Word: iba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Indeed, when President Reagan visits West Berlin this week, he may get a passing glimpse of the most extraordinary of all these observances: the building program undertaken by the International Building Exhibition (IBA), which was legislated into existence eight years ago by West Berlin's government. IBA has developed more than 100 sites around the city, mostly in the dead zones and odd holes left in the urban fabric near the Wall and along the Landwehr Canal, which runs through the center of the city. On these sites, private developers, with government-subsidized loans, have now finished the majority...
...project's virtuous social agenda would be unremarkable without its world-class aesthetic aspirations. More than 200 architects from 15 countries entered IBA's invitational design competitions, and the winners constitute a sort of international Who's Who. West Berlin has or will soon have new IBA buildings by O.M. Ungers (West Germany), Hans Hollein (Austria), Rob Krier (Luxembourg), Mario Botta (Switzerland), Aldo Rossi (Italy), Oriol Bohigas (Spain), Rem Koolhaas (the Netherlands), James Stirling (Britain), Arata Isozaki (Japan) and, from the U.S., Charles Moore, Robert A.M. Stern, Stanley Tigerman, Peter Eisenman and John Hejduk. A museum show tied to IBA...
Most of the IBA buildings were designed between 1979 and 1984, at the peak of international postmodern fervor. Rather than returning to neoclassical forms, as postmodernism has generally meant in the U.S., the IBA architects have tended to borrow from the early 20th century avant-garde. Aside from Kleihues, Rob Krier is probably more responsible for the results than any other architect. He was master planner for three important IBA blocks. While none of Krier's IBA architecture is great, all of it is good. His best is the main building (of nine) of a rather formal housing estate near...
...IBA's two most controversial projects are by Americans, mannerists at extreme opposite ends of the architectural spectrum. One is a sprawling apartment complex in a suburban resort town by Charles Moore (with his partner John Ruble), the other a cramped commercial and residential building overlooking the Wall by Peter Eisenman. The Moore buildings at Tegel are, as his critics have charged, Disney-like, a mite overeager to please. But Tegel is a resort town; the complex was meant to be a playful place, and it is easy to play along with Moore's California-cum-German-romantic palette (pastel...
Against this background, the singular hubris of IBA was to try to have it both ways -- a large-scale building program like those of the '20s and '50s, but with the strong concern for tradition and diversity that has predominated in the late '70s and '80s. The ambitions were grand, in true German style, but not grandiose. Indeed, Kleihues himself has written that IBA is "ultimately doomed to fall short of the aims it has set itself." Yet those aims were liberating because they were antimonumental. Berlin has lived (and nearly died) through all the various 20th century dreams...