persistent crossing
reconstruction | oberbaumbrücke by calvin chiu
bridges cold war ber l in memory reunification
bridging Berlin’s conflicting desires
Since 1997 , every evening from dusk till 1am, Thorsten Goldberg’s neon light installation Rock-paper-scissors has illuminated the central span of the Oberbaum Bridge over the Spree in Berlin. ‘Two individuals face each other and try to come to a decision which engenders neither argumentation nor violence.’ 1 The visual message that Goldberg has attached between two steel sections of the partly neo-Gothic and partly contemporary steel structure reminds spectators that Berlin was once a battleground of ideologies. ‘Each aspect of the Oberbaum Bridge’, Goldberg suggests, ‘exemplifies a segment of Berlin’s history’. 2 Fuelled by warfare, regime changes, social movements, foreign impacts and counter cultures, the construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of the Oberbaum Bridge reflect the complex collective memory, cultural identity and political conscience of Berliners ever since it became an urban icon in 1896. On the 9th of November in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The Oberbaum Bridge, a former Cold War barricade between the districts of Friedrichstain in East Berlin and Kreuzberg in the West, was immediately scheduled for restoration. Any type of design competition to transform the seriously deteriorated bridge into innovative architecture was ruled out. What was looked for was a touch of respect to Berlin’s troubled past, as well as a symbolic and physical reconnection between the divided landscapes. The ruined neo-Gothic towers that had long been
Berlin’s eastern gateway were to be reconstructed with a level of authenticity that would require original materials to be salvaged from the riverbed. Restricted by the conservation of the towers and the existing brick bridge structure, Santiago Calatrava redesigned the bridge’s central bay and its upper railway viaduct. Out of Calatrava’s schemes, a calmer solution was chosen to ‘attain the relatively unified image of a fairly constant arch rhythm’ 3 that links the two existing halves. Engineering firm Wachendorf, Konig & Partner was responsible for the new concrete road deck for tram, car and pedestrian traffic. The conflicting desires to differentiate the current adminis- tration from previous regimes, to reconnect with prewar Germany and to enhance a new identity of unification make the Oberbaum Bridge a political declaration of the new nation, as if a unified Germany could only come with the price of openly remembering its uneasy past. Norman Foster’s glass dome atop Reichstag signifies the transparency of the new regime. Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe commemorates war victims near the imperialist Brandenburg Gate. Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum emerges as an anti-statement of Semitism. Renzo Piano’s Daimler complex, Helmut Jahn’s Sony Center, and other new constructions at Potsdamer Platz attempt to resurrect the long-lost bourgeois life of central Berlin, upon a ghost landscape which had long been converted into a no man’s land. Most of the new construction in the 1990s has been built on existing urban
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