The much- changed Berlin Free University still embodies Shadrach Woods' vision

摘要

Shadrach Woods sought to embody the architecturally eclectic metaphors of 'web' and 'urban grain' within the architecture of large urban conglomerations. What he achieved was a university building in suburban Berlin. Without an architectural context and without a historical tradition, the Free University is set out as a new society - a new architectural order that emphasised the corridor as an 'internal street'. Woods described this opportunity to devise a flexible system as analogous of a whole city: 'The city itself, which is the natural habitat of Western man, is the school, the college, university. We see the city as the total school, not the school as "micro-community". Places of teaching and learning, when they can be identified as such, are an integral part of the structure of the city' The early '60s universities 'tended to favour a separation of functions,' he thought, and 'this led to an architecture where the lecture theatres were separated from the faculties, which were in turn separated from each other, cutting off all forms of contact - a typical outcome of functionalism. We took another path. We believed that communication was one of the most important factors within a university.' The search for a 'system' to achieve led the architects to employ Jean Prouve to engineer a facade cladding which would unify the 'street pattern of permanent main streets and adaptable side streets'.