so on. Those are identifiable pieces. You
don't need a recipe to discover them. Then, on the maps
ofpreservation planners, you see very clearly all the struc-
tures that are predominantly of historical value. Also, you
grasp certain city structures that seem to make sense because
they are assemblages; you know ... all the buildings were
erected within one specific period, and were not destroyed
during the war. And, of course, you see the tiny little bits
and pieces that are ruins and the remains of the structure in
front of the Berlin Wall. These "islands," ruins, firewall
buildings, which in the end look totally strange and unfamiliar,
force you to look at the city in a surrealistic way.
sM: Apart from these analytical mappings of the city, you also
did those colored drawings of the islands through which
everybody knows the project today. How did you work on
these?
pR: I guess the colored drawings came from the fascination
for the yellow sketch paper that we didn't have in Germany
at the time. You see it on the Buffalo project, too. I had
never done architectural drawings like that before and it was
fun. You bought these Faber Castell pencils and you talked
with other graduate and undergraduate students at Cornell
and they told you: "Oh, this kind of pencil is much better,
because it's so soft and creamy." So it was kind of an artistic
development that I liked very much. You know, you have
an idea, and then you try to come up with a "convincing"
image, not only in terms of the typology. You choose
this "city island" and not another and make it look self-
explanatory. Maybe it's a bit like the expressionism of
Bruno Taut's "Stadtkrone." The idea of the project becomes
a cerfain unmistakable identity.
And the memory effect doesn't come only from the form,
but also from the way you present it. It's the yellow sketch
paper, the black rapidograph ink, and a very individualized
coloring. This is what you learned at Cornell, although
nobody really told you. Common sense was to present
buildings axonometrically. With Buffalo, everybody would
do it the same way in terms of contrast, making a two-
dimensional drawing that reads as a three-dimensional
piece. The color of the facade didn't matter, but you always
worked with this kind of "airy lightness," like French
Impressionism.
You take the "weight" out ofthe structures, create "see-
through" glass, and differentiate colors in terms of incidence
of light. This is what I did with the Berlin islands.
THE METAMORPHOSES OF A MANIFESTO
su: Let's go back to the genesis of the idea. At some point
during the Summer School, Rem Koolhaas was invited.
Did he come to give one of those lectures?
pR: No, it was rather at the beginning, and he came by air-
plane. I picked him up with a rented car, and he told me that
he was doing sort of a concept for Berlin. I found out later
what it was, when we talked with Ungers. We talked about
the tactical strategies and Rem had his piece on the archi-
pelago. I think it was already in his mind, then he was typing
it and I guess, behind closed doors, he talked with Ungers
about the whole idea. This was not part of the "official"
business or the student activities, and then he left shortly
afterward. He was there for a week, or two weeks at most.
And then he was gone and the archipelago piece was there.
But it had nothing to do with the student operation.
su: He typed a first version, and then, for the exhibition that
took place at the end of the summer, you produced a second
version with a few corrections and additions.
pn: We basically reproduced Rem's text as it was. At that
point, I was unable to add things, because it was a piece in
itself, a typical Rem Koolhaas. Even though I knew nothing
about his work on Delirious New York,I could tell it was
a kind of surrealistic approach. It was so strange and it had
nothing to do with realistic things that you can transform
on an urban level or an architectural scale. But Mathias told
me to paste and restructure the text, and add certain things
that you can see as the originators, such as the Glienicke
Park lecture. To most Berliners, Glienicke was not just
a summer evening business, where you would go to admire
the sunset. I think Johannes Uhl and others knew about
this lecture. I don't know if they all knew it from Mathias.
But for me, Glienicke was the best place to demonstrate
what had also been lost in most German cities: the English
park, this kind ofrestructuring the nature, the landscape,
but not totally, unlike the French gardens. You have five trees
but you take two out of them, so that the group of oldest
trees stands out more predominantly. I found out later
at Cornell that it came from English landscape architect
Humphry Repton, nicknamed "Mister before and after."
When you know that, you can see that the approach is more
or less similar to what we were doing on the ürban scale.
It was also "before and after."
But Ungers also interpreted the construction of
F¡r:
Glienicke-Schinkel's design process-as a morphological
