After 1990, the reunified Berlin saw fundamentally changed conditions for urban development. Apart from urban repair projects in all areas of the East and between the East and the West, construction projects in the West also received new impetus. In Mitte and Tiergarten (in Moabit and in the meander of the Spree) the buildings for the government and parliament are being built. Private investors also took advantage of the new opportunities. They have not only created a new urban district between the Kulturforum and Potsdamer Platz, they have also developed new residential and business buildings throughout the city. For the inner city, the planners and supervisory authorities built on the insights of the 1980s. The historically developed urban setting is being cautiously developed with principles such as “critical reconstruction” and “respect for the historical substance” (the “Inner city zoning plan”).

In addition to the architecture of the 19th and 20th century, modern buildings designed by international and German architects of the 1990s dominate the visual character of the city. The outstanding example is the Reichstag, which has been redesigned by Norman Foster and now has a glass dome which is open to visitors. For Potsdamer Platz, architects such as Helmut Jahn, Renzo Piano, Hans Kollhoff and Richard Rogers have designed offices, shops and apartments. With his Schützenstrasse residential complex behind brightly coloured facades, Aldo Rossi follows on from the Berlin building plot structure, and Frank O’Gehry designed a new building on Pariser Platz for the DG Bank. Parts of Friedrichstrasse have been redeveloped and now have stores and residential buildings designed by famous architects, such as the department store Galéries Lafayette (Jean Nouvel), the Triangel office and residential building (Josef Paul Kleihues) and the office building on Friedrichstrasse, Mauerstrasse and Krausenstrasse (Philip Johnson).