Chapter two case Studies

Free University Berlin

Berlin, Germany

The regime of the National Socialists had a devastating impact upon higher education in Germany. From 1933 to 1945 large numbers of lecturers were dismissed, all ideas of academic freedom were forgotten and by 1939 the system had shrunk to almost half its size. The end of the Second World War marked the beginning of a lengthy period of rehabilitation in the German university system, impelled by the restoration of intellectual liberty. Symptomatic of this was the founding of the Free University Berlin in 1948. It was established in the suburb of Dahlem, in the American sector of Berlin, predominantly as a result of American efforts and funding. Its creation was a reaction to the repression and political manipulation of the renowned Humboldt University in the Soviet-controlled East Berlin. Thus from the outset, the university was envisaged as a pioneering departure for German higher education. It was intended as a model for democratic higher education in Germany, free from the bridle of fascism or communism. This pioneering spirit not only manifested itself in the name of the new university, but in its physical form as well.¹³

The university was initially accommodated in the scattered private villas of leafy Dahlem and in the institute buildings of the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Rapid growth in student numbers meant that new buildings were quickly planned, including the Henry Ford Building. Completed in 1954, this structure was designed by Berlin architects Franz Heinrich Sobotka and Gustav Müller to house teaching rooms and an auditorium. Inspired by the maxim ‘democracy as client’, the architects sought to saturate the building with light, symbolic of freedom and openness. The length of its façade is a glass wall

2.14 Silberlaube, Free University Berlin Photo: Reinhard Görner/Freie Universität Berlin

punctuated by white pillars, creating an impression of lightness despite the building’s large footprint.

The most significant element of the Free University Berlin’s campus in terms of the remit of this study is the so-called Rost- und Silberlaube complex (Figures 2.13 and 2.14). This monolithic structure is what makes the university interesting as a campus study. In 1963 the university launched an international competition to design a new campus for its philological institute on the Orchard Site in Dahlem. The brief made clear demands as to growth and fostering inter-disciplinary relations. It stipulated that the humanities and mathematical-natural science facilities needed to be capable of eventual expansion by 20 and 60 per cent respectively, and that the building should include spaces which encouraged dynamic exchange between members of different faculties. The competition was won by Parisian firm Candilis Josic Woods, and partner Shadrach Woods assumed responsibility for the project.¹⁴

The resultant complex is a vast, continuous mono-structure comprising two sections – the Rostlaube and Silberlaube – designed around the principles of growth and communication (Figure 2.15). Wood’s winning entry was a low-rise rectangle, essentially two storeys plus basement, structured around a web of internal pedestrian streets.

These were the primary sites for community interaction. The main streets gave the building a clear pattern around which space was assigned as ‘built’ or ‘non-built’ areas organized in terms of zones: activity, study and rest. The activity zones with the heaviest usage, such as lecture halls, seminar rooms and cafeterias, were sited along the main pedestrian streets at ground floor level. Interval spaces along side streets and on the upper storey were allotted to research, specialized teaching and individual interchange. Rest zones took the form of courtyards and roof terraces distributed throughout the rectilinear grid. These took up 50 per cent of the floor space, and offered the complex a chance to breathe. A vivid colour scheme was applied to walls and floors for orientation purposes.¹⁵

The architects sought a complex that fully exploited every opportunity to encourage contact amongst its inhabitants. Departments were not separated into different buildings, thus the psychological and physical barriers that traditionally divided disciplines were not enforced by architectural ones or the creation of individual departmental identities. Rigid hierarchies were exchanged for pluralism and tolerance expressive of the spirit of artistic and social revolution of the time. The University of Illinois at Chicago may have served as a type of model for Woods. Although the Chicago campus housed

each function, whether classrooms, laboratories, or offices in its own separate structure, Woods praised its intermingling of faculties and flexibility of its physical plant. Flexibility was key to Woods’s conception of the modern university. As growth and change were inherent in the nature of the institution, Woods envisaged spaces that could be dismantled or created within the fixed grid of internal streets. Externally, the façades were fabricated from Cor-Ten-clad steel panels in set sizes, which could be moved and replaced as the building grew. Inside, demountable and moveable partitions similarly permitted changes in organization.¹⁶

Woods’s campus was a striking departure from archetypal German examples. Germany had not responded to the campus model developed in the Unites States and United Kingdom. Typically, its universities were city-based, multi-site institutions scattered around the city landscape. In its suburban, densely organized site, the Free University was more akin to the campus model. Yet the Free University did not aspire towards the Anglo-American tradition of a marked institutional presence. A crucial difference between the Anglo-American and German traditions is the latter’s lack of a specific institutional identity. The academic function of the German university was not identified by any particular architectural style or specificity and thus it merged into the urban fabric. In many ways the Free University belonged to this tradition. Woods gave his complex no central focus, no entrance façade and even no central entrance. No one elevation is given precedence over another. The megastructure sits discretely in its surroundings. Despite its vast footprint, it makes no grand architectural gestures and is essentially restricted to two storeys in height to harmonize with Dahlem’s villas. Woods emphasized that the building was an instrument, not a monument.¹⁷

A myriad of influences seemingly affected this unusual design. Le Corbusier’s Five Points Towards a New Architecture can be detected in the Free University’s flat roof gardens (point two) and the free planning of the ground floor (point three), while its structure was based upon his Modulor, a proportional system tailored to human scales based on irregular grid intervals. The complex’s internal circulation and courtyards are reminiscent of the bazaar streets and riads of Morocco, where Georges Candilis and Shadrach Woods met and worked for four years. The Free University’s design may also have been related to 1950s architectural avant-gardism. The era bred an interest in the concept of the ideal city in a rapidly fluctuating world, in which the strict boundaries between house and city were dissolved and flexible large-scale structures played a key role.