Architectuul Tour: IBA 1987 Summertime Edition
How does a city manage to plan and build exciting but affordable, intriguing yet accessible residential architecture? In Berlin thirty years age one of the biggest architectural shows in the world offered an answer to it.
The metallic flowers on the facade of the tower supposed to represent grips for angels to hold onto when they climb the sides of the tower inspired by the 1987 film “Wings of Desire" directed by Wim Wenders.
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, criticised - and internationally recognized.
IBA 1987 development areas: 1 Tegel, 2 Prager Platz, 3 Südliches Tiergartenviertel, 4 Südliche Friedrichstadt, 5 Luisenstadt, 6 Kreuzberg SO36
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.
Meeting on the corner of Dessauer Strasse. | Photo: Sonja Dragović
The tour was created by Sonja Dragovic, participant of Future Architecture Platform and the recipient of Architectuul’s Digital Publishing Fellowship 2018 and will be leaded by dr. Boštjan Bugarič. Senior Editor of Architectuul.
Architectuul IBA Tour
Saturday, July 17th at 11am
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 and only for minimum of 5 people. Please reserve your IBA 1987 tour by sending an email to [email protected]