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The “Golden City” has always been one of the most
important architectural centers of Europe. The present
architecture guide opens the door to the architecture
of this fascinating metropolis.
The chronologically sequence and the high-quality
photos graphically display the typical characteristic
of each era. In addition to several hundred individual
buildings, significant ensembles as well as the
influential architects of Prague and each epoch are
portrayed.
This sales blad contains sample pages in miniature.
The full specification for the book itself is:
Chris van Uffelen
Prague - The Architecture Guide
Softcover
w x h: 5 1 /4 x 9 1 /2 in. | 13.5 x 24 cm
368 pages, 450 illustrations
ISBN 978-3-03768-112-1
Also available in this series
ISBN 978-3-03768-030-8
ISBN 978-3-03768-002-5 ISBN 978-3-938780-09-1 PRAGUE THE ARCHITECTURE GUIDE
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Chris van Uffelen
THE
ARCHITECTURE
GUIDE
PRAGUE

162
Continuing Chaos – the Post-War Period
1945–1961 (263)
Today, there is still a conflicting relationship
to the Berlin architecture in the postwar
years. The so-called reconstruction
has been rightly called a “second destruction”
of the city. Yet a considerable number
of these buildings have since been
raised to the status of architectural monuments.
From an architectural point of
view, they often have little in common
with each other as shown with the comparison
of the “Hansa Quarter” (see no.
296) cityscape, kept in the modern style,
with the monumental “Stalinallee” mainline
(Nos. 274, 289, 297), which speaks a
traditionalist language which National
Socialism also used before. Its function
also does not necessarily permit inference
to the developers: the Hansa Quarter
as a prestigious object of West Berlin
is a social residential area, Stalinallee
as the “first address” of the apparently
“anti-imperialistic” “workers’ and farmers’
state” an imperial splendour mile.
In fact, the chaos that prevailed after
1945 is reflected in all these refractions.
The former Reich capital was “the largest
contiguous area of ruins in Europe”.
Around 40 percent of the living space
was destroyed, two thirds of the city centre
in ruins – in particular to the south of
the Memorial Church (no. 302), between
Potsdamer Platz and Ostbahnhof.
The first reconstruction plans were
also subject to psychological paralysis.
The consequence from the catastrophe of
the Second World War, it was said, could
only be dealt with by means of a radical
break with the past. Large parts of the old
city in which society’s memory had become
a fixed pillar were to fall victim to
this thinking.
With regard to the formation of the
future, there was a lack of conception,
though, which is shown not least by the
most radical design of these years: the
collective plan, which Hans Scharoun
(no. 281) introduced as the first Berlin
senior government building officer after
the war, did not succeed in creating a new
aimed-for identity in terms of urban development.
Air raids and disassembly
had reduced the economic capacity of the
once largest industrial metropolis of the
continent by 85 percent. Of the 4.3 million
Berliners (1939), hardly more than
2.3 million remained.
Tangibles in the west, ideology in the east: the Marshall Plan and “National Development Work”.
Only the Marshall Plan introduced in
1947, the goal of which was an economic
and subsequent political consolidation of
Western Europe, brought about change.
The American aid programme totalling
billions did not just revitalise the economy:
with material prosperity, it was possible
to remove the NS ideology as well
and, at the same time, it was to serve a
policy of “containment” of communist influence.
In the cultural sector, too, there
were efforts to contain nationalism: the
influence was again the modernism (see
no. 210) of the Weimar Republic which
now returned to Germany as an “international
style” from America. The West’s
desire to be new again was typified in the
virginal white of the residential communities.
For the Soviet occupying power, however,
the communist society was the logical
consequence of history. Since the
sympathisers of this utopia had the power
but no democratic or material basis,
(the latter even being undermined by
the USSR by its dismantling and clearing
activities) they developed suggestive
dialectics: “National in form, socialistic
in content” which should enable the revolution
to succeed. This meant that as
part of the “national construction work”
(no. 296), workers’ palaces, educational
temples and countless monuments were
built to promote the way of the East towards
a different Germany.
At least, the competition between both
systems had a positive effect for Berlin:
building was done with twice the energy.
But at the same time the conflict of interests
of the superpowers prevented a
mutual policy. And what is more: in 1948,
as a consequence of the Berlin blockade,
there was a division of the city government.
Berlin developed into an international
crisis hotspot. Finally, when the
Berlin Wall was built in 1961, this indicated
that it was not only in town planning
that the ideological differences had
become insurmountable. hwh
163
306
Hans Scharoun
*1893 in Bremerhaven, †1972 in Berlin (281)
“...make a world out of the smallest part.”
