Within the framework of the publishing program of the FFM, two books are being published this year. One of them is “Four walls and a roof. The complex nature of a simple profession”by Reinier de Graaff. This is a collection of articles, which presents the author's thoughts about the profession of an architect in the 21st century and his own, sometimes tragicomic experience in this area.
The presentation, followed by coffee with the architect, will take place on 6 July. Reinier de Graaf will also speak as part of the business program of the forum. In the meantime, with the kind permission of the Moscow Urban Forum, we are publishing a fragment of one of the chapters of the book.
Part Default by Design / Design by default, section Architekture ohne Eigenschaften / Architecture without frills, paragraph Exodus / Exod
The East German housing program was supposed to solve housing problems by 1990. Which, for the most part, has been done. Ironically, the GDR's most impressive achievement - solving the housing crisis - coincided with its disappearance as a country. If East Germany had survived as a result of the events of 1989-1990, most of its population would now live in areas with completely typical buildings, where all traces of history and traditions have been erased. However, this was not destined to happen.
After 1989, a global relocation from the mass development of East Germany began. From 15.3 million in 1990, the population of East Germany declines to 12.5 million. A country that recently suffered from a housing shortage is now suffering from an oversupply. The horror story of the East German press about residential neighborhoods that are inevitably falling into decay is starting to come true. Those who can afford it move either to the new-found center of Berlin or to the flourishing suburbs that seem to have sprung up overnight on the green meadows of Brandenburg.
In the meantime, it turns out that the total demolition of East German prefabricated residential areas, which some politicians are calling for, is not feasible. Instead, the more flexible Rückbau approach of controlled collapse was chosen. This type of demolition, also called Normalisierung, is intended to transform former panel areas into normal dormitory areas that are supposed to embody more humane - if not ideal! - suburb model. Normalisierung was an attempt to solve two problems at once: to create a fashionable living space and to reduce the housing stock that had become unnecessary.
Rückbau's approach was based on the reduction of 11-storey buildings to 3-4-storey ones. These "more welcoming" houses were to be arranged in a row layout with separate entrances for each apartment or duplexes on the lower floors. The resulting buildings were insulated with expanded polystyrene panels and plastered in fresh pastel colors. The panel houses of the northern and eastern parts of Marzana - the very outskirts - are the first in line. Some high-rise buildings have disappeared completely and replaced by parks and playgrounds. Now urban planning did not create, but destroyed.
During the Normalisierung from 2002 to 2007, Marzahn lost 4,500 of his 58,500 housing units. The process stopped only when, with the influx of wealthy West Germans and wealthy foreigners into the center of Berlin, those who were poorer were forced out to the outskirts. Coupled with a wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe, accustomed to panel housing, this trend in the mid-2010s stabilized the share of unoccupied housing at 3%. This was acceptable for the market, and therefore for politicians.
It's funny that the Normalisierung process, no matter how much it rejected the original ideology of the system, which was intended to "normalize", inevitably based on the characteristic properties of this system. Typical production, being a quick construction tool, also speeds up demolition - buildings that are easy to assemble and disassembled have proven to be easy. Built panel to panel, they collapse "panel by panel". Urban planning, which is based on the radii and heights of standard construction cranes, seems to lead to this kind of fast and surgically accurate demolition. The demolition debris looks surprisingly orderly - it is made up of the same fragments that were used during the construction. The sites after the demolition are similar to the construction sites ten years earlier, only the factories are missing.
Waste (if you can call it that) is reused for the construction of other buildings that contradict the very idea of Plattenbau - single-family homes or even summer cottages.
A gable roof and a layer of plaster is all it takes to erase the memory of the original. As a reflection of the days gone by when the GDR Construction Academy obsessively explored and promoted the merits of urbanization and multi-storey panel buildings, the Technical University of Brandenburg now announces with similar enthusiasm the benefits of low-rise, low-density residential buildings created from used concrete panels.
Just as the panel technology of East Germany was once proudly exported to friendly socialist countries, now dismantled panels and decommissioned materials of the doomed state find a similar application: they are sent not only to neighboring Czech Republic and Poland, but also much farther. Since 2005, from time to time, ships have emerged from ports on the Baltic coast of Germany full of façade panels assembled after the demolition of East German buildings. They are sent to St. Petersburg and will be used in the construction of new neighborhoods.
Thanks to the superior quality of the panels, despite the fact that they were already in use, these quarters look as if they were built from completely new elements. The timeless concrete panels of the WBS 70 system proved to be significantly stronger than the political system that gave rise to them. Now, in a market economy, they act as an almost completely renewable resource.
