Editing Potsdamer Platz (section)

=== Sony ===
The second largest part went to [[Sony]], who erected their new European headquarters on a triangular site immediately to the north of Daimler-Benz and separated from it by the re-routed Potsdamer Straße. This new [[Sony Center|Sony Centre]], designed by [[Helmut Jahn]], is an eye-catching monolith of glass and steel featuring an enormous tent-like conical roof, its shape reportedly inspired by [[Mount Fuji]] in Japan, covering an elliptical central public space up to 102 metres across, and thus differing substantially from Hilmer & Sattler's original plan for the site. Its 26-storey, 103-metre-high "Bahn Tower" is so named because it houses the corporate headquarters of [[Deutsche Bahn]], the German state railway system.

Surviving parts of the former [[Hotel Esplanade Berlin|Hotel Esplanade]] have been incorporated into the north side of the Sony development, including the [[Kaisersaal]] which, in a complex and costly operation in March 1996, was moved in one piece (all 1,300 tonnes of it), some 75 metres from its former location, to the spot that it occupies today (it even had to make two right-angled turns during the journey, while maintaining its own orientation). Nearby is a new [[Café Josty]], opened early in 2001, while between the two is "Josty's Bar," which is housed in the Esplanade's former breakfast room. This, like the Kaisersaal, had to be relocated, but here the room was dismantled into some 500 pieces to be reassembled where it stands now.

Topped out on 2 September 1998, the Sony Centre was formally opened on 14 June 2000 (although many of its public attractions had been up and running since 20 January), in another grand ceremony with more music&nbsp;– this time with Sony's Japanese chairman [[Norio Ohga]] himself conducting the [[Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra]]. A keen lover of classical music, he had helped to choose the site because of its close proximity to the orchestra's home in the [[Kulturforum|Cultural Forum]].