Author: Charlotte Gill

Today it seems like any ordinary construction site wrapped in scaffolding, but the architectural plans reveal that a wave-shaped glass upper half is yet to be completed over the existing building. On the drawing board is etched a jaw-dropping, undulating structure that will tower up to 110m over the Elbe River.

This is the forthcoming Elbe Philharmonic concert hall, the centrepiece of Hamburg’s emerging HafenCity district. Designed by Herzog and de Meuron, the Swiss architects behind London’s Tate Modern gallery and partners in Beijing’s ‘bird’s nest’ Olympic stadium, the striking building is intended as a new metropolitan icon when it opens in 2012. And, to add to its significance, it sits on the northwest tip of the largest and most ambitious urban renewal project in Europe.

Some commentators have likened the rising Elbe Philharmonic to a new Sydney Opera House or Bilbao Guggenheim, but HafenCity’s Susanne Bühler points out that its origins are somewhat different. The decision had already been taken to convert 157 hectares of Hamburg’s now unused central port into a new inner-city district before the “wonderful vision” for the concert hall got the go-ahead in 2005, she says. “In the HafenCity masterplan that was decided on in 2000, the talk was all of economic, social, cultural and ecologically sustainable reconstruction.”

However, even she is forced to admit that “the Elbe Philharmonic concept crowns the project, and will create a new city landmark.”

A new iconography
It’s certainly a novel symbol from which Hamburg could benefit globally. Mention the city to many English speakers, and they often still hark back to the Beatles playing here in the 1960s, or they conjure up its red-light Reeperbahn district. Such clichés are usually followed by watery facts: Hamburg, laced with canals and situated on both a river and a lake, has more bridges than Amsterdam and Venice combined; its port is the second-largest in Europe, behind Rotterdam. The riotous Sunday-morning fish market – more a piece of theatre than a scene of trade – might also rate a mention from first-time visitors.

But while it has been overshadowed in the international imagination by Berlin and Munich, the metropolis on the Elbe enjoys an increasingly positive and sophisticated reputation within Germany. Coming second in size to the capital hasn’t made it an also-ran. Indeed, even in today’s straitened economic times and an era of drastic city-hall cutbacks, it remains much wealthier than Berlin. More millionaires live here than in any other German city, pushing the per capita income some 50 percent higher than the national average.

Home to leading news magazines and newspapers such as Der Spiegel, Stern and Die Zeit, Hamburg has long been the nation’s media hub. It’s Germany’s start-up capital, with 13.3 new businesses for every 10,000 inhabitants, and perhaps even more surprisingly is an aerospace centre of excellence, where Airbus planes are built.

Having joined the Hanseatic League trading bloc in the Middle Ages, the German ‘Tor zur Welt’ or ‘gateway to the world’ has been enthusiastically doing global business ever since. This has brought a fascinating interplay of financial wealth and multicultural influences to the city. On the one hand, there’s a certain conservatism among the ruling classes as shipping and media magnates drive their luxury cars home to the exclusive suburbs of Blankenese and Winterhude. On the other, there’s a kind of freewheeling liberalism as Turkish, Portuguese and other immigrants mingle with students and alternative types among the nightlife districts of St Pauli and the Schanzenviertel.

The city plays hard; it has vibrant theatrical and musical scenes, and thousands of diehard supporters for local football teams HSV and second-division FC St Pauli. And it works hard; one of Shanghai’s twin cities, it is the biggest entry point for Chinese goods into Europe.

For such a vibrant business centre, however, Hamburg found itself in need of more and more attractive office accommodation during the 1990s. As Berlin was rebuilt into the capital of a reunified country, it tried to lure some leading Hamburg companies to its new developments. Rather than lift the limits on the numbers of tall buildings, Hamburg retorted with HafenCity as a way of accommodating its growing business and residential populations. The city senate threw down the glove in a 1997 vote and formalised the decision in the 2000 masterplan to enlarge the urban centre by 40 percent over the next 20 to 25 years.

“The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain also played an important role in fundamentally improving Hamburg’s role in Europe,” says Ms Bühler. “From being a city on the Eastern edge of the Western world it became a metropolis at the heart of a unified and growing continent. The HafenCity is the embodiment of this new reality.”

