HafenCity

This guide to HafenCity in Hamburg starts with a question: how did a concert hall budgeted at seventy-seven million euros balloon into one of the most expensive buildings of its kind? It follows architects Herzog and de Meuron balancing a glass crown atop an old cocoa warehouse, the decade of disputes between the city and its builder, and the acoustician who spent years hand-shaping thousands of plaster panels inside. Along the way you'll hear about a parliamentary inquiry into runaway costs, right down to a single toilet brush. HafenCity itself, Europe's largest inner-city building project, grew up around that same gamble on former docklands.