Filling a Hole in the Middle of Berlin

Smack in the middle of eastern Berlin is a grassy lawn measuring nearly five acres. Near it is a huge billboard showing a castle. What gives? It’s an example of Zwischennutzung, or interim use, a word that gets bandied around a lot in a city that still has plenty of history to consider and lots of space to reconfigure.

In December 2008, the last bits of the Palast der Republik, East Germany’s outsize 1970s parliament building, were dismantled, leaving a huge empty spot on the Schlossplatz, or Palace Square. But the planned reconstruction of the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss, the City Palace, the Prussian-era palace whose ruins were destroyed by the Communist regime in the 1950s, hasn’t quite come together. Construction on the castle — and a cultural hub called the Humboldtforum that it will contain — will supposedly begin in 2010, but the 500 million or so euros (roughly $750 million) needed to make sure that building goes as planned has yet to fully materialize.

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New York Times, 18.11.2009