MOORE RUBLE YUDELL: BUILDING IN BERLIN
Introduction by Michael Webb
Edited by Adrian Koffka and Wendy Kohn
(Images Publishing, 2006)
“Undivided: The Projects of Moore Ruble Yudell in Berlin 1980-2000”
Introduction By Michael Webb
Los Angeles—the home of Moore Ruble Yudell—and Berlin—home to much of the firm’s work—are twinned cities and have much in common. Both are upstart metropolises that have undergone explosive growth over the past 130 years, attracting ambitious immigrants and stretching their boundaries to incorporate farms and small towns. The influx of talent and fusion of cultures have made each city a center of innovation. There is an underlying energy and restlessness, a sense of unlimited possibilities, that excites and alarms outsiders. Both cities have been severely tried—Berlin by the destruction of war and political division, LA. by riots and natural disasters—and have demonstrated their resilience.
In the first half of the 20th century, the cultural flow was from Berlin to LA., as Hollywood lured the finest artists ofWeimar Germany, then welcomed refugees from Nazi oppression. In the second, the flow was reversed, as many of those emigres returned home, and Americans participated in the rebuilding and sustenance of West Berlin. As a result of these exchanges, LA. was the first American city to embrace European Modernism, and Berlin has had a complicated love-hate relationship with the U.S. since the 1920s.
During the three decades that the Wall divided Berlin, each half of the city was rebuilt as a showcase of competing ideologies. In the East, the Palace of the Republic,the television tower, and the rebuilt Alexanderplatz proclaimed the triumph of socialism. In the West, the Culture Forum, Free University, and the glittering stores along the Kurfurstendamm were among the trophies of democratic capitalism. Nowhere was the contrast greater than in housing. The Stalinallee was designed in grandiose Soviet style to house workers in palatial splendor, but, behind this Potemkm facade lay serried rows of precast concrete barracks. The West inherited the bourgeois suburbs, most of which were restored after the war and the tenements of Kreuzberg, which were appropriated by young artists and radicals. The Bonn government offered varied incentives to boost settlement in this beleaguered outpost, financing unpretentious low-income apartment buildings and a few demonstration projects, notably the international building exhibitions (IBA) of 1957 and 1987,
The first IBA produced the Hansa Quarter, a centrally located complex of tower blocks, garden apartments, and landscaping created by 53 architects from 14 countries. The later project, which marked the 750th anniversary of Berlin and the shift from Modernism to Postmodernism, attracted 200 architects who competed for the privilege of planning or building on 90 scattered sites. In 1987, the goal was to stitch up the urban fabric, which had been rent by massive clearances and the Modernist fashion for object buildings. The official brief was to “pick up historical traces, respect the traditional layout, and conserve existing buildings.” The chief enforcer of this policy was Josef Kleihues, then Berlin’s authoritative city architect, who insisted on diversity, giving several firms a stake in the master plan for each block or neighborhood. Each architect was to bring fresh ideas but to work within agreed limits of density height, and layout.
One of the more controversial of the IBA projects was located near the northwestern edge of the city at Tegel, a lakeside community that is also known for its busy airport and for Schloss Humboldt, a Neoclassical country house by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Tegel Harbor was formerly a coal port, supplied by boat through a network of waterways, and a vital supply depot during the 1949 Berlin Airlift. In 1974, one hundred German architects submitted proposals for its redevelopment, but the municipal council of Reinickendorf was dissatisfied with the results and withheld its approval. As the concept for IBA took shape, the Berlin planning director, who lived in the area, persuaded Kleihues to add this fringe site to his roster. Charles Moore, then at the height of his fame, was invited to compete, alongside Ralph Erskme (Sweden), Arata Isozaki (Japan), and Rob Krier (Luxembourg). Moore developed his master plan with the Moore Ruble Yudell (MRY) office in Los Angeles, and they won the 1980 competition with a complex of 320 housing units (sandwiched between the harbor and Tegel village), a swim stadium on an island, and a cultural complex at the tip of the inlet. The scheme wove together landscaping and buildings of varied heights in a loose yet coherent composition, stepping down from the existing tower blocks at the end of the site to the modest scale of the village.
Wemer Weber, who was then planning officer for Reinickendorf and a member of the local IBA jury, remembers that he and his municipal colleagues “fought for the MRY design because it brought water close to the town, because the heights were moderate, and because there was a good balance between residential, cultural, and commercial components which could be built separately as funding became available. The scheme was people-friendly and it strengthened the center of the borough.”
