The so-called Block 2 on Dessauer Straße in Berlin-Kreuzberg (built 1986-93) stands for a housing development that takes socio-culturally diverse living models into account both conceptually and structurally; it also stands for a striving for planning and construction processes in which women are equally involved - demands that groups such as the Feminist Organization of Women Planners and Architects (FOPA) have been propagating since 1981. Embedded in this increasingly progressive women's movement in architecture and urban policy, architects including Zaha Hadid, Myra Warhaftig and Christine Jachmann realized their ideas of emancipatory housing construction on Dessauer Strasse in the course of the IBA Berlin in 1987.

For the exhibition, the two curators Océane Vé-Réveillac and Silja Glomb have compiled stories of past and present protagonists and residents. Drawings, models, writings and correspondence are interwoven with interviews and visual art in both narrative and spatial terms. Dessauer Strasse not only traces the diversity of emancipatory architectural and living environments since the early 1980s, but also raises questions about the need for and practice of affordable, pluralistic and socially just housing to this day.

German Architecture Center DAZ
Wilhelmine-Gemberg-Weg 6, 10179 Berlin
Wed-Sun, 3-8 pm
until February 16, 2025

www.daz.de