Film House Esplanade

“The Filmhaus Esplanade (1984/85, unrealised) was an architectural proposal by Jasper Halfmann and Clod Zillich for a film centre in the vacant border zone of Potsdamer Platz in divided Berlin. Based on an initial idea by Ulrich Eckhardt, the then director of the Berliner Festspiele, the project was conceived as a comprehensive film-hub, uniting film production, archives, research and public screenings under one roof. The building’s design was characterised by a linear structure reflecting the sequential process of filmmaking itself. A key aspect of the proposal was the incorporation of the remaining fragments of the former Grand Hotel Esplanade, which was once one of Berlin’s most prestigious hotels. This approach embodied Halfmann and Zillich’s belief that urban emptiness is an opportunity rather than a loss. The project also included a speculative proposal to realise Friedrich Gilly’s eighteenth-century monument to Frederick the Great. Inspired by the form of an ancient Doric temple, the monument was to be located at Leipziger Platz, an area emptied by the Berlin Wall. Ultimately, however, Filmhaus Esplanade was never built. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the site was sold to Daimler-Benz and Sony, and the area was transformed into a commercial development.

Halfmann and Zillich advanced the urban thesis of ‘Peripherie als Zentrum’ – the periphery as centre. During the years of the Berlin Wall, Potsdamer Platz was peripheral. Rather than viewing the empty border zone as a problem, they saw it as an opportunity. Gesundbrunnen, too, was situated on the periphery of a Berlin torn apart by the Wall.

The monument conceived by Gilly in 1797 was designed to make ‘belonging to a community a bodily experience,’ which was an urgent question in late 18th-century Germany, amid the formation of the nation state. Today, however, when the nation state itself generates so many problems, this architectural question needs to be updated. How can architecture and the city embody a space of civic solidarity that goes beyond the framework of the nation state? The vision of Filmhaus Esplanade, particularly the proposed construction of the Gilly Monument, can be read as a response to that question.

We want to translate that monument into a different form for the future of Berlin. Rather than reconstructing Gilly’s monument, how about transforming the Flakturm in Humboldthain? Specifically: a giant film projector would replace the gun platform on its roof, projecting films into the sky 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Light travels upwards in place of shells. During the day, only a faint beam would be visible. On a cloudy night, you might be lucky enough to see the film. But in either case, the light is there, and a film is being shown. The screening programme would be continuously updated and made public, so that you can know at any moment what is being projected and imagine the film you cannot see.

The films shown here are not really meant to be watched. They are meant to make you imagine that they are there and to bring back memories. It is a film that lives in people’s memory and is brought back to mind. So, the film must be one that someone, somewhere, has seen before. Ideally there would be a simple system: citizens vote for the film they want to see, and even if only one person votes for it, it gets shown when its turn comes. It may take time, but it will be shown eventually.

Gesundbrunnen has its own history with cinema. In 1929, the Lichtburg opened here, one of the largest cinema and entertainment complexes in Germany at the time. The building had searchlights on its roof that lit up the night sky, and embodied the very principle of cinema itself: projecting light into darkness. The Lichtburg was demolished in 1970, but the proposal to place a giant projector on top of the Flakturm can be understood as a reenactment of it. Cinema was the collective dream of citizens in the 20th century. We propose naming the structure that projects these dreams into the sky nothing other than ‘Lichtburg’ – the castle of light.”

Akira Takayama