Deutsch
English
FrançaisSub menu: Home
Home / Index of Authors
Schwartz, Claudia
Subscribe to receive the texts of "Schwartz, Claudia" as RSS feeds
2 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
A main station for Berlin
The new railway station connects Berlin with the rest of the world and is now trying to connect with the city," writes Claudia Schwartz on the opening of Europe's largest interconnecting railway station. "In future, rail passengers will arrive at the strangest place Berlin has to offer. The new main station lies in the heart of the city, yet at the same time in the middle of no-man's-land. The area surrounding the great station building looks as if the Wall had only just fallen. It's not only the symbolism of the station that makes it a latecomer in the process of Berlin becoming capital: a station which was planned neither in the east nor the west, but in the so-called 'new centre of the city. Whereas the 'bond of the nation' symbolises the German-German reunification, the station's design, with its tentacles extending in all directions, symbolises the city's opening itself to the world after four decades on the sidelines."
» full article (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » Architecture / Cities, » Germany
Topography of Terror
Since 1993, there has been an ongoing struggle to build a documentation centre for the Topography of Terror Foundation where visitors could learn about the crimes of the National Socialist system at "one of Germany's most symbolic historical sites, the former headquarters of the National Socialist regime on the grounds of the former Prince Albrecht Palais in the centre of the city." Claudia Schwartz sees the plans currently being presented by the foundation as "a remarkably dispirited architetural gesture". She adds: "One seldom sees such a degree of uniformity in designs presented by different architects. The architects appear to have taken the goal of architectural moderation to heart to the point of complete self-denial. The results are unspectacular, nondescript and conventional, or in other words, most of the architectural designs presented adopt an indifferent attitude in view of their historically contaminated location."
» more information (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » History, » Germany
© 2005-2012