The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

THE INNER STUDIO
come to symbolize the standoff between superpowers. As with
many walls, we may never know who designed it–it was not a work
of beauty but a line of war, violence, danger, and irreconcilable
hatred between enemies. It was a place that separated right from
wrong. The Berlin Wall showed the world where superpowers meet
and how they meet. It was an ugly standoff; a world-sized symbol
of harm and separation that proved no compromise was possible.
It also happened to be an enormous concrete and steel wall with
armed guards that divided a city. And instead of seeing the oftthreatened
war of mutual destruction, we saw the wall come
tumbling down in a youthful burst of liberating energy. The
divided city of Berlin was made whole in an intoxicating celebration
that was like some kind of ritual. I felt the almost archetypal
power of a wall as symbol activated and I wondered what these
images would mean for all of us who had lived with walls and separation
not of our choosing.
A wall is an ordinary thing. Without walls we would not be able
to make rooms. We would not be able to divide space or separate
activities or have privacy. We would have no place to put our
windows and doors. At one time walls were not easily built or
removed; many towns and countries owed their safe existence to a
strong stone wall. Successive walls measure some cities as generations
of inhabitants renewed their safety by rebuilding each wall
ever further from the core of the town. Today a wall is not a realistic
way of defending ourselves from military attack. But we remain
dependent on walls for psychological protection and emotional
safety. With psychological walls come the idea of boundaries, divisions,
and separation as well as the possibility of breakthroughs
and openings.
As I watched the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989, I
wondered if something inside us might also be changing, that an
internal shift was now possible. Perhaps all of us who saw the
images of the Berlin Wall collapsing understood that no matter what
beliefs we had built, no matter how deeply held a particular attitude,
or how much public effort we had made to convince ourselves
and our enemies of our righteousness, our position was not permanent
and could never be secure. The Berlin Wall was the greatest
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