Description
In 1987, the Berlin City Edge competition was launched as part of the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA)—a major urban renewal initiative in West Berlin. The competition called for visionary architectural and urban planning proposals to address the fractured nature of Berlin’s urban landscape, shaped by the legacy of the Berlin Wall.
The first prize was awarded to Daniel Libeskind, whose bold and unconventional design challenged traditional urban paradigms. His winning proposal—”City Edge”—envisioned a long, angular structure slicing diagonally through the site. This dramatic intervention mirrored the disjointed character of Berlin itself, transforming the physical and symbolic divisions of the city into a new architectural language.
Although never built, the City Edge project became a defining work in the early career of Libeskind and was featured in the influential 1988 “Deconstructivist Architecture” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The proposal exemplified a radical departure from the neotraditionalist approach advocated by architects like Léon Krier, opting instead to fragment, disrupt, and reinterpret the urban fabric.
Libeskind’s work defied conventional forms—disregarding symmetry, hierarchy, and order—offering instead a vision of architecture as a medium of memory, rupture, and transformation.
“Ancient vistas of cities and buildings, like memorable places and names, can be found on maps—the books of the world… A voyage into the substance of a city and its architecture entails a realignment of arbitrary points, disconnected lines, and names out of place… In this way, reality as the substance of things hoped for becomes a proof of invisible joys—Berlin of open skies.”
– Daniel Libeskind, on Berlin City Edge