In the sign of the square: Discover West Berlin modernity!

Would also be surprising, after all, more space was installed and more material built in these almost two decades than in the entire human building history. There had to be a lot of banal and annoying. The actually remarkable is how many interesting buildings were built despite the sheer mass. Just, you also have to discover them.

One opportunity is the latest exhibition of the municipal gallery in Wilmersdorf. The district museum shows there, selected and well staged by the photographer and curator Christine Kosorsy, under the title “Quadrat is modern” a tiny selection from a picture of a picture that was barely torn from the trash can: 15,000 slides that once made the Wilmersdorf city planning office had and then wanted to dispose of when the former triumphs were shouted as defeats.

These photos were taken as proof of success. Because around 1970, every nasty distance from today’s perspective, every new building that is still banale, surrounded by parking spaces (and in this selection you can also see some of them) as a victory over the “stone city” of the imperial era, over staircoats, via stair toilets , Celebrated backyards and coal furnace.

We are happy to forget it: Exactly the prejudices that are against “modernity” today have been against “historicism” with its stucco and cornice decorations. And just like today, investors used the prejudices to demolish well -preserved, easy -to -renovation buildings even in times of the largest housing shortage.

Operations, residential buildings, entire districts, crossed by wide streets, of course the motorway superstructure on Schlangenbader Straße and the ICC can be seen, which are still fascinating. Sometimes the projects shown here have been systematically planned and were only quickly built to replace what was destroyed in the war. But everything, according to Kososry, should be subject to the square. One can argue about it, but it is certain that a much too little-noticed era of Berlin is illuminated here, the post-war-modern West Berlin.