researching and telling the history of the built environment

Schlagwort: GDR

DAM ARCHITECTURAL BOOK AWARD 2021 – THE PRIZE WINNERS HAVE BEEN DETERMINED!

„Haus der Kultur Gera“ (Leipzig: sphere publishers, 2021) is among the winners!

As a collaborative product of research, design, photographing, and publishing, the book, edited by Claudia Tittel (Gera) celebrates the 40th anniversary of the opening of the „Haus der Kultur“ in Gera, Germany. Designed by copa ipa (Weimar/Leipzig) and published by Christoph Liepach (sphere publishers / Leipzig), the book is a manifestation of the visual, aesthetic, and historical qualities of this building in the heart of Gera.

We are happy to announce that the „Deutsches Architekturmuseum“ in Frankfurt am Main has honored the book with the „International DAM Architectural Book Award“ in 2021.

„The Frankfurt Book Fair and the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) are presenting the jointly initiated International DAM Architectural Book Award for the thirteenth time. The DAM would like to thank the Society of Friends of the DAM for its generous support of the prize.

The ten prize winners this year are:

Konstruktion / Manual / Birkhäuser Verlag
Apartment Blossom/ Donghua University Press
Antarctic Resolution/ Lars Müller Publishers
Raamwerk In Practice: Lichtervelde Youth Centre / MER B&L
Avant-Garde as a Method / Vkhutemas and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920 – 1930/ Park Books
Elemente einer baukulturellen Allgemeinbildung / Park Books
Milk.Honey / Animal Stories in Imagined Landscapes/ Park Books
Napoli Super Modern/ Park Books
HdK – Haus der Kultur Gera / sphere publishers
Anime Architecture: Imagined Worlds and Endless Megacities/ Thames & Hudson

The prize, unique in its kind and now highly respected, honours the best architecture books of a year. 94 architecture and art book publishers worldwide have responded to the joint call. A specialist jury of external experts and representatives of the DAM selected the ten best architecture books of the year from 235 entries according to criteria such as design, content concept, quality of materials and workmanship, degree of innovation and topicality.

The jury meeting took place on 1 September 2021 at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM). The winners will be announced at the hybrid award ceremony on 20 October 2021.

The external jury of experts this year included:
Stefan Weil (graphic designer), Kerstin Schultz (architect and member of the Friends of DAM e.V.), Karin Hartmann (architect and journalist) and Moritz Bernoully (architect and photographer).

The internal jurors were:
Andrea Jürges (Deputy Director of DAM), Oliver Elser (Curator DAM), Rebekka Kremershof (Head of Architecture Education DAM).

Seminar „Die Architektur der DDR: Typologien, Ideologien, Utopien“ (Heidelberg, Nov. 2020-Jan. 2021)

Online guest seminar at the Institute for European Art History, University of Heidelberg

In the 30. year of the German reunification, the architectonical remains of the GDR have officially become historical monuments of a closed era in accordance with the legal framework. Nevertheless, the discussions about the cultural value and the architectural-historical position of this episode in German history continue. Against the background of the excellent research situation, the seminar thematizes the architecture of the GDR in three interconnected steps: We will first deal with the most important building types of the centralized, standardized building industry – and the exceptions of the so-called „special buildings“. Second, we will deal with the ideological framework of architecture and urban planning in the GDR. Finally, thirdly, we will critically approach the utopias of GDR architecture in order to also ask about their current horizons of meaning.

The seminar establishes the connection between architecture and historical context by examining selected examples of building in the GDR. We will deal with important architects as well as the architectural features of building in the GDR. It will also be examined which societal and political and ideological framework conditions shaped building in the GDR and which current relevance the remains have.

Wüstenrot Stiftung Fellowship zur Erforschung der architekturbezogenen Kunst in der DDR

»Anthologie zur architekturbezogenen Kunst in der DDR«

Die architekturbezogene Kunst der DDR ist in den letzten Jahren vermehrt in den Fokus der Architekturgeschichte und Denkmalpflege geraten. Dennoch fehlte bislang eine quellenbasierte Arbeit, welche die wichtigsten Primärtexte erschließt und die Grundlage für weitere Forschungen auf diesem Gebiet schafft. Dieses Desiderat soll mit dem von der Wüstenrot Stiftung ermöglichten Vorhaben nun behoben werden. Es reiht sich in die zuletzt intensivierten Projekte der Wüstenrot Stiftung zur Erhaltung und Vermittlung der architekturbezogenen Kunst in der DDR ein. Die geplante, zweisprachige Publikation (deutsch / englisch) soll ausgewählte und redigierte Quellentexte aus den Jahren 1945-1990 zur architekturbezogenen Kunst in der DDR in ihren internationalen Verflechtungen der Forschung zugänglich machen und dadurch eine historisch-kritische Grundlage für die wissenschaftliche Beschäftigung mit dem Thema bieten. Auf Basis von Quellenbeständen in unterschiedlichen Archiven – u.a. Berlin, Dresden, Weimar und Los Angeles – werden Fachartikel, (unveröffentlichte) Diskussionsbeiträge, Vorträge oder Ego-Dokumente von Künstler*innen der Wandbildbewegung in der DDR erschlossen und herausgegeben. Es wird mit einer Gesamtzahl von ca. 40 Texten gerechnet, welche vollständig transkribiert und jeweils mit kurzen Begleittexten ergänzt werden. Ein einführender Aufsatz steht am Beginn der Publikation und wird den Forschungsstand und den Kontext der Quellenedition umreißen.

Projektlaufzeit: Juli 2020 – Juli 2022

Das Anthologieprojekt ist angedockt an Forschungen am Institut für Kunstgeschichte und Archäologien Europas, Neueste Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie der Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg (Prof. Dr. Olaf Peters).

„Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Gera“ feiert 40-jähriges Jubiläum

Publikation in Vorbereitung

Am 02. Oktober 1981 wurde das „Haus der Kultur“ (HdK) – heute „Kultur- und Kongresszentrum Gera“ (KuK) – in der ostthüringischen Bezirkshauptstadt der nach dreijähriger Bauzeit der Öffentlichkeit übergeben. Der Entwurf von Manfred Metzner und Günther Ignaczak hatte sich in einem langwierigen Wettbewerb durchgesetzt. 2021 jährt sich die Eröffnung nun bereits zum 40. Mal, weswegen die Stadt Gera eine Festschrift zur Geschichte, Gestaltung und Nutzung des Hauses vorbereitet.

Ich freue mich sehr, für das Kulturamt der Stadt Gera einen Text zur architekturgeschichtlichen Einordnung dieses besonderen Kulturpalastes beitragen zu dürfen!

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.«