The Brownfield site on which the new district is being constructed was once the heart of Hamburg’s duty-free port. However, as the era of containerisation advanced, the land fell into disuse as larger modern ships stopped docking this far up the river.

Of course, other inner-city docks have suffered similar fates, and attempts to regenerate these areas have not always gone smoothly. The Canary Wharf tower at the heart of London’s Docklands, for example, went bust in 1992 before becoming a late-blooming success three years later. The skyscraper had little connection with the surrounding redevelopment, which itself was something of a sci-fi film set with little sense of community. Poor public transport increased the sense of alienation.

The South Street Seaport in New York City and Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz are both seen as more successful tourist and retail destinations than liveable districts. Amsterdam’s Eastern Harbour District was criticised as creating a ‘monoculture’ of rented social housing when it was first redeveloped in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Additionally, Hamburg faces a challenge of its own. The city centre boasts a fabulously ornate Rathaus (City Hall), and is also home to a spectacular so-called merchants’ building, the Chilehaus, which is shaped like an ocean liner. It has ritzy canalside shopping arcades and scenic lakes. Yet anyone who has spent a weekend in the Hanseatic ‘harbourpolis’ knows that the downtown – not so far from HafenCity – already empties of an evening. While young revellers head for St Pauli and the Schanzenviertel, the more mature, middle-class set entertain themselves in Altona or Ottensen.

Mixing it up
Thus, from the outset, Hamburg has been very conscious of the need to learn from the mistakes of the past when building its new inner-city district. As well as giving the area a maritime flavour in keeping with the city’s commercial past, erecting flood defences and ensuring adequate transport links, head planner Jürgen Bruns-Berentelg – nicknamed ‘Mister HafenCity’ by local journalists – has continually emphasised the need for a diversity of uses.

There will be a mix of residential, commercial, retail, leisure and cultural features, he says. Office space for 40,000 workers will accompany 5,500 apartments for up to 12,000 people. This makes the development 35 percent residential, a higher than average proportion that compares with, for example, 10 percent in Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz (which Mr Bruns-Berentelg also led).

However, it doesn’t stop there. HafenCity already has its own school and a new International Maritime Museum; a university is on its way. The development is divided into ten distinct ‘quarters’ with names like Sandtor and Dalmann Quay (site of the Elbe Philharmonic), Grasbrook and the Überseequartier (or Overseas Quarter) at its heart. Each revolves around green or other public spaces. However, to encourage the development of a sustainable community, none is exclusively given over to one use.

“Apartments sit in direct proximity to offices, shops, cafes, restaurants and bars,” says Ms Bühler. “There is no purely work, shopping, tourist or residential district.”

Alongside diversity, “fantastic architecture” is another tool Mr Bruns-Berentelg is deploying to promote the success of HafenCity. Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are helping to shape the Elbe Philharmonic hall, but they are not the only winners of architecture’s prestigious Pritzker Prize involved in the new buildings here. Dutch ‘starchitect’ Rem Koolhaas has produced a vertical, staggered ring for the Overseas Quarter’s Science Centre; the Hamburg-America House in Grasbook has been drawn up by New Yorker Richard Meier.

Lesser-known names have also produced eye-catching architecture, including Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas with his dramatic cruise centre and hotel. What HafenCity’s planners only briefly touch upon is immediately obvious during any on-the-ground reconnaissance. As an urban regeneration project, it enjoys one strategic advantage rarely shared by its predecessors. This is that it adjoins another older redevelopment, whose presence should help weave it into the fabric of city life.

The Speicherstadt, or ‘Warehouse Town’, was the storage depot of the former duty-free port, until its neo-Gothic, red-brick buildings were converted in the 1980s. Many of them now house museums and other tourist attractions, from the Hamburg Dungeon and the world’s largest model railway exibition to a spice museum and ‘Dialog im Dunkeln,’ a tour through darkness intended to replicate the experience of being blind. Others have been transformed into artists’ studios or office space for small businesses.

While this is not the same vision that planners have for HafenCity, the Speicherstadt does line the northern edge of the same archipelago, and already lures visitors across the first wide canal – a sort of Rubicon – separating the two districts from downtown proper.

