Thiel refers to Berlin as "the city that suffers from an overdose of history. Yet it does not suffer from its sediments like other European cities, but from the consequences of its eruptions." His works are unique reflections upon the urban landscape of Berlin, that architectural/intellectual, twentieth-century piecework. He describes a type of architecture in transition, the formation of a new political space within urban structures. His actual theme is the incomplete; he prefers the process of construction to the end result, which is persistent with his pursuit of the aesthetics of temporality and of change. This extensive monograph is the first to feature all of Thiel's important groups of works on this theme. His photographs seem to capture moments in time that refer to a larger narrative context. Simultaneously, he is continually engaged in exploring the relationship of photography to painting and sculpture.

Thiel's monumental works are not merely documentation, but picture a city reborn after a tumultuous history.