ABSTRACT
The relationships between Eastern and Western architects after the Second World War have long been understood as a “battle of styles.” 1 This description of a battle refers, above all, to the rivalry between competing systems as manifested in the buildings in East and West Berlin. The investigation of an alternative East–West dialogue on architecture and urban design is only in its early stages. 2 Today, ways of approaching Cold War culture and the Nachkriegsmoderne (Post-War modernity) have developed that allow one to reexamine East–West relations in architecture: in the global context of urban development, construction in the Post-War period is seen less as the renaissance of a functional, international style and more as a heterogeneous phenomenon. 3 The “making of” certain buildings and their iconic status as examples of liberaldemocratic architecture is receiving greater attention. 4 In addition, recently, the concept of the Iron Curtain has been replaced with that of a porous “Nylon Curtain”: nylon is used to indicate not only that the curtain was transparent and permeable, but also that modern consumption functioned as an element of transnational competition. Goods, materials, and technologies created a “global” yardstick:
The curtain was made of Nylon, not Iron. It … yielded to strong osmotic tendencies that were globalising knowledge across the systemic divide about culture, goods and services. These tendencies were not only fuelling consumer desires and expectations of living standards but they also promoted in both directions the spreading of visions of “good society,” of “humanism,” as well as of civil, political, and social citizenship. 5