Marzahn, as the largest mass standard development area in the history of Europe, is a demonstration of the possibilities of a unified industrial system of total centralized planning. The huge residential area of Marzana was the result of a long evolution, which began presumably in 1955 with the resolution of the 5th Congress of the SED on careful adherence to the directives of Khrushchev in matters of industrialization. However, this does not reflect the whole point. The roots of this revolution go even further, in the days when the GDR did not yet exist, and even, probably, when the communist regime in Russia had not yet come to power. The benefits of industrialization have long occupied the thoughts of both left and right politicians, being at the center of Henry Ford's ideas no less than Lenin. (Remember “Communism is Soviet Power plus the Electrification of the Whole Country.”) After the futuristic manifesto of 1909 that celebrated violence and technology, industrialization took a firm place in the ideas of avant-garde creators, and the outbreak of World War I five years later unambiguously exposed its destructive potential. Industrialization had proven that it could be used for good or bad, and therefore it became increasingly politicized. Industrialization became the main principle of the Bauhaus movement and within its framework was developed and developed to an almost mystical level. In 1924, the famous phrase of Mies van der Rohe sounded: “In the industrialization of construction, I see the key problem of our time. If we manage to hold out until the end of industrialization, then all social, economic, technical and artistic issues will be easily resolved."
In Marzana, Mies got what he asked for. However, by putting the strength of industry over the skill of the specialist, he made the architect unnecessary as a specialist. What the proponents of modernism failed to grasp was how fundamentally anti-modern their profession was, even in the context of their own narrative: their passion for industrial progress could and inevitably led to their own professional demise. The apogee of modern architecture is not at all the hero-architect of our time, but the inevitable disappearance of the architect as a creator. It is worth thinking about this: is this disappearance an accidental by-product of the action of forces beyond the control of the architect, or is it a moment of the highest deliberate vanity, the desire of the modern generation to be the last?
If the history of modern architecture, with its aspirations to change the world for everyone, is an unfolding ancient Greek tragedy, then forty years of GDR architecture is deus ex machina: the sudden intervention of a new factor that leads to a sudden denouement of a previously insoluble situation. Resolving the situation comes at a cost. If contemporary architecture wishes to deliver on its promises, the contemporary architect must leave the stage. In a truly tragic manner, the last act of the ancient tragedy - exod - ends with the death of the protagonist.
But how tragic is this development of events? The value of each invention lies in the disappearance of which it takes a hand, in what laborious and complex processes there is no need. Whoever thought about the automated architecture of the GDR, it eliminated a whole system of painful improvisations and dubious design decisions. (Every architect reading this knows what I mean, but few will be able to admit it.) Architecture has now become not a matter of personal talent (and therefore not a unique property of the lucky few endowed with this gift), but a matter of savoir-faire - experience and skill that can be acquired rather than inherited. You grow up learning what others have invented before you, such as industrial processes and typological options. Architecture becomes something that can be learned. If earlier architects found it difficult to answer what architecture is - art or science, then in the GDR it seems they were able to give an exhaustive answer. In 2014, at the Venice Architecture Biennale, it was declared a desire to abandon the idea of a modern architect (at least for the duration of the Biennale) and put the basic elements of architecture and their evolution at the center. Architecture, not architects. East Germany has gone a step further, completely eliminating the need for an architect as the main builder and turning the entire country into a huge exhibition of what can be achieved in his absence.
From this point of view, Marzahn becomes something incredibly liberating. His faceless buildings, in which the presence of the author is not felt, are perceived as a welcome change in the exuberant meaninglessness of most of modern architecture. In many ways, this applies to all of East Germany. The continuous series of anonymous coded building systems is like X-rays, revealing genuine progress: a series of real inventions opposed to the parade of styles and fashions. All thoughts of style and taste as a bourgeois instrument for preserving class inequality can be forgotten. The elimination of the architect, the accomplice of the bourgeoisie, is like getting rid of the last obstacle that prevents us from coming to a utopian classless society.
The urban festival MoscowUrban FEST, within the framework of which the presentation of this book is planned, will take place on July 4-7 in Zaryadye. More than a hundred open educational and cultural events await the townspeople. In 2019, the theme of the festival is “City / Attention / Umwelt”. The organizers of the festival focus the attention of citizens on why we all see our multifaceted capital so differently. The program is divided into three thematic blocks "Feel", "Realize", "Look differently". Every day, the festival will delight Muscovites with performances by key experts in the world of urbanism, performances by Community STAGE, energetic workouts from FITMOST, open-air premiere film screenings from Beat Films, an extensive children's program, yoga on a floating bridge, the final of the special Moscow Urban FEST project "Muscovites Theater" … The program also includes lectures, debates, concerts, master classes and much more. You can learn more about the program on the website.
