Planwerk Innenstadt, Berlin
Core idea
Repairing blocks, streets, urban fabric
Why it matters
Shift from tabula rasa to urban repair
Description
Planwerk Innenstadt, adopted by the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development in 1999, was a framework plan for the reunified inner city on both sides of the former Wall. Associated with building director Hans Stimmann and the doctrine of critical reconstruction, it proposed repairing the pre-war pattern of blocks, streets and squares, re-establishing traditional street walls, plot structures and eaves heights across areas fragmented by wartime destruction and post-war modernist planning.
Significance
The plan marked a decisive shift from tabula rasa redevelopment to urban repair as the guiding idea for the European city centre, and it framed Berlin's post-reunification rebuilding. It provoked intense debate between defenders of the modernist East Berlin legacy and advocates of the traditional city, making it a touchstone in arguments over reconstruction, memory and urban form.
What shaped it
- The Architecture of the City (1966)
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
- Fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)
- Genius Loci (Norberg-Schulz) (1979)
- Postmodernism in architecture & planning (1977)
Sources
- https://www.planning.org/planning/2015/mar/berlin.htm
- https://www.udg.org.uk/publications/articles/my-favourite-plan-berlin-planwerk-innenstadt-1999