Hans Scharoun 1954
In his outlook for the year 2008, the
editor-in-chief of the architecture magazine,
Baumeister, recently saw a few older
people standing near the Philharmonic
Hall. They are holding tattered slides
up to the wind with the demand that the
culture forum be completed in accordance
to Hans Scharoun’s plans! For this
fiction it needed little fantasy: there really
is a Scharoun society. That it also acts
as a caller in the desert fits in with an ar-
Botschaft des
Königreiches der Niederlande (497)
Embassy of the
Kingdom of the Netherlands
2001
Klosterstraße 49–50
Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA),
Rem Koolhaas
You’d never believe the little Netherlands
to be capable of so much extravagance.
Off the Diplomatenviertel in the Tiergarten,
the embassy of the neighbouring
country resides near to the water in
Rolandufer in Mitte. The building fits externally
into the local block development;
however, it breaks with all other conventions.
A narrow strip, in which the apartments
of the embassy members are located,
borders on to the compartment
walls of the neighbouring buildings and
is separated from the actual residence
through a courtyard. This transparent
building part accommodates the representation
and studies of the ambassador
and is accessible in an unusual way. Instead
of storeys, which are one on top of
the other and reachable by stairways and
lifts, the folded split-levels are reached
1989–2005
chitect who created countless exceptional
buildings – but no complete artwork
which would have been continued. Hans
Scharoun always stood as solid as a rock.
He was born in 1893 in Bremerhaven
as the child of a trader who was always
suspicious of the artistic tendencies of
his son. He found the first encouragement
of his talent from the neighbouring
family of the architect Georg Hoffmeyer,
whose daughter Scharoun would later
marry. He completed his first plans at
school: the seventeen year old boy gave
the Bremen senior government building
through a passageway which runs
through all eight floors to the roof terraces.
This serves as air circulation at the
same time. The study of the Netherlands
ambassador overhangs like a gazebo:
with a free look across the quiet water of
the River Spree.
Deutsches Historisches Museum
Erweiterungsbau (498)
German Historical Museum
Extension building
2003
Hinter dem Gießhaus/ Unter den Linden 2
Ieoh Ming Pei
The museum was so close to the heart of
the former chancellor, Helmut Kohl, that
he immediately commissioned the architects
with the extension building himself
without any prior competition. The twopart
new building with its triangular
ground plan, located in Am Festungsgraben,
supplements the baroque arsenal
(no. 16), in which the museum had
been housed to date. A glazed round tower
building crowns the new part of the
building, which serves to develop the
subsequent exhibition wing, with its entrance,
rotunda and stairway and corresponds
to the conventional museum typology.
While the entrance area with its
glassy transparency articulates an invitation
to the public, the facade of the exhibition
area is clad in natural stone. A
tunnel combines the new building with
the historical arsenal, whose beautiful
ARCHITECTS OF THIS PERIOD
officer “fundamental considerations for
the connection of land and sea”.
He was not able to complete his architecture
studies, which he started in
1912 at the Charlottenburg Technical College,
because he was conscripted at the
start of World War One. During the war,
Scharoun was appointed assistant head
of the building consultation office in Insterburg/East
Prussia and dealt with the
reconstruction of destroyed East Prussian
towns. A member of the expressionistic
“Gläserne Kette”, a group of artists
founded by Bruno Taut from the end of
the war, from 1925–1932 he was a professor
at the State Academy of Art and
Applied Arts in Breslau but remained focussed
on Berlin, where he opened his office
in 1926 and joined the architects’ association
“Der Ring”, which also included
Walter Gropius and Hugo Häring. With
the latter, the mentor of organic building,
he remained associated all his life.
For the German Werkbund he made
several contributions, including in 1927
for the building exhibition at Stuttgart
Weissenhof.
In Berlin, he designed part of the
Siemensstadt large residential area: individual
lines stretch into the sea of trees
in Jungfernheide. A typical characteristic
of Scharoun’s architecture is the use of
maritime motifs such as rails and portholes,
like with the bachelors’ house at
Kaiserdamm (no. 203). Ship quotes and
city hostility are completely typical of the
period here. The unique thing is reflected
in the varied ground plans. They are
therefore more individual than the architecture
of these years, which was primarily
aligned towards collective needs. In
this period Scharoun found his very own
theme – understanding the individual as
the centre of architecture: in 1932 fourteen
villas were constructed full of refractions
and material variations. Only the inhabitants
function as a fixed point of the
buildings (see Haus Baensch no. 227).
