From visual montage…

The Sony development in Potsdamer Platz perhaps allows the above points to be illustrated. As a developer involved in the Sony scheme remarked in an interview the aim of the scheme is to create a "lively entertaining space…as a private development…part of a new urban communication structure…It's not only an entertainment space, it's a private space, but it's publicly open - it's closed at midnight, it's all day open" (interview). With its glass and steel the Sony scheme is a clear break with Berlin tradition. As a leading Berlin architect commented, the whole Potsdamer Platz development is non-local, a global corporate architecture which allows the branding of space by international corporations (interview). The idea of Berlin being colonised by international networks is perhaps supported by the comment of one architect who, though critical of the architectural style, observes that the Sony scheme is an "interesting space because when you go down there …you think about Sony have bought up the cultural rights to music, film, etc. That's their business now besides electronics and they seem to be imagining a whole new sort of city, like a culture, a city within a city, a culture, come and get it in Berlin sort of mentality" (interview).

As this might suggest not all of the materials employed in the development are as tangible and visible as the prefabricated blocks, the concrete, the steel and all of the other easily recognisable stuff that one would expect to encounter on a building site. The task of shaping Berlin's future involves settling far less easily grasped influences. Amongst these should be included the economic rhythms of international corporations and financial institutions and their calculative criteria and ways of seeing.

One of the chief ingredients in building a 'reunited' Berlin is the invisible rhythm of money . The central areas of the new Berlin now bear the inscription the money signs of financial capitalism and symbolic projections of international corporations. It is not by chance that some locals renamed this area 'Potsdaimler Platz'.

The rhythms of money, grabbed enthusiastically by many 'Ossis' at the money exchange points that sprang up in late 1989 have been released through the city's new heart.