REFLECTIVE SPACE
Berlin is a burdened city. It represents many aspects of both gone and present societies. Or so it seems. The present spatial appearance of the city in general, especially of the gendered western parts, doesn’t really match its literary image.
There’s one particular place though, a stretch of apparantly wasted land, that seems to represent this supposed historical and literary meaning of Berlin at an almost physical level. At this stretch of land, where the river Spree and the infamous Berlin Wall meet and the railroad from Paris to Moscow crosses the border, nothing happens. And that is its most important programmatical quality. The vacuity of program and activity in relation to the place’s thematical burdens seems to annotate the present Berlin. It evokes a need for reflection. Reflection as a point of departure for the future (re-)development of the city of Berlin.
Architecture accommodates reflection.
In the center of the metropolis one dissociates oneself from the city in order to distinguish its historical and thematical fundaments. Nothingness could stimulate thinking. Nothingness will be the functional program to be elaborated in an architectural design that explores a possible present meaning of architecture in the city of Berlin.
