Power dressing - architecture

Architectural Review, The, April, 1998 by Layla Dawson

Contrary to expectations, 'Power and Monument' is not a review solely of National Socialist architecture. As the last exhibition in the trilogy, 'Modern Architecture in Germany' at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, it confounds the cliche that power gestures in architecture are confined to symmetry, axis, or Neo-Classicism. Even architecture's heroes are viewed here in a new light. From his exile in Switzerland Peter Meyer wrote an obituary for Peter Behrens in 1940 citing his AEG factories, his Petersburg embassy and Alexanderplatz commercial building, as 'expressions of violence'(1) and forerunners for Fascist architecture. What are the conditions under which Modernism, as a rational movement in the service of enlightenment, turns against its founding ideals to become a celebration of power and control? Is Germany's history especially susceptible to such destructive turns or is it only that architects, like actors, whose work must be public, are more prone to career opportunism? There are no simple answers.

Peter Koller's 1938 planning of Wolfsburg, home of the 'German People's Car', expressed Volkswagen's economic imperium. A small label tells the visitor that the 1:5000 layout of the works was drawn by a slave labourer, Olga Alferow, in VW's technical offices on 30 August 1943. Barracks for the prisoners were erected beside the production processes they served in forms developed with the growing requirement for a new building type. Already there were models in Modernism for the marshalling of functions. Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer's 1928 planning for Friedrichstadt-Berlin, a socially progressive development at that time, with its parallel rows of identical multi-storey flats without bush or tree is a frightening concept when seen from today's standpoint. Although referred to in the accompanying book, no concentration camps are shown in the exhibition. Auschwitz-Birkenau, where prefabricated timber cavalry stables were adapted for prison huts, was banal in its details but the blanket planning and shoddy construction, unrelated to humans or topography, made them fist marks in the landscape, sites of subjugation, similar to the great industrial company compounds where their labour was used in the same way as any other raw material.

Monumentalism is not purely the reserve of political ideologies. A kaleidoscope of projects illustrates how architects have deified technology in commercial and utility buildings to impress, repress or control populations, economic competitors, shareholders or employees. Ernst Neufert's 1956 Dyckerhoff Cement Works, Hentrich Petschnigg & Partner's first German multi-storey slab blocks for Thyssen in Dusseldorf, 1960, von Gerkan Marg & Partner's Leipzig Trade Fair hall (AR March 1996), and railway projects for the next millennium glorify man's consumption and conquest of the natural sciences.

The same architecture can stand for Modernism, absolute power and even its defeat. Hans Poelzig's 1930 I.G. Farben headquarters in Frankfurt, pictured on the catalogue cover, has been empty since the American forces left during the last decade. The former all-powerful industrial base built with Modernist clarity bordering on the awe-inspiring with massive office wings leading off endless curving corridors, and heavyweight detailing executed in expensive marbles and metals built to endure, was 'temporarily' commandeered by the occupying forces in 1945. They stayed for half a century. Las Vegas-style decorations were stuck on to the garden pavilion interior which housed a casino and nightclub for the expatriate workers. The main building was cheaply partitioned and painted in a rainbow of colours for clerks. In four years, after a 44 million DM facelift, it is to be handed over to Frankfurt University.

Included among the 400 exhibits are designs for Berlin's Spreebogen government district around Foster's remodelled Reichstag and, in contrast, Bonn's soon to be abandoned government district, where the post-war Republic attempted to understate power and monumentality, as typified by Behnisch's parliament building. Berlin's development since re-unification has allowed Germany to throw off the sackcloth and ashes of 50 years and catch up with the pomposity of other European capitals. For example, the Reichshauptbank, designed by Heinrich Wolff in 1933 under National Socialism, is to become the new Foreign Office in a united Germany after serving as GDR Finance Ministry. Surviving successive political colonizations, it has always been recognizable as the architecture of power.

From Gunter Behnisch's assertion that, 'I have nothing to do with power', to downright refusal by others such as O. M. Ungers to have anything to do with the exhibition, the curator, Romana Schneider, faced extreme difficulties in staging this last part of the trilogy. The disadvantages of a privately sponsored culture are revealed when it comes to subjects preferably forgotten. German industry would not sponsor an exhibition which highlighted its exploitation of slave labour, until now unacknowledged or uncompensated. The City of Frankfurt and Friends of the Museum had to step in but the tight budget has unfortunately precluded any English translation.