ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the process of “willing” the global city through a range of explicit cultural strategies by Berlin’s growth regime. The underlying argument is that the building culture of a specific locality is changed by the dynamics of globalization where the building process – and not only the outcome – becomes part of a concerted marketing strategy. Individual buildings and whole building complexes are being used increasingly as a means of establishing a city on the map of world locations and destinations. Ridding Berlin of certain symbolic elements, while manipulating others and constructing new ones, was the preferred method of re-envisioning history in Berlin. In spite of a strong local building culture that favoured clear height limitations and stone facades, images that fit into the rhetoric of global city formation were strengthened and elaborated.
