Function Follows Form: Zur Erfindung der Aussenarchitektur. Berlin_Skopje_Istanbul

During the Cold War, the competing political systems pursued the same idea of progress, even if their methods and approaches differed greatly: the creation of equality. Modernism in urban planning and architecture gave visible form to this concern on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The massive hostility toward modernism after 1989 can therefore be understood as an expression of an ideologically motivated spatial policy that inscribes the departure from the ideal of social equality in neoliberalism into the bodies of cities.
The demolition of the Palace of the Republic, followed by the reconstruction of the Berlin City Palace, the plan to rebuild the former artillery barracks on Istanbul's Taksim Square, the facades of Istanbul's main pedestrian zone, renovated in a partly unprecedented fantastical historicism, or the post-earthquake master plan for Skopje's city center — all follow an identical pattern: “function follows form” as a reversal of the maxim of modern architecture. Thinking about the construction process from the outside in manifests exterior architecture as an independent discipline of urban representation.