German Werkbund Berlin
The German Werkbund Berlin eV is a state union of the German Werkbund founded in 1907 and based in Berlin .
Its first chairmen were Heinrich Tessenow , Walter Rossow and Julius Posener . The efforts of the Berliner Werkbund were and still apply to the humane design of the environment - from the things of daily use to living, the city, the country to the safeguarding of the biological basis of life. Its aim is to intensify the individual's sense of responsibility for social and cultural development and, with it, to promote quality.
Goal setting and activities
After the Second World War, all efforts were aimed at reconstruction . Werkbund members such as Max Taut , Hans Scharoun , Wils Ebert , the brothers Hans and Wassili Luckhardt , Hubert Hoffmann , Paul Baumgarten , Eduard Ludwig and Walter Rossow took up the idea of a building exhibition at the beginning of the 1950s. On the basis of the reconstruction competition of 1953, the Hansaviertel became the location of an international building exhibition . The Interbau 1957 sat architectural and urban standards and propagated the, city of tomorrow '. It was opened by Federal President Theodor Heuss . As early as 1952 he initiated the founding of the German Design Council.
An early example of consumer advice is the Berliner Wohnberatung , which the Werkbund set up in the early 1960s under the direction of Charlotte Eiermann.
Downtown redevelopment and ongoing housing shortages led to the construction of large housing estates. Numerous Werkbund members were involved in the planning for the Märkisches Viertel and Gropiusstadt . Criticism and further development of the large estates remain an issue to this day - currently in connection with the debate about shrinking cities . The revitalization of the 'inner city as a place to live' and the reaction to undesirable urban developments such as the clear-cut renovation mobilized many Werkbund members who also took part in the 1987 International Building Exhibition. For example, at the height of Berlin's deforestation, the Werkbund Berlin supported the 'Office for Urban Redevelopment and Social Work / Basisgruppe Kreuzberg' in the implementation of a traveling exhibition on concepts of sustainable urban renewal.
In addition to interfering in current urban development issues, issues of remembering and preservation and the social, cultural and political problems associated with them increasingly came to the fore in the work of the Werkbund. In 1985, the Werkbund initiated the initiative to deal with the Gestapo premises, which established the Topography of Terror Foundation. The preservation of valuable building fabric was a topic that Julius Posener occupied with commitment. In 1988 he also took part in the Ludwig Hoffmann Seminar founded by the Werkbund to maintain the Rudolf Virchow Hospital. For this initiative, the Berliner Werkbund was awarded the Critics' Prize of the Academy of the Arts.
When in 1990 the problem of city association and urban development of the two decades of separate parts of Berlin had to be solved, the Werkbund Berlin made a significant contribution to the establishment of the Stadtforum Berlin , thus enabling a city-wide public dialogue between citizens, interest representatives, politics, administration and specialist disciplines has been.
Classic topics of the Werkbund “from sofa cushions to urban planning” have remained central tasks. Events on ecological issues with Hans Peter Dürr, Otto Schily and Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker , on issues of the working society with Hermann Glaser and, in this context, the view of the "office of the future" as a joint project between the Werkbund and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 1996, finally the 1997 conference on the 90th anniversary of the Deutscher Werkbund "From the Bonn to the Berlin Republic - Public and Public Space in Berlin" illustrate the broad spectrum of topics and fields of work.
Dealing with post-war modernism in Berlin is a topic that the Werkbund deals with in particular. The first highlight was set in 2002 in the Werkbund gallery with the exhibition "Rediscovered - Revisited: Exemplary in the Berlin Cityscape". The selection was based on 49 articles from a Tagesspiegel series that reported from 1961 to 1965 on “exemplary achievements of local architecture after the end of the war” under the title Exemplary in Berlin's cityscape . This series, which referred exclusively to the western part of the city, was initiated by the then column head Wolf Jobst Siedler and judged by the Werkbund members Walter Rossow, Hans Scharoun and Peter Pfankuch . For the eastern part of Berlin, there has not yet been a corresponding inventory that takes into account the diversity of modern construction as well as the circumstances in which it was built. With the traveling exhibition and the companion book Ost-Moderne - Architektur in Berlin 1945–1965 , the Werkbund closed a gap in Berlin's architectural history and also made a contribution to political education and building culture outside of Berlin. The opening took place in May 2004 at the Humboldt University in Berlin, after which the exhibition has wandered through numerous stations.
Another exhibition dealt with the architect Bruno Taut , who was an early member of the Werkbund. Born in Königsberg in 1880, Bruno Taut emigrated via Switzerland to Japan in 1933 and to Turkey in 1936, where he lived in Istanbul until his death in 1938. On the occasion of his 125th birthday, the Berliner Werkbund dedicated the exhibition “Bruno Taut - Master of Colored Building in Berlin” and an accompanying book to him. Bruno Taut was an architect, urban planner, designer, humanist, idealist, social reformer, utopian and above all an artist. Intellect and feeling are reflected in his residential buildings of the 1920s in Berlin and give them a unique character. With economical means, careful details and the inclusion of outside living spaces, Bruno Taut has reformed the living spaces. Refinement and economy in the form elements make his architecture appear traditional and novel at the same time. The quality of Bruno Taut's architecture lies not least in its expressive colors, which have become a trademark of his work.
