Curators from Germany covered the topic most fully. They even played a "rebuilding" of their own pavilion, where visitors had to enter inside not through a neoclassical portico, but through an inconspicuous side entrance, where the luminous arrows pointed. This is part of the concept of designer Konstantin Grcic, emphasizing the “everyday life” of the projects presented. Inside, visitors walk and sit on the footbridge used in Venetian streets and squares during floods.
The exhibits themselves are 16 completed renovation projects for relatively new buildings (those built before World War II are in the minority). The curators named the exhibition Reduce Reuse Recycle and identified 11 themes, of which one or more were assigned to each project. Among them - "psychological", such as "behavior" and "perception", and "processing of material" is adjacent to the "processing of the image."
Many buildings were modest from the beginning and remained so after reconstruction. For example, the high-rise building of a student dormitory in Munich was simply deprived of loggias by the Knerer und Lang bureau, turning them into a full-fledged part of small-sized dwellings. The new facade made of lightweight concrete panels, which covered the building from the outside, visually "rejuvenated" the building, while not drastically changing its appearance, which is important: it is part of the former Olympic Village.
There are also more spectacular options that fully correspond to the spirit of the pun "Reconstruction (Umbau) is the new Bilbao": the "conversion" of the submarine base in Saint-Nazaire into the cultural center Alvéole 14 according to the project of the Paris-Berlin bureau LIN, or the reconstruction of the wing of the Berlin Natural Science Museum under the Diener & Diener project.
But more impressive is the partial "alienation" of the Dornbusch Evangelical Church in Frankfurt am Main (workshop Meixner Schlüter Wendt). After the war, many new churches were erected in Germany, but now, for demographic and cultural reasons, the number of parishioners has greatly decreased. Therefore, the temple can often change its function, but in this case it has decreased in size to fit the community. At the same time, the new side facade, on the side of which the compression took place, was provided with a relief reminiscent of the structure of the "lost" part, and lines were drawn on the surface of the earth, reminiscent of the original area and configuration of the building.
As an addition to this project, the exhibition catalog contains examples of shrinking cities of the former GDR, where, in order to maintain or improve the quality of life, the building area is reduced. Forests (Leipzig) and parks (Dessau-Rosslau) are planted in place of the demolished neighborhoods.
But if in Germany there is an active work on the processing of "urban resources", which is more environmentally friendly and economical than demolition and new construction, then in Estonia the situation is far from being so cloudless. The "national pavilion" located in the Arsenal presents the exposition "How long does a building live?" It is dedicated to the decay and destruction of the legacy of Soviet modernism, taking place for political and economic reasons.
The history of the Linnehal complex in Tallinn is presented as a central example in a hall reminiscent of an unkempt late Soviet lobby with a mirrored wall and a leather sofa. It was built for the 1980 Olympics (sailing competitions were held in Estonia) as the V. I. Lenin and is designed for 6,000 spectators. Then its capacity was reduced to 4,200, but after the collapse of the USSR, even this number turned out to be too large. The building, with wide terraces and stairways leading down to the water, was occupied in the 1990s by a variety of tenants, but even those tenants did not make it profitable. Investors for possible reconstruction were never found, so in January 2010 the complex was closed. From time to time there are plans to demolish it, but it has the status of a monument and the international organization DoCoMoMo is following its fate. Since its structures are quite strong, and it is well located: by the sea and in the capital, therefore its sad fate is especially indicative.
As for the buildings in smaller cities and in the countryside, which were once considered a model for fellow architects from other Soviet republics, their condition is even more deplorable. The structures that have not lost their former spectacularity and formal "relevance" - various cafes, rest houses, administrative buildings of collective and state farms - are left to their own devices and are slowly being destroyed.
