Word: platzes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Piano's words, architecture involves walking "the knife edge between art and science": One day the architect is a poet, the next day an engineer. That fine edge was highlighted in the first part of his speech, which dealt with his redesign of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz. This enormous, 5 million square foot space resonates with cultural significance, since it is both the former cultural center of Europe as well as the center of tragedy. The Cold War divide between East and West Germany, however, is now a matter for the history books, and Piano's task, as he noted...
...into a uniform design, ignoring the fact that cities draw life from the evolution of buildings over time. All told, the slides presented certainly showed a city center that avoided that danger, and mirrored the unpredictable and complex interactions of humanity. Built around a recently-opened piazza, the Potsdamer Platz as envisioned by Piano will be a meeting point that encompasses vast differences, where elements of the "sacred," like libraries, meet elements of the "profane," like cinemas and casinos. Even the act of construction, which involved 5,000 workers from all over the world, represented the idea of interaction, particularly...