Architecture and Planning Collectives of the GDR - Institutional structures and creative processes in socialist architectural production

• Applicants: Dr. Harald Engler; Professorin Dr. Stephanie Herold
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397822116

Architectural and urban planning in the GDR was organized in planning collectives, which were, according to the institutional system of the GDR, integrated into socially-owned enterprises - freelance architects were only available in a very small number. The project analyzes these planning collectives in their administrative embedding and functioning in the political system on the one hand and the artistic production methods and the self-understanding of the architects on the other hand. The collectives are examined both in their function as a political-economic form of organization, as well as in their role as artistic groupings. Both dimensions had an impact on the architectural production of the GDR, and are of fundamental importance for today's discussion of the resulting objects in their historical classification and interpretation, including copyright issues. The project analyzes the GDR's planning and architecture collectives on three levels: a comparative structure analysis (a) dealing with the institutional background, the organization and the hierarchies, including the network potentials of the collectives in historical terms; a detailed project analysis (b), which explores individual architecture and planning projects in their specific socio-historical and artistic context; and an object analysis (c), which relates the resulting objects to the planning processes and to the possible specifics and problems of the authorship. In doing so, the project provides a well-founded contribution to the research of collectivity in the GDR and will thus finally analyze the (art) historical significance of architects and their work in the GDR with a higher differentiation. And the project will carry out historically and empirically founded researches on collective artistic work in the 20th century.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Christoph Bernhardt; Professor Dr. Gerhard Vinken