PIANO AT POTSDAMER PLATZ
Renzo Piano	Site	Berlin, Germany	January 1999
Renzo Piano’s brave and humane attempt to make a new piece of city on the virtually blank debis site at Potsdamer Platz is shown here. Click on image to view larger version in new window
As in traditional cities, the spaces of the debis site vary greatly. Each architect has made a particular contribution, with Isozaki and Lehmann’s work offering a taste of Gotham City in drag, Moneo being discreetly Rationalist and Piano offering his new delicate filigreed urban architecture as a continuo against which all other parts are seen. His Marlene Dietrich Platz (pp31, 33 and here) in the middle of the site is intended to be the focus of past and present. It is a pedestrian space which has been described as every German’s idealized vision of Italy, urbane but without the washing lines. It is most unlike the grandiose flatulence of Hohenzollern, Nazi or Rationalist PoMo Berlin (pp28-30). Our photographs do not do it full justice (we do not blame the photographer who had to cope with many difficult problems in getting these pictures so early). But pictures 3 and 4 give an impression of a space that seems over-blown compared to the reality of a welcoming and kindly place. A balance between public and private space is Piano’s aim. Hence the enclosed shopping gallery and the Marlene Dietrich Platz. The arcade is a new kind of space for Berlin, though it has a distinguished modern tradition in Hamburg, AR June 1981 (the developers of some of the glazed Hamburg arcades are the proprietors of this one). It may look a bit like a conventional mall (though detailing and space handling is of a completely different order to most American ones). But it is in the middle of the great city: this is no suburban diversion. Here, vast crowds mill about as they did in the 1920s. Our pictures were taken just after the building opened and before it was discovered by Berliners as a sheltered place for shopping right in the middle of the city. Perhaps it will give the slowly re-awakening cyanosed corpse of a city a heartbeat and lifeblood. Piano has invented a generous civic architecture of terracotta and glass. It can be, by turns, place-making, kindly and formal. But on the huge debis site, there are passages of dullness (look at the flank of his debis headquarters building right in 10). Such unostentatious moments are perhaps inevitable in any piece of city generated by modern monopoly capitalism, which can command huge tracts of land and devote them to single uses. But in general, his buildings are generous and responsive to the few clues the razed site offered. Key criteria for generating the new Potsdamer Platz (particularly the debis site) have been minimizing energy use and pollution. The buildings are planned to make most use of daylight (by having shallow floor plates) and to reduce heating and cooling – for instance the debis headquarters has double skins to contain a layer of tempered air so that when office windows are opened, air at extreme temperatures will not be drawn in (AR January 1998). Individually controllable mechanical ventilation is available in all offices, but humidifiers and de-humidifiers are banned. Chilled ceilings are provided in areas of unusual heat production. High thermal insulation leads to buildings that are expected to run at 70kWh/m2. All these measures reduce primary energy consumption by 50 per cent compared with normally air-conditioned buildings. Heating for the whole area is from a combined heat and power distribution centre, which most unusually also supplies cooling in summer. Rainwater is used to irrigate landscaping, and for lavatories; the scheme is intended to save 20 000m3 of water a year. Construction materials were chosen to minimize pollution: for instance bio-degradable plant oil was required on all shuttering. Building so much so fast in the city centre could have seriously disrupted urban life. As far as possible, earth and rubbish have been removed by water (the Landwehr canal) or rail (the old goods-yards of the Potsdamer and Anhalter stations were converted to be vast materials handling depots, where waste was temporarily dumped and materials could be stored waiting to go on site). Lorries were allowed only in exceptional circumstances; savings in daily road traffic are estimated at 1700 lorries. Architect Renzo Piano Building Workshop/ C. Kohlbecker Design team B. Plattner, associate in charge R. Baumgarten, A. Chaaya, P. Charles, G. Ducci, M. Kramer, N. Mecattaf, J. Moolhuijzen, J. B. Mothes, M. Busk Petersen, J. Ruoff, M. van der Staay, E. Volz, E. Audoye, G. Borden, C. Brammen, D. Drouin, B. Eistert, M. Hartmann, O. Hempel, M. Howard, W. Matthews, G. M. Maurizio, D. Miccolis, M. Pimmel, S. Stacher, M. Veltcheva, J. Krolicki (stage); P. Furnemont and C. Colson (models) Kohlbecker collaborators: J. Barnbrook, H. Falk, A. Hocher, R. Jatzke, M. Kohlbecker, M. Lindner, N. Nocke, A. Schmid, W. Spreng Technical consultants Ingenieurgemeinschaft IGH/Ove Arup & Partners, Schmidt Reuter Partner; Ingenieurgemeinschaft Boll & Partners, Ingenieurgemeinschaft IBF (Dr Falkner), Weiske & Partner (statics); Müller BBM (physics); Hundt & Partner (extraction); IBB Burrer, Ove Arup & Partners (electrical engineering); Möhrle & Kruger (landscaping) Facades Götz Ltd Photographs Werner Huthmacher 6 and p35 Reinhard Görner V. Mosch