It also offers a touch of authentic character with two of the city’s impossibly sweet ‘Kleinod,’ or mini, restaurants. Only boasting around 20 covers, the fairytale Fleetschlösschen (Canal Castle-let) is a former customs tollhouse. Having fed hard-working dockworkers for decades, the Oberhafenkantine (Upper Harbour Canteen) continues to dole out hearty, reasonably priced local cuisine.

Although it sometimes seems that all HafenCity has to match the Speicherstadt’s quirky ‘Kleinods’ are its many information pavilions, laying out its plans for the future, in fact signs of real life are starting to emerge. German software company SAP decided to move its headquarters to HafenCity as early as 2003. Since then, 200 others, including major concerns like logistics firm Kühne and Nagel have decided to join them. Pharmaceutical giant Unilever recently opened its striking new HafenCity headquarters, designed by German firm Behnisch Architects. Der Spiegel is also relocating to offices conceived by Danish architects Henning Larsen. The area’s Chilli Club has become a popular nightlife location, even if its restaurant’s reputation is rather mixed.

Ms Bühler is hopeful about a future in which she sees the HafenCity not only reinvigorating the site on which it is built, but also bringing new vigour to the Speicherstadt and the inner-city, where today only 14,000 people live.

Recession-hit
Nevertheless, like New York’s South Street Seaport before it, the HafenCity development has coincided with a major recession, and that is finally starting to cause some angst – at least for the time being. ING Real Estate, which is managing the development of the central Überseequartier in conjunction with Gross and Partner and SNS Property Finance, has confessed that companies are no longer “knocking on the door to buy the first building.” Even more controversial has been the role of the city senate. At the end of 2009, faced with dwindling tax receipts, city hall announced that it was embarking on a programme of cuts designed to save e1.15bn before 2013. Yet Mayor Ole von Beust, from the conservative CDU party, has tried to ring-fence funding for the Elbe Philharmonie and other state monies for HafenCity. Furthermore, in the middle of the year, the senate offered to move 800 workers from Hamburg’s central office from downtown offices on Klosterwall to HafenCity. This was even though, according to opponents, this meant paying a higher rate of rent.

“All told, two-thirds of the unoccupied 50,000sq m will be rented to the city, to avoid disastrous vacancy levels,” said Dr Joachim Bischoff, of the left-wing Linke party, at the time. “All of this is just to prevent HafenCity from seeming to be an even bigger mega-flop.”

The Elbe Philharmonie, whose total cost has now tripled to nearly e325m, has also been the subject of some public criticism, and hard choices might yet have to be made over City Hall’s pet project. For the time being, however, leading politicians are unrepentant and standing their ground. “The value of the Elbe Philharmonic structure will far outweigh the cost of its construction,” claims Hamburg’s minister for urban development, Axel Gedaschko.

In the final analysis, too, this is not the only Hamburg reinvention of recent years. The sleazy Reeperbahn of old has been overtaken by a more mainstream entertainment district, where strip clubs are now joined by musicals and cabarets attended by middle-class couples. The even edgier culture of the St Georg area near the main train station is now overlain by a trendy, sophisticated gay scene. The once neglected waterfront, west of the famous fish market, has turned into a gastronome’s mile, lined with exciting restaurants catering to all tastes. And there’s even a grand plan for the deprived outer district of Wilhelmsburg. In short, the HafenCity project may be the most prominent symbol, but it is only one sign of a city on the move.

Places to stay
Fairmont Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, Neuer Jungfernstieg 9-14, +49 40 349 40, www.fairmont.com
Attracting Hamburg’s old money, and with a touch of Englishness about it, this hotel’s fame spreads well beyond the shores of the Inner Alster Lake, which it overlooks. Its Wohnhalle (living room) is where Hamburg high society comes for afternoon tea.

Atlantic Kempinski An der Alster 72-79, +49 40 402 8880, www.kempinski.com
The Atlantic’s décor gives a clue to its history. Once the preferred port of call for passengers preparing to embark on one of the many transatlantic cruise ships that left Hamburg in the 19th and 20th centuries, its wide corridors and stairwells make it feel like an ocean liner.

