Hansaviertel: ideological battles in architecture.
Oct 4, 2021
In the 1950s, West Germany got spooked by the impressive neo-classical ‘palaces for the people’ being visibly erected on the other side of the wall along Karl-Marx-Alee.
As a sort of bricks-and-mortar ideological riposte, they ran an international architecture festival for modernism’s best and brightest to fill out the park-adjacent neighbourhood of Hansaviertel. Buildings by Alto, Gropius and Niemeyer all feature, but the standout has to be the ‘Eternithaus’, named after a brand of cement (what else?)
