nfluential architect and urban planner Yona Friedman was born in Hungary in 1923. He settled in France at the end of the 1950s. In 2001, he shared with us his reflections on the city of the future, as well as his afterthoughts on the World Trade Center attack. Today, in his second issue of point d’ironie, he presents a utopian vision for Berlin. In the second half of the 19th century, the baron Haussmann demolished large parts of the city of Paris. On these sites now become unoccupied, he built up the most modern capital of Europe for the period.

In the second half of the 20th century, World War 2 destroyed the center of Berlin, which became a large wasteland. It was a challenge to build a new center, making use of concepts of avant-garde architecture. This occasion was missed.

I do not know Berlin but through a few short visits. I do not know but superficially German culture and history. Even so, being an architect, I could not resist drawing a few sketches (not a project) of a cityscape of fantasy, in order to compensate – at least for my imagination – the lost occasion. The idea to demonstrate this loss of opportunity came to me while visiting Dessau (the Bauhaus) in 2001. Luckily for me, this « counter-proposition » found moral support, in 2004, by Kristin Feireiss and Niklas Maak in Berlin, and by agnès b. who agreed to publish it.