Press and EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT Public Relations

24 April 2017 Priser Pltz   Otto Bartning – Architect of a Social Modernity (1883-1959) Germny T + ()  –  F + ()  – ! presse@dk.de www.dk.de

31 March – 18 June 2017 Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin, Tel. 030 20057-2000, [email protected] Tue –Sun 11 am – 7 pm, Admission € 6/4; admission free for under-18s and Tuesdays 3 pm – 7 pm

Architect, creative force and organisational talent – Otto Bartning (1883-1959) was an exceptionally complex figure. Together with and Bruno Taut, he was a member of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst formed in the wake of the German Revolution in 1918. As such, he belonged to the leading figures calling for modernism in architecture. As an important innovator in the process of reconstruction after the Second World War and in his work advising the city of Berlin, he consistently advocated a form of social modernity that responded to people’s needs. This comprehensive retrospective now presents Bartning’s multifaceted oeuvre and illustrates the wide spectrum of his interests and talents through original drawings and sketches, photos, and architectural models as well as 3D simulations. The exhibition shows how Bartning’s work and arguments, strongly informed by his social concerns, are still just as topical and relevant today.

Otto Bartning’s designs for residential housing and churches in his early career in Imperial Germany stand as prime examples of his radical rejection of the historicist revivalist styles dominant at that time. In his Sternkirche (1922) and Stahlkirche (1928), an innovative church assembled from steel elements, he developed landmark designs for modern Protestant churches. These two church buildings are characterised by new shapes and materials just as much as by Bartning’s desire to create a sacral space where the spatial and visual relations heighten the congregation’s sense of protestant community. His work for the emergency church programme from 1946 is also quite unique. For this programme, he designed prefabricated churches produced in series which were constructed in 43 German cities. A founding member of the West Berlin Akademie der Künste in 1954 and co-founder of the reconstituted after 1945, Otto Bartning also shaped the direction and principles of architectural development in Germany in the post-war years. His buildings, speeches and writings proved to have a major influence on architecture in the newly founded West Germany. Pge  of

The Interbau 1957 International Building Exhibition in Berlin represented a further Press and Public Relations highpoint in his oeuvre. Priser Pltz  This exhibition, curated by Dr. Sandra Wagner-Conzelmann, is a cooperation  Berlin Germny project between the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and the Wüstenrot Stiftung T + ()  –  together with the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe, the Institut Mathildenhöhe F + ()  – ! presse@dk.de and the Technische Universität Darmstadt. The exhibition is www.dk.de accompanied by a catalogue.

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