Berlin's 24 Contemporary buildings map the city's post-reunification reinvention. The German Chancellery by Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank set the tone — a monumental concrete-and-glass composition on the Spree that redefined the political centre. Frank Gehry's DZ Bank, with its billowing atrium hidden behind a restrained limestone facade, brought sculptural ambition to Pariser Platz.
The generation that followed pushed further. Max Dudler's Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Centre introduced cascading reading terraces into a Humboldt University library. David Chipperfield's James-Simon-Galerie bridged Museum Island's neoclassical ensemble with a colonnade of slender concrete columns. Norman Foster's Philology Library at the Free University earned the nickname "The Brain" for its bulging, membrane-covered reading room.
At a smaller scale, Berlin's contemporary scene thrives on experimental housing: FAR frohn&rojas' Wohnregal exposes raw concrete structure as living space, GRAFT's Bricks Berlin stacks angular volumes in Schoeneberg, and J. Mayer H.'s JOH3 wraps a residential block in perforated aluminium screens. Renzo Piano's Potsdamer Platz complex rounds out the collection with two commercial landmarks that helped stitch the divided city back together.
