   2 Dec 2008 @ 22:48, by Heiner Benking
A Forum, Market/Mall, Museum, Bauhütte, Bürgerturm or Extraterritorial Space in Borderland ?
Stretching and Squeezing the Agora – The castle-forum in Berlin, a new shopping mall behind old facades?
A Forum, Market/Mall, Museum, Bauhütte, Bürgerturm or Extraterritorial Space in Borderland ?
Stretching and Squeezing the Agora – The castle-forum in Berlin, a new shopping mall behind old facades?
The first prize in Berlin's design competition for rebuilding the demolished Berlin Schloß in the center of the city – opposite the Dom and close to the Alexander Platz – was presented yesterday in the Kronprinzen Palais. As you can see: the royal places and buildings are „in" nowadays in Berlin, some people say they have been misses by the people, and have left deep wounds in the city-scape which need to be filled appropriately.
See some pictures and articles:
Mythos Germania - Francesco Stella, the competition winner - Die Bauzeitung 2001 - Schlossplatzkonzepte 2001 - Die WELT online, can be expensive: - "nun ist aber Schloss" a readers letter in Tagesspiegel
As some readers might have followed the heated discussion over the years, which included the destruction of the East German Parliament to make place, the history of the DDR removing the ruins of the bombed old castle, the stipulation of rebuilding the castle facades only, but inviting new functions and facilities like a couple of museums, the Humboldt Forum, AND an Agora !
Looking at the winning design, I was a little shocked. It is not only that the historic design and the difficulties to paste modern infrastructure and uses are very disaparate, just think about the levels of the windows and how they match with the new floor levels. So the idea of Potemkin Villages comes up – just facades, a camouflage of that is really there (even when fitting perfectly the historic) townscape) see: Alfred Schinz - Stadtschicksal Berlin, if you to dig deeper. Potemkin Villages in reality were real and it was only because of political rumors that the future generations think it was fake – when as we know now, these villages were outstanding achievements of Potemkin for his Czar.
Given this sensibility about form, shape and function I am a little biased, but compromised and settled with the decision to rebuild the historic facades. So far so good. So let us look now at the price-winner architectural design. It has lots of pros and I STRONGLY recommend the official presentations and documents. But one item caught my attention.
For me the Agora is THE CENTRAL HUB of a community, and so I was expecting easy access to its „ center square" where people could meet, assemble, exchange and celebrate their „unity in diversity". See: Dialog among Civilizations. But what do I find on the floor map? A stretched, squeezed Agora, maybe an alley for many shops, maybe the architects confused Agora with Mall?
The need to have a place for the people to assemble was very fiercely debated over the last years. See the Bürgerturm Design or how the old East German Parliament should be the Peoples Place – not Palace. It seems okay for me now to have a place for all the Museums to be brought together in the Humboldt Forum, but I feel the potential of the Agora or at least how a „New Agora" could be better supported.
My objective here is to not only to serve community, and help to look for places to meet for all different kinds of people today, not just a place where the old museum artifacts assemble in silence.
I think also that me can reinvent democracy and do virtual processes as well, see Obama’s recent statements on inclusion and bottom-up participatory ways and means.
Again, I am biased here, as I met the people who work on a „New Agora" to Harness the Wisdom of the People. These people have an incomparable track-record over 40 years in searching for participative, normative and prognostic futures. Please see the „Retrospective Structural Inquiry of the Predicament of Mankind Prospectus of the Club of Rome" (2005, in C. West Churchman Legacy, Janet McIntire Mills, ed., Kluwer-Springer).
There is a need to bring the ideas together and check the terms being used (wording versus meaning), the values and proportions and consequences connected to it (see Hans Jonas: Ethics with Space and Time horizon), and contexts, situations presented in deliberations, the concrete clarification of the positions, angle, perspectives, focus, so assumptions and expectation become more real and so can be more fairly „negotiated“.
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