establishing shot, eröffnungsszene

In the television—prestige television as opposed to broadcast, serialisation of Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, an alternative history wherein the Axis powers won World War II and the eastern seaboard is a province of the Nazi Reich, with the west coast under the control of Imperial Japan, there are handful of people that wonder past their awful reality to peer into another timeline where the Allies prevailed. Additionally, in that parallel world, civil engineer Albert Speer would have had the opportunity to realise his vision and transform Berlin into der Welthauptstadt Germania—which the programme uses as a backdrop for its opening credits. Citylab examines how those plans might have shaped the day-to-day existence of its dwellers in practise and Speer’s philosophy on architecture in general, which included a future provision for Ruinenwerttheorie—that a city should age graciously and in a millennium the crumbling buildings, conserved as ruins should continue to inspire.