researching and telling the history of the built environment

Schlagwort: Architecture (Seite 2 von 2)

Renau’s mural back at Moskauer Platz

Last public artwork of the Spanish emigré restored

Josep Renau’s (1907-82) 30 x 6 meters large mural Man in Relation to Nature and Technology (1982-84) that was originally placed on the northwestern corner of the »Kultur- und Freizeitzentrum« at the residential area »Moskauer Platz« in Erfurt/Germany, has been presented to the public again after it was restored by the Wüstenrot Stiftung and the City of Erfurt between 2014-19.

This artwork is Renau’s last public commission in the GDR and was finished after his death by his workshop. After the building was torn down in 2009, the future of the mural was uncertain. However, thanks to a group of Renau’s pupil and local residents‘ initiatives, the mural could have been restored eventually. Being involved in the project of the Wüstenrot Foundation since 2017, I did archival research in Berlin, Valencia, and Erfurt. My edited book on the history of the mural and its restoration will be published in 2020.

The project website at the Wüstenrot Foundation: https://wuestenrot-stiftung.de/mosaik-josep-renau-erfurt/

Article in The Art Newspaper by Catherine Hickey on mural and context: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/renau-mosaic-sees-light-of-day-again

A feature by Deutschlandfunk that was produced during the mural’s inauguration in December 2019: https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/restauriertes-wandmosaik-in-erfurt-ein-stueck-ddr.1013.de.html?dram:article_id=464958

Presentation „Black Box Education“

Education Shock. Learning, Politics, and Architecture in the Global 1960s and 70s (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, November 30–December 01, 2019)

In preparation for the exhibition „Education Shock“ (2021), the HKW Berlin and curator Tom Holert hosted an international two-day conference on the global architectures of learning and education in the 1960s and 1970s. I contributed with a talk on the history of the „Academy of Marxist-Leninist Organizational Theory“ in East-Berlin (1969) discussing the intersections of architecture, cybernetics, and politics of education during the Cold War.

„In the 1960s and 1970s, the educational sector expanded on a global scale. Demographics played just as important a role in this process as the transition from industrial to post-industrial society and the education arms race during the Cold War. Extensive reform programs engendered new architectures and learning environments around the world. However, these often progressively conceived of spatialities were also increasingly called into question – as were the cultures and institutions of education, architecture, and science as such.
The conference will discuss the spatial and educational policies of an era that also harbors a wealth of resources to inform the necessary renewal of today’s schools and universities.“

Presentation and discussion in the panel „Cybernetics and Type Building. Socialist Educational Architectures and Their Export“ (for the videos of the presentation and discussion click on the pictures) with Tim Holert, Dina Dorothea Falbe and Elke Beyer.

Link: https://www.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/veranstaltung/p_164339.php.

Film: David San Millán / (c) HKW Berlin

PhD-Thesis Published

»Arbeit. Wohnen. Computer. Zur Utopie in der bildenden Kunst und Architektur der DDR in den 1960er Jahren«

My dissertation just came out as an open-access publication with Heidelberg University Publishing! Here’s the link to the full version: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.422.613

» In the 1960s, between the construction of the Berlin Wall (1961) and the change of power (Ulbricht / Honecker 1971), a field of tension between the claim to power and truth of the SED on one side and the subjective obstinacy of the works of art and their creators on the other hand developed. Within it, debates arose regarding the question of the design and appearance of a future, technologically high developed and scientific socialism. Working. Living. Computer tracks down questions about the appearance of the worker of the future, the future of living, and the significance of the computer in the future and analyses these imaginative worlds of socialist dreams and desires in image, architecture, and texts.«

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