Building exhibitions have been held in Germany since 1901. So they represent a treasure trove of more than a hundred years’ experience when it comes to finding innovative solutions for the most pressing problems of urban community life. Many ideas still live on today. And each show was an inspiration to innovators.
The history of building exhibitions starts shortly after the dawn of the 20th century on Darmstadt’s Mathildenhöhe. By 1901 industrialization had led to an unprecedented surge in mass produced housing and overcrowded living space. The architect’s “art” seemed to have no place in the city. The first IBA rebelled against this state of affairs, creating an independent settlement and artists’ colony. In 1927 it was followed by the Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart. Here the Deutsche Werkbund (design & industry federation) realized its vision of a new kind of dwelling. The building exhibition Weißenhofsiedlung showed the latest developments in architecture and house construction as if under a burning glass.
After the Second World War two competing concepts of progressive building emerged in the two halves of the divided nation; both sought to move beyond the disastrous tradition of the barrack-like apartment blocks built in the 19th century Gründerzeit. In the early 1950s the (east) German Democratic Republic realized its vision of “Residential palaces for workers” with monumental buildings on Stalinallee. Not to be outdone, the western part of Berlin staged its Interbau exhibition of 1957 and rebuilt the war-ravaged Hansa district as a loosely structured cityscape with high-rises and low buildings. The Berlin IBA in 1987 was a reaction to the construction “sins” committed in the 1960s and 1970s, offering models for the repair and reconstruction of urban spaces. The planners aimed for a sensitive treatment of the old and new buildings still standing in Berlin’s historic city centre.
The IBA Emscher Park started in 1989 and its ten years were dedicated to the post-industrial, often abandoned cityscapes of the Ruhr area; for the first time an exhibition focussed on an entire region with numerous towns and administrative districts. Models were developed here for economic and environment-friendly conversion work in the Ruhr district. Since 1999 a similar theme has been occupying the planners of IBA Fürst-Pückler-Land, site of disused lignite mines in Niederlausitz district: here too the issues are environmental rehabilitation, artistic transformation and putting the region to new, contemporary use. These days, solutions also need to be found for “shrinking towns”, which economic and demographic changes are threatening to hollow out. That is the subject matter of IBA Stadtumbau (running until 2010), which is the first exhibition to take an entire state in the German Federation – Saxony-Anhalt – as its location.
All building exhibitions to date have had this in common: they generated ideas on shaping the future of urban life, survival even, that had an impact far beyond their immediate location and remit.
Cooperation: M:AI Museum für Architektur und Ingenieurkunst NRW