I am writing my paper on Paris at the end of the 19th century and its urban planning, with emphasis on the 1889 exhibition and the building of the Eiffel Tower. This period is also known as fin-de-siècle Paris . In order for me to even gain the smallest grasp on my topic, I first had to gain a working definition of what the term fin-de-siècle actually meant.

The fin-de-siècle period, literally translated to end of the century–roughly the years 1880 to 1900–was characterized by great cultural and political ambivalence, an anxiety for things lost, and a longing for the new. It is characterized by a fear for society due to the idea of it being a time of degeneration, but also a feeling of hope because of the start of a new century.

The term “Fin de siècle” is most commonly associated with French artists, especially French symbolism  and was affected by the cultural awareness characteristic of France at the end of the 19th century. However, the expression is also used to refer to a European-wide cultural movement. The ideas which were developed in this period went on to greatly influence the subsequent modernist movement. The major political themes of this era were those of revolt against materialism, positivism, the bourgeois society, and liberal democracy.

The fin de siècle encompasses a broader set of concerns, social and political, that often stand in tension with aestheticism.It was also a period of great cultural change including an outpouring of intellectual responses to the conflicting times from such eminent writers as T. H. Huxley, Emma Goldman, William James, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde. When talking about the fin-de–siècle in relation to art, the general meaning is of an artistic climate of sophistication, escapism, extreme aestheticism, world-weariness, and fashionable despair.

The tradition of International Exhibitions began with the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition which was held in London. It expanded upon an existing European tradition of regional and national commercial fairs as well as a more recently emergent “exhibitionary complex,” enjoyed by the people of the time, comprised of museums, public monuments, panoramas, arcades, and early department stores. After this first international exhibition in 1851, exhibitions would become fixtures of European and American life, taking place every 1 to 5 years, mostly in major cities such as Paris, London, Chicago and New York. These Exhibitions became seen as symbols of a dawning culture of mass spectacle in the West, bringing together crowds of varied national backgrounds, gender, and class in a shared experience of visual consumption.

Historically, these Exhibitions had a major effect upon the Urban Planning of the city or area which is hosting the Exhibition. Nineteenth-century world’s fairs were the epitome of modern times, as were the cities that hosted them. Cities such as Paris, London, New York and Chicago were metropolitan centers that were truly examples of universal modernity during this period. These cities were cosmopolitan, financial, and cultural centres that concentrated and combined both national and international trends. World’s fairs were thus, the controlled portrayals of these cosmopolitan cores, as much as they were the cities greatest spectacles showing off the marvels of the city and its capabilities.

World exhibitions were conscious representations of what was thought to be the epitome of progress and modernity, and they were the ideal rendition of the modern city. Fairs embodied and fostered the primary components of nineteenth-century modern existence: the belief in positive, universal, and homogeneous truth; the presumption of freedom; the concept of ending history by summarizing the past and controlling the future; and the creed of nationalism as an intrinsic part of both international cosmopolitanism and economic imperialism. While in some instances the impacts of the Expos are barely visible, in other instances the strong impacts produced involves alterations to the structure and the urban forms of the city or of the wider territory in which the Expos have taken place. Exhibitions proved to be important instrument of renewal as a catalyst of urban regeneration with growing, substantial and lasting physical impact. Being that, landscapes are made by ideas as well as construction, and the last decade of the century was full of ideas about society and the city might be like in the future, the buildings created for the Expos were very cutting edge and modernistic.

To conclude my trilogy of Albert Speer posts, i have decided to write this blog posting on what may be the only piece of Germania that remains to this day, which, ironically, was only meant to be temporary.  This structure is called the Schwerbelastungskörper.  This basically means heavy load-bearing body. It also came to be knicknamed “the mushroom.”  What this structure is, essentially, is just a heavy piece of concrete, designed to test the stability of the soil of Berlin.  The fact that this lone structure is composed of concrete is another irony, as it is all the exists of Germania.  Considering that the main buildings of Germania were going to be constructed from heavy granite blocks, and looking at how much this Schwerbelastungskörper sunk, it seems that without a great deal of foundation planning, compacting, and further testing, Germania, as it was imagined and designed would not have been feasible, largely due to this single factor.  The plan, at the time, was just to bury the structure.  Currently, this block is a historical monument, largely due to the fact that it could not be safely blown up.  Not exactly what Hitler had envisioned.

My term paper focussed on the growth of Madrid throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I really enjoyed researching for my paper because I knew nothing about Madrid before this assignment, and now I have a greater knowledge of how Madrid came to be the city that it is today!

The information that was most intriguing to me, was from Carlos Sambricio`s piece “Arcades in Early Nineteenth-Century Madrid”, and his discussions on the Puerta del Sol. It was recorded as the best known and busiest place within Madrid, and the heart of the city. As the center of the city, it was used immensely for transportation, communication, and entertainment. When it was first created, medieval suburbs began to surround the Puerta del Sol and created it to be a central meeting place from then on. Within the Puerta del Sol there are a lot of famous buildings and landmarks. For example, mounted in the square is the statue of Charles III of Spain. Such monuments create a historical feel for the lively square and in 2011, the square had been established as a focal point and a symbol for ongoing Spanish democracy. Overall, I truly enjoyed digesting all of the information on Madrid that I researched, and thought that Sambricio`s piece, “Arcades in Early Nineteenth-Century Madrid” was the most effective in describing how influential the Puerta del Sol was as the center of Madrid.

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My final paper was centered around the city of Berlin and how its city planning was affected by the division of Germany in 1949 and its eventual division by the Berlin Wall in 1961.  In the post-war era Berlin became the focal point of the Cold War and the tensions between capitalism and socialism could be seen clearly in the economy, social life and urban design policies.  In East Berlin, they planned according to the three features of Socialist Realism:

• Socialist Realism is the consistent, necessary, and sole expression of the socialist ideology
• Socialist Realism is the expression of a totalitarian social structure and an anachronism
• Socialist Realism is the heir of the Classical tradition in architecture and implies a critique of Modernism.

In addition to this, East Berlin used the 16 Principles of Planning as a guide to planning socialist cities in the GDR.  These principles highlighted three important urban elements, plazas and major streets (Stalinallee and Alexanderplatz), significant buildings ( 365m high TV tower building) and hierarchically structured residential areas.

In West Berlin, the ‘International Style’ was utilized to rebuild the city.  The United States even brought German planners back to the US to study American urbanism.   West Berlin also held planning competitions in order to rebuild the city.  In 1957 the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) rebuilt the Hansaviertel residential zone – contrary to the Stalinallee project.  The planning of this neighbourhood was based on a “city in the park” viewpoint which was counter to East Berlins.  The buildings in the neighbourhood were seen as a success but the IBA project as a whole was viewed as a failure as it involved to many self-referential buildings of various famous architects.  In 1987 the IBA was organized again, this time with two principle concerns ‘careful urban renewal’ and ‘critical reconstruction’.  These projects were successful as they focused on a larger area of the city rather than a specific neighbourhood.

By analyzing the urban planning and the major projects of both sides of Berlin, it could be inferred that the capitalist and socialist governments both used the same device, transformation of the urban space, to prove their success and impact in their territories.