Berliner Stadtmodelle

"Berliner Stadtmodelle" (Berlin City Models) showcases fifteen influential residential complexes, tracing the evolution of housing construction in Berlin from the late nineteenth century to the 1980s. The Hobrecht Plans stone city serves as the starting point for examining the reforms, alternative designs, and further developments that occurred during five epochs of Berlins recent urban development history. The publication showcases projects that addressed the social and urban planning challenges of their time, ranging from Alfred Messels redesigned apartment buildings to early modernist cooperative housing and the programmatic buildings of Stalinallee and Hansaviertel, as well as urban renewal projects within the framework of the IBA 1987. Plan drawings, axonometric projections, urban planning parameters, and accompanying essays make the projects comprehensible and comparable. Photographs by Berlin-based architectural photographer Maximilian Meisse show how the presented urban models have aged and which qualities have proven useful in todays urban spaces. The book offers a nonideological view of Berlins residential architecture and is intended as a tool for architects, planners, and anyone interested in the citys history and future. "Berliner Stadtmodelle" is a publication by Moritz Henkel, Ingemar Vollenweider, and Anna Jessen from the Department of Urban Design at TU Dortmund University. It is a follow-up to the out-of-print "Atlas Ruhrgebiet - Von der Arbeitersiedlung bis zum experimentellen Wohnungsbau der Moderne".