Berlin holds 39 Modernist buildings in the catalogue — the largest single-style collection in any city. The timeline stretches from Peter Behrens's AEG Turbine Factory of 1909, widely considered the first modern industrial building, through the Bauhaus-era Horseshoe Settlement by Bruno Taut and Martin Wagner, to post-war civic landmarks like Hans Scharoun's Berlin Philharmonic and State Library.
The Cold War divided the city but doubled its Modernist output. In the West, Werner Düttmann shaped the cultural landscape with the Academy of Arts, Hansa Library, and a series of churches and housing projects. Hugh Stubbins contributed the House of the Cultures of the World and the Dreipfuhl Housing Area. In the East, Josef Kaiser's Kino International and Café Moskau lined Karl-Marx-Allee with a confident socialist Modernism.
Mies van der Rohe's New National Gallery — a steel-and-glass pavilion of almost nothing — anchors the collection alongside Le Corbusier's Corbusierhaus, Oscar Niemeyer's Interbau apartment, and Walter Gropius's own house in the Hansaviertel. The result is an open-air encyclopaedia of Modernist ideas, from the earliest industrial prototypes to the style's mature civic expression.
