The exhibition “Public Works – Architecture by Civil Servants” created by Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture for last year’s Biennale of Architecture in Venice has now been invited by Berlin gallerist Johann Koenig to his still-to-be-renovated St. Agnes Church in Berlin. Presenting photographs, drawings and background information for public buildings by unknown architects, the exhibition sheds light on innovative city planning in the ’60s and ’70s and aims to cherish a niche in European architecture that has been overlooked previously.
Europe in the 1960s and 1970s was a good place for publicly funded — and designed — architecture. Administrations had the financial resources to back large projects and employ young and eager teams of architects and city planners to develop them; when after World War II national economies were recovering, there was plenty of need for new buildings. A rich array of often large-scale projects was realized, from schools and municipal centers to entire housing blocks and even churches. In most of cases, the architects remained unknown to the wider public. Unlike their colleagues on the free market, who gained fame as prolific visionaries, they worked in the anonymity of public service as employees to ministries, administrations or town halls.
With its huge open space concealed behind massive concrete walls, St. Agnes Church serves as a perfect location for this exhibition, not least because the building itself was the work of a public servant. The church, was built from 1964-67 by Berlin architect Werner Düttmann, the former head of the Berlin Senate Department for Construction and Housing, who later received more renown than other contemporaries when he designed the Akademie der Künste and the Brücke-Museum, two prestigious institutions in the German capital.
While St. Agnes enjoys protection as cultural heritage and will be redesigned as Koenig’s new gallery and exhibition space shortly under the helm of Berlin architect Arno Brandlhuber, many equally interesting buildings of this period have been less lucky. Amazing structures like the Brutalist Pimlico School that British architect John Bancroft designed for the Greater London Council (GLC) in the 1960s have since been demolished or shut down despite their architectural merits.
Laura Baird and Reinier de Graaf, the two curators of the exhibition, state that public buildings are less protected than structures helmed by prestigious architects, for the lack of an impressive name attached to them. “It’s also often for financial reasons,” de Graaf says, adding, “these buildings tend to be very spacious, so it can be lucrative to tear them down and build new houses that use space more efficiently and thus make more profit.” (It would be interesting to hear what Bancroft would have to contribute to the debate about the latest U.K. government’s plans for replacement schools that circle around exactly that issue.)
One of the most interesting aspects of the exhibition is the background information it provides about the structures and organization of city planning departments in different European countries. In Britain, the GLC managed to accumulate a wealth of talent and work force, employing up to 3,000 people, who operated considerably free in small independent units. Collectively they created stunning projects like the London South Bank. Ron Herron, Warren Chalk and Dennis Crompton, who later became known for their work with the British Archigramm collective, worked for the GLC and are said to have been involved in projects like the Hayward Gallery and the Queen Elizabeth Hall before they moved on.
In the Netherlands, the Rijksgebouwendienst was so inspired by the GLC’s innovative architecture that Jo Vegter designed the Dutch Ministry of Finance with a glass reduced Brutalist façade reminiscent of British projects and added especially many – and large – office rooms for employees; apparently, this has made the building very popular among its users up to present day.
In communism-friendly postwar France, finally, the right political background could take young architects a long way. One of them, architect Claude Le Goas, was hired by the communist municipality of Montreuil to create the “Montreuil Zone Industrielle Nord,” which became the first “vertical” industrial zone in France, with an orchard, a fountain and a cafeteria on the roof where factory workers could dine together and enjoy picnics with their families during lunch breaks.
“It’s a great legacy these architects gave to their cities,” de Graaf says. “Our office draws a lot of inspiration from this period. We really hope the exhibition can help give some of these unknown architects the recognition they deserve.”
“Public Works – Architecture by Civil Servants,” St. Agnes, Berlin-Kreuzberg (Alexandrinenstr 118-121), through 14 April 2013.