A photographic search for traces
While studying architecture at the TU Berlin in the 1980s, the International Building Exhibition IBA 1987 was a must-see. In 1988, we made a pilgrimage from Rauchstrasse, where we marveled at ecological buildings for the first time, to Lützowplatz with its postmodern apartment buildings by Botta, Cook, Jansen, etc. On the other side of the square was the apartment block by O M Ungers, a must for any architecture student: Townhouses – then called city villas – for social housing.
Thirty years and a wall later, there is nothing left to see; the entire Ungers block was successively demolished. The current new building embodies the obligatory mixed-use Berlin style, miles away from the conceptual originality and the IBA-typical generous inner-city residential quality of the Ungers building.
In a concept of (West) Berlin as a “Green Archipelago” developed with colleagues such as Hans Kollhoff and Rem Koolhaas, Ungers opposed a reconstruction of the historic urban body and advocated the planning of greened urban islands within a polycentric whole: The garden as city, the city as garden.
By West Berlin standards, the block at Lützowplatz offered paradisiacal conditions – and at social housing rents. It was thus prototypical of the International Building Exhibition, whose principle was to create “the reclamation of the inner city as a place to live” with affordable housing. “Critical reconstruction” was another point; in view of the housing shortage and new castle construction, this program seems visionary again today.
Stephanie Kloss shows photographs of the demolition and contrasts them with other IBA buildings. She is not concerned with documenting them, but with an abstraction that seeks to elaborate the theoretical idea or approach of the IBA and at the same time looks critically at current urban policy.
Stephanie Kloss, born in Karlsruhe, lives and works as a visual artist in Berlin. She studied architecture at the Technical University in Berlin (diploma) and media art at the University of Design Karlsruhe with Marie-Jo Lafontaine and Günther Förg as well as photography with Thomas Struth and Candida Höfer. Stephanie Kloss’ photographic works deal with sociological, political and spatial phenomena. The theme of power plays a central role in recent works. She is represented in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In addition to her artistic activities, she teaches at the Berlin University of the Arts in the Studium Generale and the Summer University, curates exhibitions such as “Erotica” or “Pissing in a River. Again!” at Kunstraum Kreuzberg and writes texts for various art magazines. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)