Park Hyatt Bugenhagenstrasse 8, +49 40 3332 1234, www.hamburg.park.hyatt.com
Hanseatic flair is given a touch of Asian elegance in one of Hamburg’s loveliest hotels. Discreetly tucked away in a large old shipping merchant’s building, the Park Hyatt is within walking distance of HafenCity

East, Simon-von-Utrecht-Strasse 31, +49 40 309 930, www.east-hamburg.de
Around the corner from the Reeperbahn, East has a lush organic appearance, with curvy plant-like features decorating the rooms. The columns descending into the sunken restaurant resemble striated white tree trunks, while guests at the bar rest in a honeycomb seating structure..

Empire Riverside, Bernhard-Nocht-Strasse 97, +49 40 311 190, www.summithotels.com
Another symbol of the Reeperbahn’s regeneration, this tall tower enjoys views over the Elbe River. Its chic panoramic bar on the 20th floor is a hit with locals as well as overseas visitors.

Wedina Gurlittstrasse 23, +49 40 280 8900, www.wedina.de
Hundreds of internationally renowned authors have stayed in Hamburg’s pleasantly modernist literary hotel. There’s an extensive library of signed novels, and guests are more likely to find a book than a chocolate on their pillow.

YoHo, Moorkamp 5, +49 40 284 1910, www.yoho-hamburg.de
Despite the youthful-sounding name this is equally appropriate for older business travellers on a budget. The oriental opulence is reserved for the breakfast room and the top-class Syrian restaurant; rooms are tasteful, minimalist and comfortable in burnt sienna and earthy tones.

“Paris is always Paris, and Berlin is never Berlin!” a bemused French culture minister, Jack Lang, once exclaimed. With two halves stitched back together, like a maltreated magician’s assistant at the end of a wicked trick, the scars of Berlin’s history still run around her middle. But this tireless performer continues to mesmerise young and old with an exciting talent for shape-shifting.

The past is easily conjured in this most forward-looking of European capitals. All but a tiny stretch is gone of the Wall that once divided the city into capitalist West and communist East. But visitors who glance down near the Brandenburg Gate will see the line of the infamous barrier etched out in paving bricks. Just north of the gleaming Potsdamer Platz development, a 21st-century temple to Mammon, is the site of Adolf Hitler’s bunker. The historic thoroughfare of Unter den Linden runs through the rejuvenated Mitte (or ‘middle’). Three-quarters of the way down the street at Bebelplatz there’s a memorial to the first major Nazi book-burning in 1933. Ten minutes further on, 1970s communist kitsch survives in the revolving restaurant 207m up the Fernsehturm (TV tower).

Staged recovery
The city that visitors see in 2009 arrived in distinct stages, says Nick Gay of Original Berlin Walks and author of the book Berlin Then and Now. It’s “unrecognisable in parts” from the Berlin that Gay first moved to 18 years ago.

After the Wall ‘fell’ with the opening of the East-West border on November 9 1989, there was a heady rush to national unity. The next year, on October 3, the DDR (or East Germany) ceased to exist. The first major change came as ‘Ossis’ (Easterners) went west, lured by the promise of freedom and capitalist riches. Artists, slackers, squatters and other alternative types moved into their abandoned buildings.

Low rents in Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain and other eastern districts laid the ground for Berlin to become the capital of creative start-ups it is today. They also underpinned the east’s rebirth as the epicentre of Berlin’s world-class nightlife. Periodically, arbiters of style will declare the better-off western districts of Charlottenburg and Schöneberg trendy again, and these areas undoubtedly have their charms. In truth, however, the heart of the action in Berlin has – to paraphrase the well-known sign at the Checkpoint Charlie Russian-US crossing point – long left the old American Sector.

The Mitte of reinvention
The revamp of Mitte, just east of the Brandenburg Gate, was the next major redevelopment stage, and it ran alongside the decision to bring the seat of government back to the capital in 1999. As more than 35,000 parliamentarians, bureaucrats and national media personnel packed their bags in Bonn (the western capital from 1949), Berlin prepared for their arrival with a building boom.

Up went five-star hotels, designer shops, restaurants and offices, and up went a space-age government district. Crowds began flocking to the Hackescher Markt complex of shops, artists’ workshops and restaurants. Most notably, the 19th-century Reichstag was reinvented as a major sightseeing attraction with its glass beehive dome. Elsewhere, a Jewish Museum was built.

