Columbushaus
The Columbushaus (Columbus House) was a nine-storey modernist office and shopping building in Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, designed by Erich Mendelsohn and completed in 1932. It was an icon of progressive architecture which passed relatively unscathed through World War II but was gutted by fire in the June 1953 uprising in East Germany. The ruin was subsequently razed in 1957 because it stood in the border strip; the site where the structure once stood was occupied by activists shortly before the fall of the Berlin wall. Architecture The Columbushaus has been described as a "little skyscraper".Wolf von Eckardt, ''Eric Mendelsohn'', Masters of World Architecture, New York: Braziller, 1960p. 22 It was a horizontally detailed steel-frame building, the alternating bands of windows and spandrels on the upper floors prefigured by a conceptual sketch of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. (Mendelsohn later claimed that he had to include masonry courses to allow for neon signs, and would otherwise h ...
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Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz (, ''Potsdam Square'') is a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park. It is named after the city of Potsdam, some to the south west, and marks the point where the old road from Potsdam passed through the city wall of Berlin at the Potsdam Gate. After developing within the space of little over a century from an intersection of rural thoroughfares into the most bustling traffic intersection in Europe,Weitz, Eric D. ''Weimar Germany'', 2007, Princeton University Press, , page 43 it was totally destroyed during World War II and then left desolate during the Cold War era when the Berlin Wall bisected its former location. Since German reunification, Potsdamer Platz has been the site of major redevelopment projects. Historical background The history of Potsdamer Platz can be traced to ...
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