Berlin's Architecture in Panoramic Photos

With his project Panorama Streetline, Jorg Dietrich creates composite photos dedicated to showing a city’s architectural identity. We invited him to share his new perspective of the German capital…

Berlin might not be the first city one thinks of in terms of grand metropolitan architecture. Sure you have the icons, like Brandenburg Gate, the Wall, the Fernsehturm (TV tower) and some celebrated churches and bridges. But this is not London, not Paris, not Madrid, nor Vienna when it comes to grand old architecture and boulevards. And whilst some examples still shine through in memorial of grander times, like the ruinous old Wertheim complex, until recently used as the Tacheles Kunsthaus, most buildings of that era are gone.

Instead Berlin offers a very unusual and diverse mix in architecture. You have the large Plattenbau areas of the East, the modern architecture of the last 25 years filling all kinds of open spaces, museum architecture from different eras, the Soviet socialist classicism, to name but a few different kinds of surviving buildings from the past. Some even call Berlin an agglomeration of “villages”, as, once you have left the centre, you’ll find different districts in different living styles, from the alternative cultures of Kreuzberg and Neukölln, through the calm Wedding district to the suburban villas of Zehlendorf. Take in the “royal suburb” of Potsdam (today the capital of the neighboring Brandenburg state) and you’ll also find the gloss and glamour of the old Prussian monarchy. So while Berlin is not a capital where expectations of a past grandness are fulfilled, it is a city where surprise waits at every corner.

In our project Panorama Streetline we collect linear cityscape views from all over Europe, including Berlin. We take a series of photos along a street from different perspectives and then create a composition, visualizing the whole street in one image, as if you could walk along it. Especially for Urban Travel Blog, we would like to present an overview of the German capital through our eyes and the chance to take a trip through the city from perhaps a different perspective….