Place matters: The squares of Berlin

摘要

Beautiful squares in cities owe their existence to a paradox: they snatch back from the city some of the space it has previously taken possession of. Squares are not financially viable - on the contrary, they cost money, permanently. They create a kind of equilibrium between the unbuilt sphere that surrounds the city and the spaces inside it that they hold open. I don't mean unintentional squares here, of course, such as those that arise in the intermediate space between two major streets - such as Breitscheidplatz at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. Nor do I mean squares where only the other side of the street is missing because it was destroyed by bombing and hasn't been rebuilt yet, thanks to a city planner or because an investor has gone bankrupt. Squares like that can also acquire a peculiar kind of beauty - the beauty of decay and oblivion - and until only recently, Berlin was teeming with them. What I mean here is the dramatic, designed squares, without which a city would be nothing but a collection of streets and buildings. In fact, it's actually the squares, rather than the streets, building facades or parks, that give a city its appearance.