Neither “American egg-boxes” nor a “Hitler-barracks style” was the demand of Walter Ulbricht for the planning of the “Stalin Avenue”. The first great expansion project of the GDR proclaimed a new age in the name of Socialism. 5000 apartments for the working class should demonstrate the changed power relationships in the workers´ and peasants´ state. But soon, the gap between this claim and reality showed in the Uprising of the 17th of June 1953.

Half a century after the INTERBAU 1957, we will visit the Hansa Quarter, one of the most important living quarters of Berlin West in the 1950ies. Consciously having broken with the older building traditions a living quarter was developed which was bound to the newest urban guidelines of a “loose and green urban landscape”. 54 architects, among them Walter Gropius, presented a broad spectrum of modern building. In a typical way the pro and contra of a now historic building ideology show here clearly.

In the early twentieth century, the Potsdamer Platz advanced to the position of being the busiest place in the cities of Europe. With its vibrating liveliness it was seen as the embodiment of urban modernity. Not much more than a myth of this place was left over after the destruction of the Second Wold War and the German partition. After the reunification, a new quarter was erected in a huge effort, showing a broad spectrum of contemporary architecture coming from many internationally distinguished architects.