By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

Ever since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Germans have been looking to Berlin as the once and future capital of their formerly divided country.

But moving the capital from Bonn back to Berlin is no simple matter. After more than 40 years as the locus of one of the Cold War's bitterest stand-offs, the city's historic center contained undeveloped sites and wastelands on a scale unparalleled in 20th century urban planning. Currently, the entire city center is under redevelopment. The year 2000 is the expected completion date for the moving of the capital, but rebuilding will go on long after that.

Next week Harvard will host a conference, jointly sponsored by the Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES), that will bring together architects, urban planners, politicians, cultural officials, journalists, and business people from the United States and Europe to discuss issues related to the giant redevelopment project. Titled "Berlin: Fashioning a National Capital at the End of the Twentieth Century," the conference will take place Feb. 6-8 in Gund Hall and is open to the public.

The conference was organized by Charles Maier, the Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies and Director of the CES, and John Czaplicka, an affiliate of the Center and a fellow at the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University.

Maier said that the conference organizers have no specific agenda, nor do they hope to influence the redevelopment of Berlin in any particular way.

"We hope to raise general questions and to facilitate conversation," Maier said. "Sometimes people will engage in constructive dialogue at a conference like this when they wouldn't be likely to speak to each other abroad."

For further information on the conference, please call the Center for European Studies at 495-4303.

A special exhibition in the gallery area of Gund Hall accompanies the conference. The exhibition, running now through Feb. 12, is titled "From Europe's Largest Building Site to Capital of the 21st Century." It is organized by Wilfried Wang, director of the German Architecture Museum in Frankfort and adjunct professor of architecture at the GSD.

The exhibition focuses on the renovation and new construction program for Berlin. It presents urban design proposals for Berlin's inner city, proposals and plans for the Alexanderplatz (the city's main traffic and transport hub), designs for the government quarter, and other projects by internationally known designers including Sir Norman Foster, I.M. Pei, Helmut Jahn, and Frank Gehry.

 

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Copyright 1998 President and Fellows of Harvard College