Another major architectural push preceded the football World Cup in 2006, when united Berlin finally got a central train station, and an undulating field of concrete blocks made a surprisingly moving Holocaust Memorial. However, what Berlin really gained that summer was a newfound confidence. Crowds lining the Fan Mile along Tiergarten park – from the Brandenburg Gate to the winged Siegessäule (Victory Column)  – seemed to have lost their ambivalence about sometimes controversial national symbols as they enthusiastically waved the German flag.

Since 2006, Berlin has has had a patchier construction record. The Neues Museum recently reopened after 70 years, bringing a famous bust of Egyptian queen Nefertiti before the public and a new sheen to the renowned Museums Island. But financial restrictions saw the new U55 underground line, nicknamed the Chancellor Line because of its route through the government quarter, opened late and in a comically truncated, three-station version. Similarly, chaos and service cutbacks in 2009 on the city’s normally reliable S-Bahn transit system have been blamed in some quarters on parent company Deutsche Bahn preparing its books for privatisation – a plan postponed only because of the global financial crisis.

Poor but sexy
It’s an ironic twist of fate that has brought the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall into collision with the worst economic conditions since the 1930s. In Berlin, which experienced both communism and capitalism, a joke doing the rounds this year asks the difference between the two systems. Answer: under communism first you nationalise and the economy is ruined; with capitalism it’s the other way around.

In some ways, the German capital can afford to laugh. In 2003, confronted by a e60bn hole left in the city budget by earlier ill-fated construction loans, Mayor Klaus Wowereit memorably declared Berlin “poor but sexy.” This chic poverty, says Michael Burda, an economics professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University, has rendered the city largely recession-proof. “You can’t be poorer than Berlin and still be a world-class city. During the financial crisis, Berlin didn’t have much to lose and in fact it has much more to gain,” Burda says.

The figures seem to bear out his view. Nearly 80 percent of the local economy relies on the service sector (especially tourism, media, advertising, technology and fashion) and this has been much less affected by the current crisis than Germany’s famous automotive and other manufacturing businesses. Consequently, the capital’s GDP dropped by only 2.3 percent in the first six months of 2009, compared to 6.8 percent nationally.

Another 10 percent of Berlin economy is driven by essential federal and state government business. “We’re not home to any of the major production facilities of Daimler, BMW or Opel, which tend to mould a place,” says Petra König, economy policy director of the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Trade. Meanwhile, Berlin has been promised a generous share of stimulus money: e632m of Germany’s e50bn second stimulus package will go into the capital.

Although any city with Berlin’s history is resilient enough to withstand recession, politicians are cautioning against over-optimism. Harald Wolf, Berlin senator for industry, technology and women, has warned that that high unemployment (at 13.6 percent) and weak consumer confidence could hamper recovery.

Too much of a good thing?
Not everyone is happy with how things have panned out over the past 20 years, and since Berliners are famous for their bluntness or ‘Schnauze’ (literally ‘snout’), the disaffected are vocal about it. A minority have a – revisionist or otherwise – nostalgia for the welfare state and greater social cohesion of East Germany. A few simply miss city landmarks like the copper-coloured glass Palace of the Republic (the East German parliament finally demolished in late 2008) or Tempelhof airport, the landing strip for the Berlin airlift that could now be turned into an aviation museum… or a housing estate.

Some decry the Disneyfication of such Cold War landmarks, including Checkpoint Charlie, where actors in military uniforms now pose for tourist photos. Others resent the gentrification of even ‘knallhart’ (tough as nails) districts like Neukölln or Berlin’s less distinguished modern architecture, which they worry might eventually make it like any other metropolis.

But all such gripes have been put aside during this typically chilly, global-warming-defying Berlin winter, as the city has partied like it’s 1989. Historical exhibitions and celebratory cheer will run well into 2010, especially with the 20th anniversary of German reunification on October 3. However, one event chosen for the big night of November 9 2009 exemplifies how Berlin has learned to face and embrace its painful history – the 1,000 eight-foot-tall Styrofoam dominoes erected and then pushed over along part of the east–west divide. “We want to knock the Wall over once again,” said Mayor Wowereit.