Search Results

This introductory chapter summarizes this volume's arguments, as well as the particular case studies which will be the subject of each individual chapter. It also details the scope of the study, which encompasses a large number of case studies in order to demonstrate the reach of counterpreservation beyond a few anecdotal or exceptional examples and leave room for examination in diverse spatial, programmatic, and urban conditions. The chapter also discusses the scholarly approach this book tackles as a whole, in order to give insight into a spatial practice that pops up across the city and even beyond it. In doing so the chapter raises the question which forms the heart of this book—why people in Berlin want to live, work, perform, and play in decrepit buildings when they could either renovate their buildings with their own hands, or, in some cases, afford to live in renovated ones.

This chapter is a conceptual discussion of counterpreservation. It defines the term in more detail and explores its connections with relevant theoretical and critical works. The word “counterpreservation” here serves to identify, analyze, and aggregate tendencies present in a range of examples, indicating coincident social processes and convergent cultural meanings. Thus, the chapter first focuses on Berlin and its particular attitudes toward the decay and repurposing of old buildings, examining how these architectural practices echo three issues that have defined the city since 1989: gentrification, historical memory, and unification. The chapter then moves beyond the city of Berlin to describe how counterpreservation functions in myriad forms through other urban settings and landscapes.

This chapter tests the concept of counterpreservation against two ruins of a more recent past: structures built by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and called into question after unification. One of them, the now-demolished Palace of the Republic, exemplifies counterpreservation in a different form—not as the display of picturesquely crumbling façades, but as new interventions and installations set into the gutted shell of a former Socialist civic center. The second structure is the Berlin Wall as it is preserved and memorialized in the Berlin Wall Memorial Grounds on Bernauer Straẞe, built between 2007 and 2014. The centerpiece of the memorial grounds (and the reason for their being there) is a long, decaying section of the Wall, complemented by a constellation of remains and archaeological findings related to the border fortifications.

This concluding chapter considers whether counterpreservation was first and foremost a socio-architectural phenomenon specific to Berlin during the Wende, even if it could be applied to other places. In doing so the chapter also considers whether there can be “an architecture of change,” of transience, alongside the impulse to build stable and enduring cities and buildings. Counterpreservation is a step toward a conceptual exploration in this direction, even if it cannot account for all of the aspects of an architecture of change, which would involve issues that go beyond historic structures. Here, the chapter sketches what such a broader investigation might look like, providing preliminary explorations that point to a direction where the present study might unfold.