March 9, 2006
New York Times: Berlin Journal
Just a Rail Hub? Or a New Sort of Compass for Europe?[1]
By Richard Bernstein
BERLIN, March 8 — Nobody in Berlin, it is safe to say, has failed to see it, the enormous construction site bristling with cranes in the middle of what used to be the desolate no man's land between the eastern and western halves of the city.
For a while it was an immense water-moving project as the Spree River, which cuts through Germany's capital from east to west, had to be diverted and then brought back to its original course.
And there was that highly filmed moment when the two halves of a 500-foot-long bridge that connect two office towers were lowered from the vertical to the horizontal position over an arched glass roof more than three football fields in length.
Now, finally, after 10 years of work and $850 million, the project — Berlin's new main train station, probably the only new central station to be built from scratch in Europe in a century or so — is scheduled to be completed and to open for business, just in time for the beginning of the World Cup soccer tournament here in June.
|[pic] |
|Berlin's new train station, with an arched glass roof longer than three football fields, is rich in symbolism as well as |
|architectural sweep. It is set to open this summer. |
|Photo Copyright: New York Times 2006 |
"We consider this station to be a central place between the former East and the former West Berlin," said Hartmut Mehdorn, the chief executive of the giant German railway system, Europe's largest. "But it's also a central place in Europe. We wanted to be a little bit symbolic in this sense, after the reunification of Germany and the joining of East and West."
Indeed, like much else about Germany, it is easy to read symbols into the new train station, a filigreed steel and glass edifice with some 750,000 square feet of floor surface, 54 escalators, 43 round glass-enclosed elevators and many shafts of daylight falling diagonally from its glass roof to the main platforms three levels and 150 feet below. It is designed as a new crossing point in an ever more integrated Europe, with upper level east-west trains linking Moscow and Paris crossing lower-level north-south trains connecting Copenhagen and Istanbul.
"The two main elements, the huge glass roof and the station bridge that crosses over it, symbolize this crossing," the project's main architect, Meinhard von Gerkan, said.
But, of course, this being Berlin, where nothing happens without a certain amount of controversy, some people are very critical of the project, including, in one important respect, Mr. von Gerkan.
The station is still in something of a no man's land, even if Berlin's supermodern chancellor's office and the main parliamentary office building are just a few minutes' walk away. Otherwise, there is not much in the way of residential or commercial attractions to draw people to the area, certainly much less than already exists at the two stations — the Zoologischer Garten Station in the former West and the Ostbahnhof in the former East — that will be closed once the new main station has opened.
"It's in the center of the city, but it's still a desert all around," Mr. von Gerkan said.
Mr. von Gerkan is so unhappy about some modifications of his plan made by the German Railway that he is suing to have the original plan respected. Specifically, he said, the arched glass roof that is the station's most conspicuous architectural feature has been shortened from roughly 1,300 feet to about 1,000 feet, which means, he said, that passengers getting on and off the longest high-speed trains will have to do so in the rain.
"I don't know what his stupid idea was to cut the roof on the two sides," Mr. von Gerkan said, referring to Mr. Mehdorn, who had ordered the alterations in the original plan, "but it damages the proportions of the whole building."
Mr. Mehdorn, who was reluctant to talk about this aspect of things, said it was simply not true that anybody would have to board trains unprotected.
"There is one major thing where he and I are in complete disagreement," he said, referring to Mr. von Gerkan. "He wanted to make a world monument and I want a functional train station. He spent our money. We have to focus on staying within our budget."
Like much else in Berlin, the new station reflects the city's and Germany's turbulent and ruinous history. The station is known both as the Main Station and the Lehrter Station, after a classic neo-Gothic train station that was built on the site in 1871 and that served Hamburg, Hanover and other cities to the west.
The Lehrter Station was badly damaged during World War II and torn down entirely in 1958. When Berlin was divided by the wall in 1961, the area became part of the wide strip of free-fire zone that cut through the city. But after reunification in 1990, the idea soon gained hold that, with the chancellery and Parliament in the same former buffer zone, a new train station would be a sort of grand finishing touch to a restored German capital.
It indeed promises to be exactly that. Judging the building itself will be left to the architecture critics, but certainly it is large, light, airy and high-tech. Hany Azer, an Egyptian native who has been the project's chief engineer, says there are 101 technological innovations adopted in the project involving dozens of patents. There are solar cells on the glass ceiling, raised strips on the platforms to guide the blind, acoustical features to turn the racket of passing trains into whispers.
The new station will connect with a huge new tunnel under the Tiergarten, Berlin's equivalent of Central Park, and that will connect Berlin to terminals in both the north and the south. Right now, as a joke, the pre-opening sign boards announce trains to Cairo and Stockholm, though, in fact, there are no direct trains to those destinations. There is not even a direct train to such cities as Copenhagen or Rome.
Rail traffic is good for the short to medium haul, especially in these days of discount airlines, though Mr. Mehdorn says that in all, German Railways, which has 5,800 other stations, handles four million to five million passengers a day.
"There's no question," he said, burying his disagreement with Mr. von Gerkan. "It's a great piece of architecture. It's fantastic. It will be one of the most beautiful train stations in Europe."
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[1] Richard Bernstein, "Just a Rail Hub? Or a New Sort of Compass for Europe?" in New York Times, 9. March 2006 and
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