Hansaviertel: A Design for Life

At first glance, the Hansaviertel may seem like a quiet, green residential pocket of Berlin — but beneath its tranquil canopy lies a district that tells a much larger story about the city’s hopes, traumas, and reinventions. We begin in the 19th century, when Berlin’s population exploded and new neighbourhoods rapidly expanded. While factory workers crowded into dark tenements on the outskirts, Hansaviertel emerged as a prestigious riverside enclave — a showcase of privilege, with manicured gardens and ornate façades crafted by leading architects for the city’s rising middle class.

Behind these façades lived a cast of remarkable residents. We follow the stories of political thinkers, artists, and writers — from Rosa Luxemburg to Nelly Sachs and Käthe Kollwitz — and explore how the neighbourhood became one of Berlin’s key centres of Jewish life before the Nazi era. At a quiet corner of the district, we visit a memorial to one of Berlin’s largest pre-war Jewish communities, and reflect on how this world was shattered by persecution and war. Allied bombing raids later flattened much of the neighbourhood.

But out of the rubble came one of West Berlin’s boldest postwar experiments. In 1957, as part of the Interbau exhibition, visionary architects like Walter Gropius, Oscar Niemeyer, and Alvar Aalto reimagined the Hansaviertel as a blueprint for modern urban living — a pointed counter-model to East Berlin’s Stalinallee. Their buildings remain: a striking mix of Bauhaus clarity, concrete brutalism, and experimental housing that reflect the ambitions and tensions of the Cold War era.

As we walk, we explore not only these iconic designs but also the gap between architectural ideals and everyday life — and what this district reveals about Berlin’s changing ideas of community, space, and the “good life”.