What do New York and Los Angeles have that Berlin does not?

        This is at least how the Berlin architect’s office Metropolis, having dealt thoroughly with the finesse of urban architecture in a metropolis, understands the term. In a lecture at the "European Study Centre of St. Anthony’s College" in Oxford for a highly reputed audience, comparisons were drawn between the architecture of New York, Los Angeles and Berlin. For the Berlin architects, New York, the huge city on the Hudson River, shows in a particular way that "splendour and myth are based on quite simple conditions". Manhattan, the heart of New York, is characterised by – with the exception of the diagonal orientation of the Broadway - a regular pattern of blocks and streets surrounding the big open area of Central Park. The skyline radiates the charm of this city. The river as a natural boundary around Manhattan enhances this unique city profile - seen from the opposite coast, the skyline increases the sense of distance. It is this skyline that made New York unique from an architectural point of view. The architects show in their lecture that its origins are based on fantastic designs designed for the metropolitan fun fair on the entertainment island "Coney Island". It is only through these designs that Manhattan’s visionary architectural culture was made possible.

        For people all over the world, New York embodies the vertical orientation of a city. Virtually without any compromise it has been realised as a "centre city" with rising spaces and steep ravines.

        According to the Berlin architects, the myth of Los Angeles' urban architecture is based on opposite phenomena. "In Los Angeles, the horizontal dominates. The wide, flat landscape, the boundless expanses..." Space becomes ineffective. The image of a city, so clearly defined in New York, becomes indistinct in Los Angeles. And this imprecise architectural giant is growing. "Los Angeles expands more and more every day and reclaims new pieces of land from the desert."

        The vacuum of a clear architectural image is filled by Hollywood's fiction. This is the reign of myths, of the fantastic, which is not visible in the architectural form of the metropolis. In Hollywood, the "American Dream" is produced in an infinite variety and is eventually exported to the whole world. From a creative point of view, this dream consists of a simple dimension: a house, a garden and, as the Metropolis architects emphasise, ironically, "the American landscape" in front of it. The increased realisation of this dream of space in the cityscape of Los Angeles shows how consistently people try to live this desire. Houses and green spaces almost everywhere. What seems bourgeois and narrow-minded gains dramatically in value in the paintings of Edward Hopper. He stylises landscape and private architecture to be the model of a whole society. The question the Berlin architects put to their audience in Oxford is certainly legitimate: "Is Los Angeles the garden city of the twenty-first century?"

        Finally Berlin. Having said that New York is the prototype of a centre and Los Angeles of a periphery, according to the “Metropolis” architects, these clear concepts cannot be used to characterise Berlin. History has continued to change the city and the remaining architecture of the past centuries shows this vividly. "Berlin's old centre was periphery before the coming down of the Wall and after this it was suddenly meant to become the centre again. Today, only a few places in Berlin’s cityscape are unambiguous." And this is exactly the dilemma. Or, putting the conflict in other terms: "Berlin has never had a defined, physical focal point. Berlin possesses, if at all, a centre with main foci that have shifted continuously throughout the course of its history." After the collapse of the Wall, Berlin's centre appears to the architects as a "maltreated city body made up of the remains of bygone times." Despite this conflict of architectural disunity, soon after the Wall came down, hopes and desires arose: politically, economically and, above all, speculatively. This new euphoria became most clearly visible at the Potsdamer Platz, which was once a dense traffic junction and waste land during the period of the Wall. Today acclaimed as "Europe’s biggest building site", it already gives an idea of what the future holds. "The city structure seems to wear a suit that is turned out on the short side" is the impression the architects’ team got after the first completed stages of construction. The speculative element is too evident: "One feels that this city quarter is going to exploit every square inch to the utmost." Creativity and authenticity are not involved. According to the Metropolis architects, a virtuosic architecture did not even have much of a chance because before the tender there was no forum dedicated to the fantastic as a creative idea. New York got its unique metropolitan character only through the projection of the bizarre and fantastic. In Berlin there was no time for it. But there are still important areas in the German capital where the architectural game is not yet decided: The Schloßplatz is one of them. One of Berlin’s biggest architectural challenges awaits. The politicians did not include this area in their plans for the capital since, with the exception of the ministerial use of one building of the former East German government, they are orientated more westerly towards the former Reichstag and the new Bundestag, the German Parliament. Metropolis regards the design of the Schloßplatz as a chance to avoid previous errors. Situated opposite one of the most beautiful buildings in Berlin, the Altes Museum, built by Karl Friedrich Schinkel as the conclusion of the unique building ensemble of the Museumsinsel and in the light of the public debate as to whether to demolish the Palast der Republik and rebuild the old castle, the building to be planned should be dignified with regard to its aesthetics as well as content. What the Metropolis architects have in mind is "something quite unlike a castle, but rather a self-confident ensemble of buildings, a modern attitude towards the city". They quote an example of the architect Benedict Tonon who designed a building idea like a "magic play of letters". Original architecture grows out of these imaginations. We remember the example of Coney Island. Metropolis suggests using such an authentic building at the Schloßplatz as a Centre of Eastern European Cultures. "The walkways in the buildings should, as in a mysterious labyrinth, lead us to unknown treasures." A bold suggestion, not meant to be an affront to western policy. It is supposed to be a stimulus to encourage us to reflect on urban planning in Berlin which assigned the new functions of the capital mainly to the former western part. In addition, those responsible did not quite understand the period of new departure Berlin is going through as a chance for a forum for fantastic architecture. The Berlin architect’s office agrees that a real metropolis would have used this opportunity for visionary planning ideas.