process itself.
pR: I guess Ungers was so much into this morphological
thinking that he naturally started to see everything through
that lens. He was filled with this idea and it was so intense
that he wanted to convince other people to share his way of
thinking. And of course it works fine, because it's very
natural to see things in a morphological way, evolutionary,
not static.
sM: So,after the end ofthe session, the third version olthe
text was made by Ungers, which is the only one that was
A SYMBIOTIC OPERATION
published. Where did this happen? Ungers added a lot of
things to what was already there: this whole thing about
the history of the city being in phase with the concept
of the archipelago, then Glienicke, the model of Schinkel
and Lenné, as a gene of the archipelago idea, and finally the
reinjection of the urban villa. Where was this new text,
structured in eleven theses, produced? Did you participate
in its production?
pn: The first text was the Koolhaas original, and the second
one, which I call the "paste and copy," was presented
during the exhibition in Berlin as a handout. As for the third,
we pasted it together in Cologne, and it was then printed
at Cornell. I think it was all done by Mathias, who was now
clearly trying to address the SPD and the Senate. It's a pub-
lication for politicians, aiming to combine Rem Koolhaas's
ideas on the one hand, and "The City in the City" on the
other, in a more realistic, more understandable way. Kool-
haas's concept was on an intellectual level, for architects
dealing with urbanism. "The City in the City," the idea of
a shrinking city (or "a city in retrenchment," as Koolhaas
wrote), all these ways ollooking at the city, was already
unusual for me, and I had to understand it. Ungers wanted
to make it understandable for everybody. His reworked
version still has a kind of vision, but it tries to bring it to
"normal" people, to convince them that it would be a good
urbanistic strategy ... for example an international building
exhibition.
TANDEM
rn: But even if the last version is more decent, it's stil1
incredible that he presented this project, with hunting safaris
and mobile pensioners, to politicians.
pn: In the third version, Ungers skipped strong surrealistic
and ironic statements by Rem, such as the safari business.
Obviously it seemed for him too dangerous to present this
to "realistic" people. Architectural commissions for future
building exhibitions are too precious to fool around withl
However, this "operational shift" incorporates two things
that are not very strange. The first has to do with Berlin.
Ungers is trying to convince people that he's not coming with
mere ideas, bringing something that might be "alien" to
Berlin, but that he's developing and extracting these ideas
out of the existing structure and the existing history of
the city. The second thing has to do with Ungers's power
and directness: here I am, dear Berliners, I'm developing
something for you that's already (hidden) there. I'm
nothing but a catalyst, no demiurge. I'm the healer, but YOU
are the most important part. In that respect, I guess Ungers
is very convincing. At the same time, with the Glienicke
piece, he brings to architects and urbanists some sort of
a paradise, a Heile Welt. Dwing the war, Berlin was heavily
destroyed, and then divided, and people had all these
bad memories. When you wanted to go to East Berlin, they
searched your car, checking out ifyou had weapons or
Western newspapers. It was a sick and artificial situation,
and Mathias was now establishing a vision, not in a utopian
way, but in a way that everybody could understand.
su: And do you think that, in his view, his idea was able
to overcome the Wall?
pR:I guess Mathias had fewer problems with Berlin than
with any other city. Because he always stressed the point that
Berlin is fixed within its boundaries, it cannot extend. And
as the population was shrinking, you had to do something,
but you couldn't solve the problem with a master plan, and
invent big industries from scratch. Berlin was not in a growth
situation. Most architects deal with their buildings in terms
of growth. And now it was a different situation, a laboratory
situation where the reference to Glienicke and the idea of
reducing the city and making things identifiable, but only on
a tactical level in specific areas, became very convincing.
rx: This was abig change, compared with his approach
in the 1960s, where the subject for his students was not the
divided Berlin.
pR:Yes, ofcourse, the old projects had an integrated
aspect ofgrowth, for instance the long, stretched Rupenhorn
housing from the mid-sixties, but it was, nevertheless,
already a similar way of thinking. In those days, he said
that it was ridiculous to repair areas only with tiny little
structures. The tactical approach, or the technical operation
behind it, did not change.
su: But in this last version that he did in Cologne, by
adding the idea that the archipelago concept was genuine
