How does a city manage to plan and build exciting but affordable, intriguing yet accessible residential architecture? Some thirty years ago, Berlin did this by organizing one of the biggest architectural shows in the world! Let us show you…

During a two-hour walk, we’ll travel back to Berlin of the 1980s: the times when city, cut in half by a wall, with decaying central neighborhoods and persistent shortage of well built public housing, was in need of bold, but careful strokes. To reignite the inner city life, the sense of hope and belonging, West Berlin government turned to urban planning and architecture. For a decade starting in 1977, Southern Friedrichstadt was one of the sites of the international building exhibition known as IBA 1987, to which architects from around the world were invited to envision and build publicly funded residential projects. The task was to restore the old blocks and renew the neighborhoods, but with respect to what’s already there: to critically and cautiously reconstruct, rather than destroy and build anew. The results were vast, extraordinary, influential, criticized - and internationally recognized. Time magazine called IBA 1987 “the most ambitious showcase of world architecture in this generation”.

Three decades later, it is still possible to see almost all of this exhibition here in Berlin! Come along: let’s see how the city dealt with the issues of affordable housing in the (fairly recent) past. We’ll visit the works of some of the most renowned architects in the world - such as Aldo Rossi, John Hejduk and Zaha Hadid - and some less famous, but equally inspiring. We’ll discuss sustainable urban solutions, participatory design, women in architecture, porous borders, and lasting values. 

The tour will be guided by Sonja Dragović, Urban Studies MSci, participant of Future Architecture Platform and the recipient of Architectuul’s Digital Publishing Fellowship.

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Architectuul IBA Tour
Thursday, Nov 14th at 12:30pm
Meeting point: corner of Bernburger and Dessauer Strasse

Admissions: 20€ regular, 15€ reduced, 60€ for groups of 5.
The tour will be guided in English.