Over 60 years ago, Germany was divided into two separate lands, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the German Democratic Republic. More than 20 years after their reunification, this exhibition marks the first attempt to review the concurrent architectural developments in the two German states.
The exhibition approaches its subject with more questions than answers. It traces the diverging and converging aspects of the two apparently separate architectural disourses, cites the cultural, political and economic context of the developments in the nature of examples and examines the processes that have been made under different auspices in view of the history of the discipline itself. The exibition does not claim to codify a binding 'truth' but rather is to be understood as the attempt to provide a new basis for comparative studies by publishing so far unknown material from West and East German archives, and to initiate further debate. In the centre of consideration are the respective disciplinary debates about how to design homes and memorials or how to give architectural form to the relationship between tradition and innovation.
The results of a perennial research project at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (University of Fine Arts), Department of Architecture are incorporated in the exhibition. The curators Simone Hain and Hartmut Frank participated in this project as well as numerous students with their studies and models.
The exhibition is co-organized by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., Stuttgart (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations) in cooperation with the Föderation deutscher Architektursammlungen (Federation of German Architectural Archives).
About the exhibition
Duration: 01.05.2014 — 20.05.2014
Venue: Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center
Duration: 25.06.2014 — 13.07.2014
Venue: Nanjing Urban Planning Exhibition Center
Duration: 01.09.2014 — 30.09.2014
Venue: Blue Roof Museum of Chengdu, China
Duration: 15.10.2014 — 15.11.2014
Venue: Academy of Art and Design, Tsinghua University
Courtesy of the Goethe-Institut China, for further information please visit www.goethe.de.
