"Potsdamer Platz in Berlin has been a site of change and historical significance for more than a hundred years. It grew from a sandy crossroad to a pulsating trade center teeming with people and goods. It was the cultural, business, and political center of both the Kaisers and the Nazis. It was buried under a huge heap of wartime rubble and became a deadly desert with a wall running through it, a monument of the Cold War. It has been the focal point of conflict between world super powers. It experienced the most joyful reunion of the east and the west.

Then, like the phoenix rising out of the ashes, Potsdamer Platz became the greatest construction site in Europe. Is it a one way street to bankruptcy or a bold concept that created a brand new city center out of nothing? Is it a soulless display of megalomaniacal greatness or a true attempt to return the site to the center of culture it once was?

For me, who peeped across the barb wire from a watch tower, who broke lumps of painted concrete out of the wall, who walked around on narrow boardwalks above water underneath giant dinosaur like cranes, who roamed around between rising architecture that was still deserted, this place now stands  as a symbol of the fact that dynamic changes can be made if only the people will it!"

Magda Boltz-Wilson