to Berlin, coming from its very history, and by explaining
that the concept could be a kind of extrapolation of
that of Glienicke, he was in a way also proposing a kind
of retroactive manifesto for Berlin.
pn: But Mathias would have never used the word.
sM:No, but don't you think that to some extent, Rem
Koolhaas lound the idea in Ungers's work?
pR:Yes, it's a symbiotic operation, like a tandem. At one
point, one is in front and giving the direction. I guess
Ungers never had "competitive" problems with Koolhaas,
because he is so different. In the same way, Ungers never
had problems with Bóhm, because their attitudes toward
architecture were also very different. It was not the same
situation with his league of Neo-Rationalist friends, like
Kleihues, Gregotti, Rossi, and others. They were too close.
I was struck in terms of the "symbiosis" by certain aspects
of the Fourth Ring project, when I saw that some buildings,
the skyscrapers, which are terraced, and have a hat on top ...
they look like Konrad Klaphek's painting Der KrieglWarl.
This is not Ungers, this is typically Rem Koolhaas-or maybe
Arthur Ovaska, I don't know-but the surrealistic approach
is not the attitude of Ungers. Of course, he collected
all these works of art. His house harbored many modern
paintings and sculptures. I think he admired this "otherness,"
but it was not his way of straightforwardness.
I remember him telling us the story about collecting
Expressionistic drawings of the "Gláserne Kette" [Glass
Chain] and finally getting rid of the whole stuff after having
studied this "otherness." This positioning oneself within
a f,reld of different characters is similar to what is done by
the implementation of a building within a given context.
As for Berlin and the Summer School, he was active,
eager to regain the strength ofbeing an architect and to
build. I think this was his strongest ambition: after years
of theory-teaching and thinking-he wanted to build.
He was not the type of guy who sells vacuum cleaners at the
door to get a commission at any price. His approach was
much more intelligent, but of course it's very understandable
that he was doing it that way ... any other way would not
have worked for him.
srvr: What's nice about this hybrid manifesto is that we can
read it as a monument of their friendship, a baby they
produced together...
pn: ... but which was aborted somehow. Maybe, because
the baby wouldn't have fitted into the context of Berlin.
Delirious New York ftts into New York, because it's a highly
intellectual society, with all these dissociations and distor-
tions, where different cultures are trying to come together.
It's not the asserted melting pot, it's the opposite, and
there it fits perfectly. When Fiem's Delirious New York is
stressing the contradictions sometimes painfully, Mathias is
looking for the healing philosophy, the "Zusammenfall
der Gegensátze" [coincidence of opposites], which I tried to
explain in "Casa Tragica - Cittá Comica." The one being the
surgeon, the other being the healer, maybe this is the way
Mathias felt...
In Berlin, where for years and years everybody was looking
to be reunited, where everybody was talking about reunif,r-
cation, nobody in the late seventies believed any longer
that it would happen. It's funny that during the exhibition
that Kristin Feireiss organized in 1988, Berlin-Denkmal
o der D enkmo dell fBerlin-Monument or Working Hypothesisl,
nothing extraordinary happened in terms of change. In
hindsight, it was an intellectual event, and all of a sudden,
two years later, when nobody was thinking about it, the
East German regime collapsed and the wall, that strange
piece that had fascinated Rem years before, came down.
FH:You said you didn't participate in the presentation to
the Social Democratic Party, but do you remember the final
exhibition at the end of the Summer School?
pR:Yes. This was done with the axonometric drawings and
the floor plans for the villas in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien.
¡H: And who was there?
pn: The Berlin press, I think-I remember handing out
one copy to Peter Rumpf from Bauwelt-Berlin architects,
Ungers's colleagues, and city officials. Everybody was
invited. One part was the "Urban Villa," and the other part
was "The City in the City," with all the drawings I had
done, plus the typologies, so you could see the islands, for
instance Central Park transplanted into the context of
Górlitzer Bahnhof, etc. I think they all liked it. Also the
fact that this bunch of foreign architects came to the still
divided city: Hans Hol1ein, Vittorio Gregotti, Richard Meier,
James Stirling, Aldo Rossi, Bob Stern, and fancy Stanley
Tigerman, telling Berliners that in the US, the "pricks" live
in the suburbs! At that time, they were not well known
in Germany, and the Berlin students were fascinated. James
Stirling giving a lecture at Amerika Haus: it was a great
event!
rn: But there was no further debate in Cornell about the
archipelago project?
 A SYMBIOTIC OPERATION

