Ernst-Reuter-Platz

Ernst-Reuter-Platz is a generously scaled roundabout at the western end of the Strasse des 17. Juni in Charlottenburg and one of the showpieces of West Berlin's post-war reconstruction. The square was named on 3 October 1953 in honour of the Governing Mayor Ernst Reuter, who had died four days earlier; during the 1948-49 blockade he had become the international face of free Berlin. In the late 1950s the city reframed the square in the spirit of the car-oriented modern city with eight free-standing office towers in sober curtain-wall modernism, including the BEWAG building by Paul Schwebes and the Telefunken Tower behind it. Fountains and a kinetic sculpture structure the central island. Today thousands cross it daily; for anyone interested in architecture it is an open-air archive of post-war modernism.