The exhibition, which was sponsored by the Federal Foreign Office, is designed as a traveling exhibition in German / English. For the first time, Bruno Taut's Berlin residential complexes and housing developments are systematically presented. A comprehensive overview of the architectural work, its development phases, renovation measures, procedures in monument protection and the current state is given. The exhibition curator and architect Winfried Brenne made fundamental contributions to the recovery and preservation of Taut's legacy. The analytical care and the manual experience in the work done here as well as the renovation results are of exemplary value for the building certificates of the 20th century, which are endangered in many places. The exhibition was shown as a preview in May 2005 at the Technical University of Berlin and traveled through the Turkish Goethe Institutes in Istanbul , Ankara and Izmir , and in December 2005 it was also on view at the Adana Cultural Institute. By 2016, the exhibition was shown in more than 30 exhibition locations worldwide.
The 100th anniversary of the Werkbund in 2007 was the occasion to look at the roots of the early Werkbund and its outstanding personalities. Friedrich Naumann (1860-1919) was a Werkbund man from the very beginning. Julius Posener called him the early chief ideologist of the Werkbund, who through his programmatic writings was not only actively involved in the run-up to the founding phase, but also wrote the first advertising brochure for German industrial art for the Werkbund in 1908 . In it, he formulated the concept of quality work in its economic and social meaning and had a lasting impact on the Werkbund's self-image. On September 28, 2004, the exhibition "Friedrich Naumann - Life, Work, Effect" of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation was shown in the Berlin House of Representatives , which recalled the achievements of its namesake in politics, economy and culture and was supplemented by text panels from the Berliner Werkbund . The exhibition is related to the series of events “Between Art and Industry”, in which, in a critical reflection, impulses from the early Werkbund are taken up and placed in a contemporary context, because looking at the past sharpens the view of the present and the future. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the German Werkbund in 2007, exhibitions were shown in Munich and Berlin, and a comprehensive catalog was drawn up.
The conversion of the Werkbund Galerie into a polyfunctional exhibition space in 2009 made it possible to create an interdisciplinary meeting place in City West. The urban development of the
Since then, the Berliner Werkbund has accompanied City West both critically and constructively. He would like to contribute to developing the basic lines of an overall strategy for the important and attractive inner-city area of City West. A coordinated overall strategy is the prerequisite for making City West fit for the future in terms of urban planning and cultural as well as scientific and economic aspects. Since 2016, the Berliner Werkbund has been calling on the young generation of students to deal with current issues in urban development and to develop visionary ideas and strategic concepts for selected situations at various locations in City West. It invites renowned universities and colleges to ideas competitions and awards the "Werkbund Berlin Prize" for outstanding work. The topics so far have been: 2016: redesign of the Quartier am Zoo , 2017 redesign of Ernst-Reuter-Platz , 2018: redesign of the An der Urania area .
“This is modern - German Werkbund Exhibition Venice 2014” was the title of the exhibition by the Berliner Werkbund, which was shown on the occasion of the 14th Architecture Biennale 2014 and the 100th anniversary of the German Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne in 1914 in Venice in the Palazzo Ca'Tron. It was about the question of today's modern architecture and design: 22 architectural offices from Germany were asked to present their position and attitude in a design task. The task consisted of a dispute with the German pavilion in Venice, the demolition of which was requested by the President of the Federal Chamber of Architects a few years ago. The building has now been classified as dilapidated and the architects have been given the option of a new building in the same location. The question of the basics of today's architecture was linked to the question of the knowledge gained from 100 years of modernity, in the search for an appropriate attitude in one's own architectural work, for the self-image and the integration of one's own work in the context of other design tasks. The exhibition catalog was published by Jovis Verlag.
On the occasion of the German Werkbund Day from September 23 to 25, 2016, the Berliner Werkbund presented the plans for the WerkBundStadt Berlin , a new urban quarter in Berlin-Charlottenburg.
For years, the Berliner Werkbund has been grappling with key issues relating to residential construction in the capital. It was planned that the WerkBundStadt would be built on an area of around 29,000 square meters of a former tank oil depot on the banks of the Spree. A total of 1,100 apartments were planned, around 330 of which are rent-linked. 33 well-known architectural offices develop and design the project together. With the WerkBundStadt, the urban and architectural prerequisites should be created for a socially, demographically, culturally and functionally diverse urban quarter in which no cars can be parked and neighbors and walkers have unimpeded access to the banks of the Spree. The WerkBundStadt concept did not rely on traditional housing developments, gated communities or town houses. Its financing should be based on the principle of socially responsible investors who adopt the innovative project approach. The Werkbundstadt Berlin project will not be implemented on the intended property. The exhibition “Building and Living. The history of the Werkbundsiedlungen ”. Catalogs for both exhibitions have been published by Jovis Verlag.
Since 2016, the Berliner Werkbund, in cooperation with the University of the Arts, has been awarding the Julius Posener Prize every two years . The first prize winner was the architectural historian Kenneth Frampton from New York City; In 2018, the architect and urban planner Jan Gehl from Copenhagen received the prize, which is endowed with 5,000 euros.
On the 80th anniversary of Bruno Taut's death, the book Bruno Taut - Visionär und Weltbürger was published by Wagenbach Verlag in December 2018 .
literature
- 50 Years of the Deutscher Werkbund Berlin eV Review - Insight - Outlook. Regioverlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-929273-29-2 .