pR: No. At Cornell, all the drawings that we'd been doing in
Berlin were presented after the Summer School under the
Sibley Dome. People were used to having Ungers presenting
his projects, for instance his first prize for the Berlin Hotel
competition, and for Cornell this was quite normal. But
it's also true that the American students were quite distant
from what was going on in Berlin and Europe.

ECHOES

su: After the Summer School, you went back to Cornell

to do your thesis. Did you ever catch up later with the others,
IJRBAI¡ DTSIEII STRATEEIES
your partners in this little adventure?
FOfl EERLIII
W|lll A CASE STUOY OI{
8ERLilr -
SI¡OLICtlE FNIEONICtlSIAOT
pR: I saw Rem Koolhaas only once afterward, in the
"Corderia" at the Venice Biennale. We talked a little bit,
Peter Riemann, master's thesis on the c¡ty in the city,
but I knew nothing about his project. I was there with
Cornell University, 1979 a friend who worked for Kleihues, just to bring his exhibi
tion stuffto the Biennale. As for Mathias, after I'd finished
my thesis, I think I did visit him two or three times in
his office, but Mathias always tried to be a bit nast¡ just by
teasing. He said: "Oh, you're coming to do espionage, or
do you want to learn what we're doing." I was then working
on the new Ministry of Defense in Bonn for a Dortmund
architectural firm. Mathias said: "Oh, I heard you're working
for the "Bundeswehr" (armed forces). It was this kind of
fancy conversation at the beginning ofevery visit, then
it got more collegial. After that, we next got in touch again
when I did this publication on Ungers-"Casa Tiagica -
Cittá Comica"-in which I summed up my understanding of
IJngers's thinking about architecture. He liked it a lot, and
he was very nice, wrote me a card, and invited me to Cologne.
In the end, we met briefly when I brought him the collection
*Sps of finalplans for "The City in the City"-which had been
in my basement for years-shortly before his big Kosmos der
vo. der Slockstñktur z@ Fr.@it -
v€dndsu¡g der 8¡dsttultur in lelft.um von 1m ¡¿hs Architektur exhibition at the Staatsgalerie in Berlin. The

Peter Riemann, competition pro¡ect for Rauchstrasse

"City" plans were presented at the TU exhibition Learning
at the T¡ergarten in Berlin, 1980 from OMU. But I never collaborated with Ungers and
never worked on competitions with him.

su: And Hans or Arthur: did you see them afler that?

pR: When I came back from Cornell, I worked for a couple

of weeks in Ungers's office. Arthur was there, but left soon.
I learned from Lo Ungers that he was doing his study on
the housing developments. I don't really know if he finished
it totally. There was very little to do in Mathias's office,
so I left for good and was then working on the big office

t-.
structure for the Ministry of Defense in Bonn. I met Hans
and Arthur occasionally for a symposium in Enschede
and at the grand opening of the Kosmos exhibition in Berlin,
where Rem held what I felt was a rather "blue" laudatory
speech to his former comrade-in.arms. Finall¡ I met Arthur
and Hans at Ungers's funeral.

su: And for yourself, this archipelago adventure and your

master's degree on Berlin: what did they lead to later in your
career?

pR: One competition on this 'odesign track"-a kind of

mixture of landscape and architecture-I did for the parlia-
ment area in Bonn. Another strong analogous urban
Ungers design can be seen in the fifth prize in the national
competition for the Dom-Rómer complex in Frankfurt.
And then-I guess this was my mini Utopia project-I par-
ticipated in the I BA comp etition for Tiergarten / Rauchstrasse,
"against" Rossi, Rob Krier, and Hermann & Valentiny ...
But this was neither the time nor the area for straight-
forward social housing.

rH: And what did you think in 1990 when you discovered that
{Jngers's proposal for "Berlin Morgen" was almost the
archipelago proj ect "reloaded"?

