Eisenhuettenstadt is GDR’s first planned city, located in East-Germany near Frankfurt Oder.
In the early 1950’s, this new city was built near an iron-hut to supply housing for up to 55.000 people.
While other planned cities were mostly build with readymade “Plattenbau”-segments, Eisenhüttenstadt’s city structure is more crafted and differentiated. It appears almost like a condensation in fixed-matter of the GDR’s vision for the life in idealism of the new socialistic man, as the GDR used to nurture it in the 50’s. The citizens often used to identify themselves with this, until the fall of the berlin wall in 1989. After crucial political and economical changes, Eisenhüttenstadt is nowadays confronted with completely other circumstances, way of lifes and ideologies.
The publication and exhibition “Planstadt Eisenhüttenstadt” is meant as an possibility for an recognising and understandable approach to this field of tension. As authors we wanted to document the present status quo of Eisenhüttenstadt, cross the axes of the planned city, walk on it’s borders, and collect experiences of the citizens for an deeper, self reflected discourse on the relation of man and architecture on this particular place.
In collaboration with Tobias Keinath
Co-author Ben Kaden
Fotographic Assistance by Marija Heinecke
Mentoring by Markus Artur Fuchs &
Prof. Matthias Siegert
SUPER GROTESK HÜTTE – type family alteration in 3 weights, courtesy of FontFont Intl.
planstadt-eisenhuettenstadt.com
Slanted.de
2012