Berlin Rail Hub

Berlin Rail Hub
Berlin's new main railway station, the city's biggest ever building site, has sparked the bitterest dispute of architect Meinhard von Gerkan's 40-year career.

Deutsche Bahn AG first forced von Gerkan to slice 100 meters (330 feet) off a steel-and-glass roof overarching the tracks.

Then the German state-owned railway company changed the design of an underground ceiling.

That was a step too far for von Gerkan, who took the company to court, accusing it of distorting his plan.

Deutsche Bahn denies any breach of copyright rules, which in Germany protect the integrity of work by artists and architects.'

"I'm far from giving up," von Gerkan, 71, said in a Dec. 22 interview at his office overlooking Hamburg's harbor.

"I will not distance myself from this station in the same way that I wouldn't distance myself from a child burdened with a hereditary disease.

It's my child and I will try to heal the disease."

The $840 million station, the biggest non-terminus rail hub in Europe, is designed to handle 300,000 travelers and visitors a day.

It caps 15 years of rebuilding to unite the separate infrastructures of east and west Berlin after decades of division.

The station is located in the wasteland left behind after the fall of the Berlin Wall, meters away from the new Chancellery, from where Angela Merkel