German Pavilion at the
16th International
Architecture Exhibition 2018
La Biennale di VeneziA

26.5.–25.11.2018

The Berlin Wall existed for 28 years and it has been 28 years since it fell. The Wall and death strip left behind a non-place, an empty space shaped by violence and destruction.

There was no blueprint for how Germany should grow together or for the empty space of the death strip. Civic initiatives, political decisions, economic interests and different ideological opinions competed with or complemented one another. Bold utopias contrasted with the desire to reconstruct what was lost, a culture of remembrance with the wish to forget.

The space of the former border reflects both the successes and difficulties of the path to German reunification. The examples in this exhibition present the 28-year process of healing as a dynamic spatial phenomenon. They illustrate the range of diverse approaches, typologies, participants and results along with the breadth of architectural positions and solutions.

The process of reunification is still ongoing. The exhibition describes this as a dynamic, democratic and successful story but also reveals the often painful traces of division that are still evident today.

UNBUILDING WALLS TRAVEL FELLOWSHIP

as a continuation of the exhibition UNBUILDING WALLS at the 16th Architecture Biennale in Venice, the curators of the German Pavilion, the architects GRAFT and the politician Marianne Birthler, are initiating and awarding two UNBUILDING WALLS travel grants worth 3,000 euros each.

Carried by the idea of sensitizing the next generation to current walls, boundaries and their implications, the curators would like to deepen the topic as a field of research. Students with architectural and also free works whose thematic focus is on the relationship between physical and mental barriers and their overcoming can apply. In addition to classical research and design projects, initiatives, media documentaries or other conceptual ideas dealing with the subject of UNBUILDING WALLS are supported. The aim of the work may be to investigate the social and political implications of walls and borders or to develop designs for physical intervention. The result should meet an artistic and creative aspiration.

The scholarship was awarded to Brooke Adams and Antonio Giráldez López in 2019 and to Katherine Ball in 2020. There are currently no plans to offer the scholarship again.

Wall of opinions

The Wall of Opinions video installation documents the voices of people who live in the shadow of walls in Cyprus, Northern Ireland, between Israel and Palestine, the USA and Mexico, North and South Korea and at the European external border in Ceuta.

Press

GRAFT GmbH

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commissioned by

SPONSORs

Brillux

With kind support by Friede Springer