Berlin

Berlin has never only been a theatre in the battle between ideas and ideologies. Rather, it has always been the material means by which these ideas clash against each other. If the struggle for our futures must take place in Berlin, as our historical moment seems to demand, there is no better guide than Philipp Oswalt's now classic Berlin: City Without Form. His scholarly ingenuity and perceptive architect's eye are only matched by a commitment to the future of his city. --Eyal Weizman, Goldsmiths/University of London Taking Berlin as a prototype, Philipp Oswalt's lucid analysis describes how much the built environment of cities is influenced by the unintended side-effects of political, economic, and technological processes. This automatic urbanism reveals modernist master-planning and national building traditions as being a myth. Instead, the book offers a both socially and ecologically more sensitive, more responsible approach to develop cities as found. --Saskia Sassen, Columbia University New York This English edition of Philipp Oswalt's now-classic study could not be more timely. Every effort to understand the modern city must contend with Berlin, the twentieth century's anti-capital. Its lessons, presented here with singular insight and authority, remain necessary to anyone thinking about what that word -- city -- might still mean today. --Reinhold Martin, Columbia University New York