Berlin – a city of many faces and different identities – has been used as an experimental laboratory within the project seminar Berlin City West. From Ernst Reuter Platz to An der Urania, organized by the Doctorate of the Iuav University of Venice, and the Deutscher Werkbund Berlin. The seminar aimed to compare the functioning of theoretical research with the architectural project by involving teachers, tutors and doctoral students on the theme of the project. The exercise was shared with some other doctoral schools with a long tradition – Venice, Rome, Naples and Bari – in order to create a real occasion to compare strategies, methods and reflections, alternating, during several months, moments of work inside individual doctorates with strategic collective meetings to compare different visions and approaches. The work focused on Berlin, aware of the particular meaning that this city still has in the urban imaginary of European architectural culture, identifying places for design experimentation and defining objectives to adapt to the current debate on the conversion of certain areas of the city. The exercise, beyond any judgment, returns to reflect on the fate and destiny of some emblematic places in the city, proposing a comparison with its history within a ‘laboratory of future’.