This Thursday will see the opening of the major Kultur:Stadt (Culture:City) exhibition at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, curated by Matthias Sauerbruch. The show considers 37 cultural projects globally – from big signature museums to locally organized initiatives – and explores the project's impact on their cities.
Both exhibition and accompanying programme will take a measured but critical view at the relationship between cultural buildings, architecture and the cities in which they are located, looking at the benefits but also the dark side of a huge range of projects, from early examples such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Kulturhuset in Stockholm, to those from the ‘icon’ era, like Tate Modern and Guangzhou Opera House or Peter Eisenman's Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The exhibition also includes new civic hubs and information centres like Seattle Library, the creative re-use of the existing city fabric such as at the Berghain nightclub in Berlin and other less top-down and more bottom-up projects like the Detroit Soup initiative – smaller, less spectacular interventions that have a wide, slow-burn effect.
Included is the work of architects such as Lina Bo Bardi, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, OMA, Mecanoo, Lacaton & Vassal and Hans Scharoun, and some of the projects are documented within a series of specially commissioned films of featured projects by students of the German Film and Television Academy. There is an extensive programme of events, stretching over three months with speakers like Jacques Herzog, Peter Cook, Peter Eisenman and a substantial catalogue, edited by Wilfried Wang, with contributions by Richard Sennett and William Curtis among others. Phew! In all its a pretty big hit of culture in the city itself.
We at uncube are very pleased to be media partners of the Culture:City exhibition. We are not only dedicating our next issue to this rich theme, but we've also been involved in the concept of the Culture:Capital Symposium taking place on Saturday 13 April. More specifically, we will be chairing the afternoon session which will start with presentations by Giancarlo Mazzanti and Enrique Sobejano, to which Markus Bader of raumlabor will then be responding. We look forward to seeing you all there!
Kultur:Stadt / City:Culture
Opening event: Thursday 14th March, 7.00pm
Exhibition: 15 March to 26 May 2013, Tue-Sun 11am to 7pm.
Symposium: Friday 12 April at 7pm, Saturday 13 April from 9.30am
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin 227