It is obvious that Scharoun’s subjectcentred
architecture would have to come
into conflict with the concept of art of the
National Socialists. This is why he limited
his activities to the construction of private
detached houses during the Third
Schlüter courtyard, named after the architect
of the Baroque period, is covered
by a glass roof again as it was before.
Institut für Physik
der Humboldt-Universität (499)
The Institute for Physics
at the Humboldt University
2003
Newtonstraße 15
Augustin & Frank
The Institut für Physik is the most prominent
project of the ambitious architects
Augustin und Frank. The Berlin architects,
who were still really young, interpreted
the building, which was almost a
hectare, made up of special laboratories,
lecture rooms, study rooms and offices,
which the competition from 1998 demanded,
as a labyrinth. However, from
the outside, the building shows an elaborate
transparency: the view breaks
through distorted ornamental supports
made from wood, bamboo plants, wicker
boxes, servicing bridges and room-sized
glazing, in order to remain clinging to
sloping neon lights and indirectly lit
coloured walls. Instinctively, the visitor
remains standing, looks, is amazed and is
barely cleverer than before at the end: as
the actual experiments, which take place
in the North of the complex, remain hidden
behind frosted glass.
Kommunikationszentrum
der Humboldt-Universität (500)
Communication Centre at the
Humboldt University
2003
Rudower Chaussee 26
Daniel Gössler
Residing in the midst of the science city
of Adlershof, the accommodation of the
THE NEW BERLIN
Reich. The festival halls, railway stations
and communal palaces which Scharoun
designed for himself during the Second
World War, however, make it evident that
his architecture must also be seen as an
attempt at a new social model. But above
all, they radiate an optimism which is astonishing
when we consider what was
happening at the time.
So Scharoun became the man for Zero
Hour. As the first post-war senior government
building officer of Berlin, he presented
in 1946 the (later mistakably
titled) “Collective Plan”. The plan he elaborated
with a group of young architects
provided for the creation of a new town
structure coming from the position of
Berlin in the glacial valley between Barnim
and Teltow. Only the historic Unter
den Linden street of houses and individual
historic buildings were to remain.
The entire rest of the structural legacy
was there to be used. The fundamental
idea is the design of a “city band” which,
running parallel to the Spree, would combine
all political, economic and cultural
functions. The motorways which were to
pass through the cityscape were going
to be created in terms of North American
chess board road patterns. It was the
most radical break with all townplanning
tradition. Scharoun visualised
individual freedom and a new beginning
– and therefore fulfilled the wishes of
many people, especially in the West. But
ultimately his plan was so subversive
that it could not be implemented.
Hans Scharoun is seen as an intellectual
authority for this reason alone.
Already in 1946, he was no more than the
town planning professor at the Berlin
Technical University. He remained President
of the Academy of Arts until 1968.
During this period, he built a great deal,
but always in solitary projects. The highlight
of his achievements is the Philharmonie
Hall at the Kulturforum (no. 307).
This provides the best evidence of the
rich collective experiences which his
anthropocentric architecture enabled.
hwh
HU computer pool and their library
grew to the Kommunikationszentrum. To
house this, there was initially only the
former energy central from the times of
the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt
(no. 230) on the plot of land. The
Hamburg architect Daniel Gössler received
the commission because he preserved
the long scales according to a type
of basilica and interlocked it closely with
the new L-shaped strip made from charcoal
grey zinc plates. Before the ambulatory-like
diagonal wing, there is room for
a light-grey auditorium cube as well as a
veritable reception area. At the rear, the
central square of the lowered reading
room is included. In the rear part of the
red-painted old building, the study areas
of the library are situated today, in front,
the cafeteria for the entire campus.
Haus Knauthe (501)
Knauthe House
2000
Leipziger Platz 10
Axel Schultes Architekten
The Haus Knauthe is the only building on
Leipziger Platz which has a private owner
– a fact which is reflected in the architecture.
Since where with economically
surface-optimised office buildings, every
visitor finds it hard to catch their breath
as soon as they enter, the house no. 10 is
presented in a more generous flair. The
entrance area receives visitors with a
bistro and leads to a rear part of the building,
whose glass surfaces themselves
provide the daylight in the depth of the
plot. Circular segment and curves are the
basic forms, which have been set on all
storeys against the strongly, orthogonal
173
307