Berlin plans

A competition contribution for the ‘Schlossaneignung’ initiative in collaboration with the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst.

In the summer of 2024, the ‘Schlossaneignung’ initiative called for an end to the glorification of Prussia that had resulted from the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace façades. It wrote: ‘Since the demolition of the Palace of the Republic, only the façade of the Prussian royal house and the German Empire has been on display here. Yet the palace stood […] for 20th-century German history: the 1918 Revolution, the Weimar Republic, the Second World War, the division of Germany and the GDR, but also the peaceful reunification and the cultural appropriation of the building. We demand that this be brought to life on site through artistic means and inscribed into the façades of the Humboldt Forum.’

We have decided to take part in the competition but are opposed to imitating historical traces. Why imitate the damage caused by the fighting between the Red Sailors and the Freikorps? Future revolutions will leave their own marks. That should not be our concern. We propose turning the ‘palace’ into a building site and erecting scaffolding around it. Scaffolding is like a shelf. It would provide space for many things that cannot find a home in Berlin: student accommodation, creative production, and social, cultural and political initiatives. It would be a place where the public could experiment, discuss and plan what they really need in the centre of their city. Just as in 1946, when the city’s reconstruction was discussed in the palace ruins with the exhibition ‘Berlin Plans’.