pR: Yes, I think lJngers, freed from the chains of political

attention, "reloaded" an aborted manifesto. Sometimes, one
can't get rid of strong ideas, especially if they've been
developed by and together with a symbiotic tandem driver.
And since you ask, I wonder how the project would have
looked ifthey had done it together.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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BIOGRAPHIES
OSWALD MATHIAS UNGERS
(1926-2007) was one of thé most influential
German architects of the latter half of the twentieth
century. Following h¡s studies of arch¡tecture under
Egon Eiermann at the Technische Hochschule in
Karlsruhe, he establ¡shed a professional practice in
Cologné in 1950. ln 1963, at the invitation of Hans
Scharoun, he accepted a professorship at the Tech-
nische Univers¡tát Berlin. He became dean of the
architecture faculty two years later and developed
a teaching approach that in its comb¡nation of
theory, history, and des¡gn was unusually experimen-
tal in Germany at that time. After the student revolt
of 196268, which discred¡ted his contr¡bution to the
Márkisches V¡ertel housing complex in Berl¡n, he
relocated to the USA at the inv¡tation of Colin Rowe
to head the Depaitment of Architecture at Cornell
Univers¡ty in lthaca, NewYork, For almost a decade,
Ungers devoted himself to the teaching and invest¡-
gat¡on of, in part¡cular, morphological des¡gn pro-
cesses, wh¡ch he explored ¡n projects for numerous
competitions. During th¡s per¡od, he consol¡dated
h¡s posit¡on as one of the maior exponents of the
Neo-Rat¡onalist movement and publ¡shed his most
¡mportant théoret¡cal writ¡ngs: P/a nning Criteria
(19761, Morphologie: City Metaphors (1982), and Die
Thematisierung der Architektur (1983), as well
as the trilogy of Summer School publ¡cat¡ons: Ihe
Urban Block ('l976l,The Urban Villa (19771,and
The Urban Garden (1978). He later taught at Harvard,
the Un¡vers¡ty of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),
the University of Appl¡ed Arts ¡n Vienna, and the
Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. The many architects
who stud¡ed under and/or worked for him include
Rem Koolhaas, Rob Krier, Ludw¡g Leo, Hans Kollhoff,
Stefan Wewerka, and Max Dudler. ln the late lgTos,
Ungers finally began to receive prom¡nent ma¡or
comm¡ssions, such as for the Deutsches Arch¡tektur-
museum (1979-e4) and the Messe-Komplex mit
Torhaus (1979-97) in Frankfurt am Ma¡n, the Bad¡sche
Landesbibliothek ¡n Karlsruhe (1980-91), the Gaterie
der Gegenwart at the Hamburger Kunsthalle (1986-
96), and the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne
(1996-2001). His enthus¡asm for morpholog¡cal
processes increasingly gave way to a rigorously
geometr¡cal approach, culminating in his "Haus ohne
Eigenschaften" (House without Qual¡t¡es). An ardént
lifelong collector, Ungers amassed, ¡n add¡t¡on to
an ¡mpressive art collection, one of the world,s most
extensive arch¡tectural book collections, which
today is housed in the Ungers Archives for Architec-
tural Research in Cologne.
REM KOOLHAAS
Born in Rotterdam ¡n 1944. Worked as a journalist
and scriptwriter before studying architecture at the
Architectural Assoc¡ation in London, where he dis-
tinguished himself with a memoir on "The Berlin Wall
as Architecture" and a conceptuaFmetaphor¡cal
project entitled "Exodus, or the Voluntary Pr¡soners of
Arch¡tecture" (with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis, and h¡s
wife, Madelon Vriesendorp).1972 moved to the USA,
first to Cornell to study the teachings of Oswald
Mathias Ungers, and then to NewYork, where he and
his friends launched the Off¡ce for Metropol¡tan
Arch¡tecture in 1975. Réturned to London to teach at
the AA and in 1978 publ¡shed Delirious New York:
