Reframing Berlin is about how architecture and the built environment can reveal the memory of a city, an urban memory, through its transformation and consistency over time by means of ‘urban strategies’, which have developed throughout history as cities have adjusted to numerous political, religious, economic and societal changes.
These strategies are organised on a ‘memory spectrum’, which range from demolition, new construction, Disneyfication to supplementation, suspension, memorialisation.
The book reveals the complicated relationship between urban strategies and their influence on memory-making in the context of Berlin since 1895, with the help of film locations. It utilises cinematic representations of locations as an audio-visual archive to provide a deeper analysis of the issues brought up by 12 strategies and 24 case studies including the mutated Berlin Wall, Hitler’s demolished New Reich Chancellery, the appropriated TV Tower, the relocated Victory Column, and the city’s adapted bunkers and techno clubs in relation to memory-making.
Purchase the book here.
Christopher S. Wilson and Gul Kacmaz Erk, Reframing Berlin: Architecture, Memory-Making and Film Locations (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2023)
