Utopie Kulturforum

Even 55 years after the foundation stone was laid, Hans Scharoun’s realized vision of a library has lost none of its radical modernity. From the very beginning, the spatial impression Scharoun intended of a limitless and directionless reading landscape was perceived as a challenge, even an imposition – and certainly not only on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in whose immediate vicinity the gold-clad building was to shine as a widely visible beacon of democracy. The station at Haus Potsdamer Straße (Berlin State Library) showcases the time of the building’s construction, takes an excursus into the early development of the area, and illuminates Hans Scharoun’s reading landscape, revealing it as a heterotopia, a co-working space, and an inexhaustible source of inspiration.