A Retroact¡ve Manifesto for Manhatfan, which estab-
I¡shed h¡s reputation as a theoretician of metropol¡-
tan congest¡on and as a genu¡ne writer. ln the 1980s
and l990s OMA developed a project¡ve reflection
on the architecture of B¡gness, contrary to the Post-
Modernist trénds of those years.1995 Koolhaas
and the graphic des¡gner Bruce Mau collected the
pro¡ects resulting from the¡r collaboration (along
w¡th a number of essays and crit¡cal wr¡tings) into
a monumental book,S,M,L,XL, wh¡ch has done
much to revive the genre of arch¡tectural mono-
graphs. Wh¡le the number of OMA productions has
multipl¡ed on all cont¡nents s¡nce then (Seattle
Publ¡c L¡brary, Opera in Porto, CCTV headquarters
¡n Be¡jing, etc.), Koolhaas has cont¡nued to pursue
his theoretical research: "Generic C¡ty," "Junk-
space," and the mutat¡ons of arch¡tecture in the age
of globalization-first, ¡n his research stud¡o at
the Harvard Graduate School of Des¡gn: Mutatlons
(20OOl, The Great Leap Forward (2002),Shopping
(2002), and then within OMA's mirror imagé, AMO,
wh¡ch is devoted to para-architectural debates:
Confent (2003). ln add¡tion to a number of other texts,
such as on the conservation of rural areas, he has
recently published an important oral h¡story (with
Hans-Ulrich Obrist) of the metabolist adventure ¡n
Japani Project Japan: Metabolism Talk (2011).
HANS KOLLHOFF
Born in Lobenstein, Germany, in 1946. Graduated
from the University of Karlsruhe in 1975 w¡th
a degreé in architecture. A subsequent DAAD
scholarship took him to New York, where he studied
and later taught at Cornell Un¡versity,1978 founded
the office of Kollhoff & Ovaska ¡n Berlin, wh¡ch
he has codirected with his l¡fe partner, the architect
Helga Timmermann, since 1984. Other off¡ces
opened in Rotkreuz, Sw¡tzerland (1999), ¡n Rotter-
dam, Netherlands (2000), and in Florence, ltaly
(2011). From 1990 to 2012 professor of architecture
and design at the ETH Zur¡ch. S¡nce 2004 pres¡dent
of thé lnternational Academy of Arch¡tecture
¡n Berlin.
ARTHUR OVASKA
Born in Massachusetts, USA, in 1951. Rece¡véd
his B.Arch degree from Cornell University, NewYork,
¡n 1974 and completed h¡s master's under Professor
Oswald Mathias Ungers.1974-78 worked in the
off¡ces of Ungers'in lthaca, NewYork, and Cologne,
Germany, before founding the off¡ce of Kollhoff &
Ovaska ¡n Berl¡n ¡n 1978, Left Berlin in 1987 to accept
a full-t¡me academ¡c pos¡t¡on at Cornell Un¡vers¡ty.
2012-13 guest professor for arch¡tecture and urban
research at the Academy of F¡ne Arts in Nuremburg,
Germany, where he has been focus¡ng on "The
Green Arch¡pelago."
PETER RIEMANN
Born in Eschwege, Germany, in 1945. Studied civil
eng¡neering and arch¡tecture at the Technical
Un¡vers¡ty Braunschwe¡9, Germany. Graduated in
1975, followed by a DAAD scholarship, graduate
stud¡es, and a post as teach¡ng ass¡stant at Cornell
Un¡versity, New York. 1979 master's degree ¡n arch¡-
tecture.1980 founded his own architecture studio
in Bonn, Germany. 1981 -83 vis¡ting associate profes-
sor at Virg¡nia Polytechnic lnst¡tute and State Uni-
vers¡ty, and the Washington Alexandr¡a Arch¡tecture
Center.1985-99 visiting lecturer, docent, and interim
professor at various universit¡es (Notre Dame
University, Rome; Stádelschule, Frankfurt; Bauhaus
University, Wéimar; Peter Behrens School, Düssel-
dorf; Univérsity of Appl¡ed Sc¡ences, Cologne).2009
closed his office in Bonn and moved to Starnberg,
Germany, to work as an architectural consultant,
mediator, and ¡ournal¡st.
FLORIAN HERTWECK
Born in Bonn ¡n'f975. Stud¡ed architecture and
the h¡story of art in Paris; master's degree ¡n
arch¡tecture 2001, ¡n h¡story of art 2003, PhD 2007.
2OO6-Og guest professor at the École Nationale
Supérieure d'Arch¡tecture Par¡s-Malaqua¡s. Since
