Raumstation Ruhr, since 2023
C-Prints, 40×50 cm / 50×60 cm
Looking back to a new future
In the 1960s and 1970s, a wide range of innovative and often large-scale architectural structures emerged, including residential complexes, universities, and administrative or public buildings – often hybrids that attempted to combine culture, commerce, bureaucracy, and housing in a single complex.
In public perception, these buildings are widely unpopular today, considered ugly and described as „concrete monsters“ or „architectural sins“. In fact, however, the structures are documents of a time when architecture was conceived differently. They are the result of a modern belief in technological progress, speak of the spirit of optimism of the post-war years, and are cultural testaments to an era.
The new architecture of the time was driven by a highly utopian vision. Its buildings were considered prototypes, constructed in the firm belief that they would offer society a new and better future. Indeed, it was expected that large-scale urban structures would replace the traditional, small-scale city in the near future.
Photographed in the Ruhr region.
Kindly supported by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, Essen