Shrinking Cities in Reunified East Germany

Shrinking Cities in Reunified East Germany PDF Author: Agim Kërçuku
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000686221
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
The book explores the relationship between the shrinking process and architecture and urban design practices. Starting from a journey in former East Germany, six different scenes are explored in which plans, projects, and policies have dealt with shrinkage since the 1990s. The book is a sequence of scenes that reveals the main characteristics, dynamics, narratives, reasons and ambiguities of the shrinking cities’ transformations in the face of a long transition. The first scene concerns the demolition and transformation of social mass housing in Leinefelde-Worbis. The second scene deals with the temporary appropriation of abandoned buildings in Halle-Neustadt. The third scene, observed in Leipzig, shows the results of green space projects in urban voids. The scene of the fourth situation observes the extraordinary efforts to renaturise a mining territory in the Lausitz region. The fifth scene takes us to Hoyerswerda, where emigration and ageing process required a reduction and demolition in housing stock and social infrastructures. The border city of Görlitz, the sixth and last scene, deals with the repopulation policies that aim to attract retirees from the West.

Building Socialism

Building Socialism PDF Author: Christina Schwenkel
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478012609
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Following a decade of U.S. bombing campaigns that obliterated northern Vietnam, East Germany helped Vietnam rebuild in an act of socialist solidarity. In Building Socialism Christina Schwenkel examines the utopian visions of an expert group of Vietnamese and East German urban planners who sought to transform the devastated industrial town of Vinh into a model socialist city. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research in Vietnam and Germany with architects, engineers, construction workers, and tenants in Vinh’s mass housing complex, Schwenkel explores the material and affective dimensions of urban possibility and the quick fall of Vinh’s new built environment into unplanned obsolescence. She analyzes the tensions between aspirational infrastructure and postwar uncertainty to show how design models and practices that circulated between the socialist North and the decolonizing South underwent significant modification to accommodate alternative cultural logics and ideas about urban futurity. By documenting the building of Vietnam’s first planned city and its aftermath of decay and repurposing, Schwenkel argues that underlying the ambivalent and often unpredictable responses to modernist architectural forms were anxieties about modernity and the future of socialism itself.

Neo-historical East Berlin

Neo-historical East Berlin PDF Author: Florian Urban
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351915347
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
In the years prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the leaders of the German Democratic Republic planned to construct a city center that was simultaneously modern and historical, consisting of both redesign of old buildings and new architectural developments. Drawing from recently released archival sources and interviews with former key government officials, decision-makers and architects, this book sheds light not only on this unique programme in postmodern design, but also on the debates which were taking place with the Socialist government.

Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin

Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin PDF Author: Emily Pugh
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822979578
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
On August 13, 1961, under the cover of darkness, East German authorities sealed the border between East and West Berlin using a hastily constructed barbed wire fence. Over the next twenty-eight years of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall grew to become an ever-present physical and psychological divider in this capital city and a powerful symbol of Cold War tensions. Similarly, stark polarities arose in nearly every aspect of public and private life, including the built environment. In Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin Emily Pugh provides an original comparative analysis of selected works of architecture and urban planning in both halves of Berlin during the Wall era, revealing the importance of these structures to the formation of political, cultural, and social identities. Pugh uncovers the roles played by organizations such as the Foundation for Prussian Cultural Heritage and the Building Academy in conveying the political narrative of their respective states through constructed spaces. She also provides an overview of earlier notable architectural works, to show the precursors for design aesthetics in Berlin at large, and considers projects in the post-Wall period, to demonstrate the ongoing effects of the Cold War. Overall, Pugh offers a compelling case study of a divided city poised between powerful contending political and ideological forces, and she highlights the effort expended by each side to influence public opinion in Europe and around the World through the manipulation of the built environment.