2009 professor of arch¡tectural des¡gn, architectural
theory, and urban development at the École Nat¡onale
Supér¡eure d'Arch¡tecture de Versa¡lles. Member
of LIAT: Laborato¡re lnfrastructure, Arch¡tecture,
Terr¡to¡re at the École Nationale Supérieure
d'Architecture Paris-Malaquais and LEAV: Labora-
toire de l'École d'architecture de Versailles.
Currently engaged ¡n research on the turnaround
in the energy sector ("Les terr¡to¡res de I'énergie").
Since 2010 own architectural practice with
P¡erre-Alexandre Devernois in Versailles. Author
of Der Berliner Architekturstreit (2010) and
coed¡tor of C/r'mat(s) (20'12]-, an anthology about
architecture w¡th¡n the cond¡tions of climate
change.
SÉBASTIEN MARoT
Born in Paris in 196l.Trained ¡n phi¡osophy, he
holds a PhD ¡n h¡story from the École des Hautes
Études en Sc¡ences Soc¡ales, Paris.1987-2002
general delegate of the Soc¡été Franqa¡se des Arch¡-
tectes, where he ¡nit¡ated a ser¡es of public dis-
cussions on the history and crit¡cism of architecture.
Ch¡éf editor of the journal Le yísiteur from 1995
to 2003. A founding member of the École d'Architec-
ture de la Ville et des Territo¡res, Marne-la-Vallée,
where he teaches environmental h¡story and theory.
Lectureships and guest professorships at numerous
schools of arch¡tecture and landscape des¡gn in
Europe (Université de Genéve, Arch¡tectural Associ-
ation School of Arch¡tecture, London, ETH Zurich)
and North Amer¡ca (Haruard Un¡vers¡ty, University of
Pennsylvania, Cornell University). For his essays
and research work, wh¡ch led him to the Canad¡an
Center for Architecture ¡n Montréal in 2005, the
Académ¡e d'Arch¡tecture awarded him ¡ts Architec-
tural Critic¡sm Medal (2004) and its Architectural
Research Pr¡ze (2010). AuthoÍ of Sub-Urhanism and
the Art of Memory (2003), editor of Marnes: docu-
ments d'arch itecture (20111, and currently preparing
the publ¡cation of h¡s new book: Palr'mpsesfuous
Ithaca; A Relative Manífesto for Sub-Urbanism.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks go first to Sophia Ungers for her
trust and encouragement, as well as to Anja S¡bers-
Albers, and to Oswald Math¡as Ungers's former
secretary, Hilde Bailer, for her transcription of the
or¡g¡nal manuscr¡pt, Without full and act¡ve support
from the Ungers Arch¡ves, this publ¡cation could
not havé been produced,
Next, we wish to express our gratitude to the four
"evangel¡sts" whose narrat¡ves have been collected
here, and who were all, to various degrees, con-
tr¡butors to or coauthors of the man¡festo: Rem
Koolhaas, Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff, and Arthur
Ovaska. The t¡me they devoted to answering our
questions, along with the memories and documents
they shared w¡th us have considerably helped
and enr¡ched th¡s reed¡t¡on.
Help and advice was also provided at different
stages of the process by a number of other people,
¡ncluding colleagues and fr¡ends: Jasper Cepl,
Gerardo Brown-Manrique, James Westcott and
Stephan Petermann (both from OMA/AMO),
Petra Egebrecht (from the office of Hans Kollhoff),
Alejandro Lapunzina, Andrea and Manuel
Hertweck, Mar¡bel Casas, and Sophie Deramond.
Our thanks also go to the research laboratories
of the two schools of architecture at which we teach
in France-the OCS jn Marne-la-Vallée and the LEAV
in Versailles-and to the M¡n¡stére de la Culture et de
la Communicat¡on, for the financial support granted
to the publ¡cat¡on.
F¡nally, it is the personal dedication and maieut¡cs
of Lars Müller and his collaborators at Lars Müller
Publishers, part¡cularly Soph¡e Loschert, that have
enabled th¡s project to finally become ava¡lable
in three simultaneous ed¡tions. We therefore w¡sh
to express our fullest gratitude to them.
Flor¡an Hertweck and Sébastien Marot, April 2013

