Berlin Free University

Gabriel Feld

Transgressing the distinct boundaries of architecture and urbanism, Berlin Free University is a unique imagination of what a building might be –a building designed to function as a piece of the city, adapting to the needs of its users while generating opportunities for social interaction. The university offers a window into the politicized and optimistic discourse of the 1960s and 1970s, but it also illuminates contemporary debates around large projects of infrastructure and public space. It is, in the words of Peter Smithson, ‘one of the two critical building-events of the second half of this century’.
The publication contains specially commissioned photographs, archive material, construction details and plans. The visual survey is completed by essays that describe the building’s conception and system of construction, and analyse the reasons for its enduring importance.