"Berlin is in the process of unofficial self-creation because what was officially planned collapsed: the city is nearly 60 billion euros in debt. Totalitarian central planning according to the Western capitalist model failed, and people started to think, “I’m glad that it didn’t work because now I have an opportunity to make Berlin into a city of my own.” Each generation should be able to build its own city"
Excerpt from an interview with Kyong Park, founder of Storefront for Art & Architecture in NYC, who now is something of a theologian of architecture as the ultimate memory.
His thought here really nails EXACTLY what i felt about Berlin when I visted last winter - it was a place that I could make my own - and instead of accepting the architecture and “plan” for my city as it existed, I could work with it myself…. I could make it home (it’s a bit of my nesting complex writ large)….
From the January 2006 Metropolis, “The Dark Side of Architecture”