UAA UNGEFS ARCHIVES FOB ARCHITECTURAL

RESEARCH
The Ungers Arch¡ves for Arch¡tectural Research
was founded in Cologne in 1990 by Oswald Mathias
and Liselotte Ungers, lts cha¡rperson is Sophia
Ungers, director of research is Anja Sieber-Albers,
and Bernd Gr¡mm ¡s ¡ts art¡st¡c directon In add¡t¡on
to a comprehens¡ve library spanning 500 years
of architectural h¡story, the UAA also manages
the complete estate of Oswald Math¡as Ungers,
includ¡ng h¡s drawings and written documents
as well as the building complex on Belvéderestrasse
w¡th the office and res¡dential bu¡ld¡ng (built in
1959) and the extension for the l¡brary (built in 1990).
W¡th the Ex Libris lectures series, architects and
architectural h¡storians present and discuss books
chosen from the library. The UAA also organizes
summer academ¡es, workshops, and exhibitions and
ass¡sts PhD students and researchers with their
investigat¡ons. The UAA can be vis¡ted by appoint-
ment only.
THE CITY IN THE CITY IMAGE CREDITS
BERLIN: A GREEN ARCHIPELAGO
25 A) 2013, Éditions Allia, Par¡s
A manifesto (1977) by Oswald Math¡as Ungers and Rem Koolhaas 26i 27 a, bi 28a, bt 29a, b; 35a' b; 36c, 37 ; 38; 39a, b;
with Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff, and Arthur Ovaska 57; 58; 60b; 67; 133a, b, c, d, e,tl 145a'b, ci l46a' b' c;
154a, b; 156a, b; 164a, b, c' d @ UAA, Cologne
A critical ed¡tion by Flor¡an Hertweck and Sébastien Marot 31;63a O 2013, Prolitter¡s, Zurich
32 O Superstudio
Translations: French-English: Helen Ferguson ("Relaunch," "The Genes¡s 33a O photograph and photomontage: Horst Ziehten,
of a Hopeful Monster"), German-Engl¡sh: Sébast¡en Marot ("The City in Bad Münstereifel
the City" based on the first translat¡on published in Lotus), M¡chael Robinson 33b;135; 136a, b; l4l Q Rem Koolhaas
("Berlin lnfluences and Ram¡fications") 34a,b,ci 36a;67b;68a, b;141 O OMA
Copyedit¡ng: Danko Szabó 35c O Rita Wolff
Editorial office: Sophie Loschert 36b @ lmage by Elia zenghel¡s, courtesy of OMA
Design: lntegral Lars Müller/Lars Müller and Sebast¡an Fehr 40a,b@LéonKr¡er
Prepress: Ast & F¡scher, Wabern, Switzerland 41 a @ lmage by Madelon Vr¡esendorp, courtesy of OMA
Paper: 135 g/m2, Hello Fat Matt, 1.1 42a,bOAl¡ceDebord
Pr¡nt¡ng and binding: Kósel, Altusr¡ed-Krugzell, Germany 43 O Dan Grogan
56 a, b O Rob Kr¡er
O 2013 Lars Müller Publ¡shers, Zürich, and UAA Ungers Archives 59 O bpk/Kupf erstichkab¡nett, SMB/photomontage:
or Architectural Research, Cologne
f
Florian Hertweck
6Oa O Stiftung Preussische Schlósser und Gárten
No part of th¡s book may be used or reproduced in any form or manner Berlin-Brandenburg/photograph: Jórg P.Anders
whatsoever without prior written permiss¡on, except in the case of br¡ef 63b O Jan Utzon
quotat¡ons embod¡ed ¡n critical art¡cles and reviews. 63c @ Léon Krier
68c @ Collage for COW the udder waY
Lars Müller Publ¡shers von Gareth Morris (What ¡f: pro¡ects Ltd)
Sw¡tzerland, Zürich 69a O LIN - Finn Geipel/G¡ul¡a And¡
w,lars-mueller-publ¡shers.com 69b O Franz Oswald
tsBN 978-3-03778-326-9 158 q Hans Kollhoff/Dav¡d Griff¡n
160a, b, c O Hans Kollhoff
'162; 163a, b; 164a, b, c, d; 170a, b O Peter Riemann

Also ava¡lable from Lars Müller Publishers: The editors have endeavored to ident¡fy all copyr¡ght
holders and photographers. Should despite our
German version: ¡ntens¡ve research any person ent¡tled to rights have
Die Stadt in der Stadt - Berl¡n: ein grünes Arch¡pel been overlooked, leg¡timate cla¡ms shall be compen-
rsBN 978-3-03778-325-2 sated within the usual provision.

French version:
La ville dans la ville - Berlin: un archipel vert
tsBN 978-3-03778-329-0

Printed ¡n Germany

Published with the support of the French Ministére de la Culture

et de la Communication/Bureau de la recherche architecturale, urbaine
et paysagére

TX
Liberté .
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