Plans and Dreams – Drawn in the GDR

Were the drawings of GDR architects marked by distinctive features? In the planning offices, they worked with the standard tools of the trade used all over the world. And, as everywhere else, talents were unevenly distributed; each design collective had its own particularly gifted “drawing ace” who ultimately provided the decisive visualisations of a building idea. It would be quite possible to illustrate a stylistic history of four decades of GDR architecture with the help of selected drawings.

But this exhibition is not about illustrating the history of GDR architecture. It is about the makers of that architecture, about the motives, visions and disappointments of several generations of architects. Every year, they graduated from the architecture departments in Dresden, Weimar and Berlin and, fired by ambitious goals, entered a professional practice in which creative design had to take a back seat to radically mechanised construction processes and increasingly severe cuts in resources. The desire to create freely developed architectural ideas was lived out in daring competition designs or in independent artistic exercises. This exhibition focuses on that difference: professional drawings for specific building projects are contrasted with private drawings, which often reveal completely different visions and reflections. Commissioned images are juxtaposed with images of aspiration and imagination.

For the presentation of over 140 drawings, extensive use will be made of the rich holdings of the Scientific Collections of the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) in Erkner. Also on display will be drawings from the Berlinische Galerie – Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture (Berlin); Leipzig City Archives; Modernist Archive; Bauhaus University (Weimar); Saxon State Office for the Conservation of Monuments (Dresden); Weimar City Museum; Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge (Berlin); Archive of the Foundation of Architects from Saxony (Dresden); Klassik Stiftung Weimar; Cultural Office of the City of Frankfurt (Oder); and private collections.

A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition.