Monday, May. 29, 2006
Thousands of soccer fans arriving this month for World Cup matches in Berlin may find the newly opened Central Station as thrilling as any penalty shoot-out. The $905 million depot consists of a soaring, 321-m-long, 9,000-glass-pane hall covering tracks running east to west, a 46-m-high barrel-vaulted steel-and-glass hall and two rectangular office buildings running parallel to the underground north-south lines, plus a shopping galleria.
It's on the site of the city's Lehrter Stadtbahnhof, inaugurated in 1871, the year the German Empire was founded. Badly damaged in World War II, most of the building was later razed, leaving just four inner-city tracks in operation. In a further twist, the cold war division of the city left the former hub marooned in the desolate wasteland abutting the Wall, the last stop in West Berlin before the Iron Curtain. The new building celebrates its renewed role as the focal point of the reunified metropolis. "We drew on the fact that Lehrter Stadtbahnhof was the center of Berlin, the embodiment of a lively city quarter," says architect Jürgen Hillmer of German firm Von Gerkan, Marg and Partner. And lively it will be again. Even after the soccer fans are gone, an estimated 300,000 people are expected to pass through the station daily.
- Regine Wosnitza/Berlin
- A new station gives Berlin new cause to celebrate
