Berlin is well known as the city of contrasts, and its signs are everywhere, especially when we see the different ways in which the city was rebuilt in after the II World War.
Understanding the divided Berlin, it’s possible to perceive the way in which it was differently reconstructed, the ideology behind the new buildings, the naming of streets and avenues, as well as the urban ideology behind the choices made to rebuild what was destroyed, understanding that architecture and the determined aesthetics are not necessarily consensual as same as the political choices that divided the city at the time.

Understanding the rational architecture, which like its propositions has ideological characteristics, we can also perceive its translations by their physical characteristics and deformations related to the political propaganda.

Karl-Marx-Allee, formerly Stalinallee was built as an important axis that starts with the TV Tower and extends to the districts of Friedrichshain and Lichtenberg. In this area, our language school Kapitel Zwei is located nowadays. It was very important in relation to the choices made by the reconstruction of the city center that was also part of the German Democratic Republic sector. It is very interesting to note how do the articulation constituted by the avenue contrasts with the previously built axis of Unter den Linden avenue, which historically is strong and important, not only for cutting the main city park, but also how to be part of the composition of the monumental center that crosses the Brandenburg Gate.

The search for a new monumentality was also necessary for the political assertion of a new ideology to be implanted after the occupation of the German territory by the Soviet Union, as well as the creation of the German Democratic Republic and its new principles. The capital of the new political system also had to express the characteristics of a different time and mentality.

The avenue was formed to exalt the workers, and as from its previous name, Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union. With residential buildings, their bases have commercial activities and wide sidewalks for pedestrians. Even though it is displaced from the human scale by its monumental size, it’s important in relation to the perspectives that have been constructed which direct the looks and intentions directly to the TV Tower, which is the main build work of the government, as well as mainly a construction of ideological affirmation, not only to reaffirm the new values but also to exalt it’s size and importance and the way it appears to the other side of the city for the assertion of those who lived in a different political context. The run to the moon was also a run through constructions in the rivalry of the cold war
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Coming from Latin America, on the other side of the Atlantic, Karl-Marx-Allee is a very different place from everything that I had ever seen and experienced. In this piece from the East, that starts right in front of our school there are: Frankfurter Tor, second hand shops, galleries, cinemas and nice cafes along. The nice perspectives, places and different architecture make this one of the most interesting and unusual places to visit in Berlin.