Counterpreservation

Counterpreservation PDF Author: Daniela Sandler
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706802
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In Berlin, decrepit structures do not always denote urban blight. Decayed buildings are incorporated into everyday life as residences, exhibition spaces, shops, offices, and as leisure space. As nodes of public dialogue, they serve as platforms for dissenting views about the future and past of Berlin. In this book, Daniela Sandler introduces the concept of counterpreservation as a way to understand this intentional appropriation of decrepitude. The embrace of decay is a sign of Berlin's iconoclastic rebelliousness, but it has also been incorporated into the mainstream economy of tourism and development as part of the city's countercultural cachet. Sandler presents the possibilities and shortcomings of counterpreservation as a dynamic force in Berlin and as a potential concept for other cities. Counterpreservation is part of Berlin's fabric: in the city's famed Hausprojekte (living projects) such as the Køpi, Tuntenhaus, and KA 86; in cultural centers such as the Haus Schwarzenberg, the Schokoladen, and the legendary, now defunct Tacheles; in memorials and museums; and even in commerce and residences. The appropriation of ruins is a way of carving out affordable spaces for housing, work, and cultural activities. It is also a visual statement against gentrification, and a complex representation of history, with the marks of different periods—the nineteenth century, World War II, postwar division, unification—on display for all to see. Counterpreservation exemplifies an everyday urbanism in which citizens shape private and public spaces with their own hands, but it also influences more formal designs, such as the Topography of Terror, the Berlin Wall Memorial, and Daniel Libeskind's unbuilt redevelopment proposal for a site peppered with ruins of Nazi barracks. By featuring these examples, Sandler questions conventional notions of architectural authorship and points toward the value of participatory environments.

Architecture in Global Socialism

Architecture in Global Socialism PDF Author: Łukasz Stanek
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168709
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1 Introduction Worldmaking of Architecture -- Chapter 2 A Global Development Path Accra, 1957-66 -- Chapter 3 Worlding Eastern Europe Lagos, 1966-79 -- Chapter 4 The World Socialist System Baghdad, 1958-90 -- Chapter 5 Socialism within Globalization Abu Dhabi and Kuwait City, 1979-90 -- Epilogue and Outlook -- A Note on Sources -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Image Credits.

The GDR Remembered

The GDR Remembered PDF Author: Nick Hodgin
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571134344
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Competing representations of the former East German state in the German cultural memory.

Neo-historical East Berlin

Neo-historical East Berlin PDF Author: Florian Urban
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754676164
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Drawing from recently released archival sources and interviews with former key government officials, decision-makers and architects, this book sheds light not only on this unique program of postmodern design, but also on the debates which were taking plac

Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany

Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany PDF Author: Itohan Osayimwese
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822982919
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Over the course of the nineteenth century, drastic social and political changes, technological innovations, and exposure to non-Western cultures affected Germany's built environment in profound ways. The economic challenges of Germany's colonial project forced architects designing for the colonies to abandon a centuries-long, highly ornamental architectural style in favor of structural technologies and building materials that catered to the local contexts of its remote colonies, such as prefabricated systems. As German architects gathered information about the regions under their influence in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific—during expeditions, at international exhibitions, and from colonial entrepreneurs and officials—they published their findings in books and articles and organized lectures and exhibits that stimulated progressive architectural thinking and shaped the emerging modern language of architecture within Germany itself. Offering in-depth interpretations across the fields of architectural history and postcolonial studies, Itohan Osayimwese considers the effects of colonialism, travel, and globalization on the development of modern architecture in Germany from the 1850s until the 1930s. Since architectural developments in nineteenth-century Germany are typically understood as crucial to the evolution of architecture worldwide in the twentieth century, this book globalizes the history of modern architecture at its founding moment.

Japan and Central Europe Restructuring

Japan and Central Europe Restructuring PDF Author: Winfried Flüchter
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447035316
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Revised and updated papers originally presented at the 7th Japanese-German Geographical Conference, Aug. 16-27, 1992, in Heidelberg and Duisburg, Germany.