How, of all places, was it possible that Berlin, the city of unlimited open spaces, came to experience an increase in rents and a shortage of affordable housing? After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the merging of the eastern and western parts of the city made spatial resources seem inexhaustible, but investor-friendly urban planning, real estate speculation and massive waves of privatization fostered an urban sell-off policy. For the present and the future, the following questions arise: How can the housing question be dealt with? How can the restored awareness of the social responsibility of property, as it is currently being discussed in politics and civil society, manifest itself?

The exhibition 1989–2019: Politics of Space in the New Berlin outlines the urbanistic and architectural development from the point of view of the supposed “end of history”: How did Berlin become what it is today? Projects realized especially for the exhibition exemplify various urbanistic policies and their consequences for today’s Berlin. They depict partly contradictory processes and narratives that to this day are superimposing and intensifying in Berlin as a constructed city. There is not only one Berlin, but many myths and ideas of what Berlin is supposed to be. The exhibition reflects the perspectives and myths of history, of the market and of creativity.

In the framework of an extensive discourse program, selective glimpses into the history, present and future of the city are supposed to sound out what the urban Berlin consists of today. Politicians, architects, urban theorists, artists and activists will be discussing the politics of space in the New Berlin: What to do about historically amnesiac ambitions? What is the current constitution of urban social movements, how can their relationship to party politics be apprehended in terms of emancipation? What kind of associations, planning approaches and architectures are needed to create a Berlin that is open and based on solidarity?

Arno Brandlhuber is an architect and urban planner in Berlin and has headed Brandlhuber+ since 2006. His work includes architectural and research projects, exhibitions and publications, as well as political interventions. His interest in public policy surrounding architectural and urban production, led to a collaboration with the artist and film director Christopher Roth on the films Legislating Architecture (2016) and The Property Drama (2017). Brandlhuber has been a professor of design and architecture at ETH Zurich since 2017.

Katalin Gennburg is an urban researcher and an active member of the German Left party. She studied philosophy and historical urban studies at TU Berlin and wrote her thesis on post-1990 land privatization in Brandenburg and the wealthy suburbs of Berlin. In the elections for the Berlin House of Representatives in September 2016, she was elected by direct mandate to represent the electoral district 1 of Treptow-Köpenick. In the House of Representatives, she is the Left party’s spokesperson on urban development, tourism, and the Smart City Berlin strategy.

Guerilla Architects is an international collective of architects, urban planners, and artists. Founded in 2012 while sharing a common squatting experience in London, the team focuses on unused and forgotten urban resources. Based in Berlin, Kiel, and Sofia, they use unconventional and subversive methods to reveal how socioeconomic structures are being questioned and threatened in urban public spaces.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes is an architect, urbanist, and scholar. In 2009 she founded the urban design practice OMNIBUS. From 2014 to 2019 she was program manager of the Master of Advanced Studies in Urban Design program led by Marc Angélil at ETH Zurich, and was a guest professor at TU Berlin from 2018 to 2019. She holds a PhD from ETH Zurich on the effects of the political economy of food on the built environment. She co-authored the books Housing Cairo: The Informal Response (2016), Some Haunted Spaces in Singapore (2018), and Eileen Gray: A House under the Sun (2019). She is a founding member of the Parity Group, a grassroots organization committed to improving gender equality in architecture. She co-curated the XII International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo, held in 2019 under the theme Everyday.

Birgit Möhring has been Managing Director of Berliner Immobilienmanagement GmbH (BIM) since March 2015, where she has worked as an employee since its foundation in 2003. As an authorized signatory and member of the management board, she was responsible for the areas of portfolio management and purchasing for more than ten years and was involved in the establishment and further development of the national subsidiary. In December 2013, she moved to Liegenschaftsfonds Berlin (the state property management fund), where she was managing director until BIM took over its business operations in 2015.

Philine Schneider works as an architect in Berlin at the intersection of curatorial practice, art, and research in urban planning and architecture. In 2011 she co-founded CollageLab in order to develop transdisciplinary research in architecture and urbanism. Within this framework, she conceived exhibitions, competitions, workshops and other event formats. In addition to her work as an architect, she worked from 2011–2015 as a research assistant at Bauhaus Dessau and 2015/2016 at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the field of international urban planning. Since 2019 she is a partner at rosa architekten, Berlin.