Introduction by Michael Webb
Edited by Adrian Koffka and Wendy Kohn
(Images Publishing, 2006)
“Undivided: The Projects of Moore Ruble Yudell in Berlin 1980-2000”
Introduction By Michael Webb
Los Angeles—the home of Moore Ruble Yudell—and Berlin—home to much of the firm’s work—are twinned cities and have much in common. Both are upstart metropolises that have undergone explosive growth over the past 130 years, attracting ambitious immigrants and stretching their boundaries to incorporate farms and small towns. The influx of talent and fusion of cultures have made each city a center of innovation. There is an underlying energy and restlessness, a sense of unlimited possibilities, that excites and alarms outsiders. Both cities have been severely tried—Berlin by the destruction of war and political division, LA. by riots and natural disasters—and have demonstrated their resilience.
In the first half of the 20th century, the cultural flow was from Berlin to LA., as Hollywood lured the finest artists ofWeimar Germany, then welcomed refugees from Nazi oppression. In the second, the flow was reversed, as many of those emigres returned home, and Americans participated in the rebuilding and sustenance of West Berlin. As a result of these exchanges, LA. was the first American city to embrace European Modernism, and Berlin has had a complicated love-hate relationship with the U.S. since the 1920s.
During the three decades that the Wall divided Berlin, each half of the city was rebuilt as a showcase of competing ideologies. In the East, the Palace of the Republic,the television tower, and the rebuilt Alexanderplatz proclaimed the triumph of socialism. In the West, the Culture Forum, Free University, and the glittering stores along the Kurfurstendamm were among the trophies of democratic capitalism. Nowhere was the contrast greater than in housing. The Stalinallee was designed in grandiose Soviet style to house workers in palatial splendor, but, behind this Potemkm facade lay serried rows of precast concrete barracks. The West inherited the bourgeois suburbs, most of which were restored after the war and the tenements of Kreuzberg, which were appropriated by young artists and radicals. The Bonn government offered varied incentives to boost settlement in this beleaguered outpost, financing unpretentious low-income apartment buildings and a few demonstration projects, notably the international building exhibitions (IBA) of 1957 and 1987,
The first IBA produced the Hansa Quarter, a centrally located complex of tower blocks, garden apartments, and landscaping created by 53 architects from 14 countries. The later project, which marked the 750th anniversary of Berlin and the shift from Modernism to Postmodernism, attracted 200 architects who competed for the privilege of planning or building on 90 scattered sites. In 1987, the goal was to stitch up the urban fabric, which had been rent by massive clearances and the Modernist fashion for object buildings. The official brief was to “pick up historical traces, respect the traditional layout, and conserve existing buildings.” The chief enforcer of this policy was Josef Kleihues, then Berlin’s authoritative city architect, who insisted on diversity, giving several firms a stake in the master plan for each block or neighborhood. Each architect was to bring fresh ideas but to work within agreed limits of density height, and layout.
One of the more controversial of the IBA projects was located near the northwestern edge of the city at Tegel, a lakeside community that is also known for its busy airport and for Schloss Humboldt, a Neoclassical country house by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Tegel Harbor was formerly a coal port, supplied by boat through a network of waterways, and a vital supply depot during the 1949 Berlin Airlift. In 1974, one hundred German architects submitted proposals for its redevelopment, but the municipal council of Reinickendorf was dissatisfied with the results and withheld its approval. As the concept for IBA took shape, the Berlin planning director, who lived in the area, persuaded Kleihues to add this fringe site to his roster. Charles Moore, then at the height of his fame, was invited to compete, alongside Ralph Erskme (Sweden), Arata Isozaki (Japan), and Rob Krier (Luxembourg). Moore developed his master plan with the Moore Ruble Yudell (MRY) office in Los Angeles, and they won the 1980 competition with a complex of 320 housing units (sandwiched between the harbor and Tegel village), a swim stadium on an island, and a cultural complex at the tip of the inlet. The scheme wove together landscaping and buildings of varied heights in a loose yet coherent composition, stepping down from the existing tower blocks at the end of the site to the modest scale of the village.
Wemer Weber, who was then planning officer for Reinickendorf and a member of the local IBA jury, remembers that he and his municipal colleagues “fought for the MRY design because it brought water close to the town, because the heights were moderate, and because there was a good balance between residential, cultural, and commercial components which could be built separately as funding became available. The scheme was people-friendly and it strengthened the center of the borough.”