Short history of Potsdamer Platz

• 1730, urban development in a baroque style, expanding in west.Following the Parisian example, 3 geometric squares are constructed: Rondell (today: Mehringplatz), Octogon (Leipziger Platz), Carrée (Pariser Platz).
• Originally Potsdamer Platz came into being as a square (Torplatz) around one of the city gates. This was the point where the road from the Royal Residance of Potsdam entered the city of Berlin. Potsdamer Platz was the pair of Leipziger Platz outside the city wall (the so called Akzisemauer).  
• 1742: Tiergarten was pronounced to be a public park,  the roles of Potsdamer and Leipziger Platz were getting more and more important. The housing of the area strated very slowly, the majority of the houses reflected a countrified stlye.
• architectural and construction activity (Unter den Linden, Leipziger Platz) , plans of Friedrich Gilly and Schinkel 
• 1867: demolition of the city wall, Berlin turns into a capital city, the Potsdamer Bahnhof is put into operation. The importance of the to squares Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Platz is inverted, the roles are interchanged.  Till then Leipziger Platz was the dominant of the two squares, Potsdamer Platz was only an insignificant, amorphous square, generraly used for waiting before one could enter the city. Now,Potsdamer Platz comes to the front, as important traffic junction.
• The residential houses are dipappearing from the square, while more and more commercial bulidings are being constructed offering a large scale of services. One of them was the especially famous commercial center called Wertheim designed by Alfred Messel. 
• Potsdamer Platz in the first decades of the 20th century: vivid place in the city with heavy traffic, restaurantes, cafés, hotels, intensive social life, embraced by Haus Vaterland and Potsdamer Bahnhof. At the beginning of the 1930s with the commercial bulidings of the Teltschow brothers , modern architecture showed up as well. Posdamer Platz was one of the busiest squares of the city, in the 1920s it was getting even more chaotic.  
• World War II left the city in ruins, but Potsdamer Platz could have been reconstructed despite of all the devastation. However, the erection of the Wall made it impossible and converted the once vivid and significant point of the city into a desert, the land of no-one. 
• The deconsrtucion of neighbouring buildings started on the western side in order to construct a multilaned north-south highway along the Wall, as it was planned. That is partially the reason for the position of the buildings of Scharoun and the Kulturforum, which are situated perpendicularly to the former Potsdamer Strasse. 
• Demolition of the Wall in 1989, plans for the reconstrucions of the city center. After the negotiations in 1989, Daimler Benz and Sony bought large territories which led to indignation and debates. The fate of Potsdamer Platz was in the hand of multinational companies and investors, the city deprived itself of the right of making further regulations. 
• The first plans proposing intensive low housing in the area didn’t satisfy the investors so they came up with their own plan co-working with Richard Rogers. The city opposed, rejected the proposal and ordered the resignation of Rogers, who later was nearly dismissed from Berlin. Rem Koolhaas, being part of the jury, also resigned and left Berlin. As the investors got rid of Rogers, they got furter permissions (for instance, instead of the the former 22 meters of maximum height they were allowed to conrtuct buildings of even 80 meters of altitude).