Perfect – or no good at all?
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| Online event, free admission |
| English, German |
| Online event |
“Built for eternity” – every building, at least in Europe, shoulders the burden of this weighty claim, not just palaces and churches, but also post offices, swimming pools, museums, theaters and residential homes.
“Architecture is a dangerous mix of both power and powerlessness,” state Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau. This sentence prefaces Belgian author Charlotte Van den Broeck’s book Wagnisse, in which she highlights thirteen architects of failed structures. What standards do works of architecture have to meet? Who determines these standards? In what ways can architects fail? How come some buildings derided by contemporary critics are then eventually appreciated and cherished by posterity? Could buildings, as Heiner Müller would have wondered, wait for their users?
Charlotte van den Broeck’s interlocutor is the Berlin architect Hilde Léon, whose architectural firm léonwohlhage designed, among others, the Indian Embassy and the Bremen State Representation in Berlin, as well as currently the office and commercial building TRION on Leipziger Platz, which completes the historic city figure of the octagon on Leipziger Platz again after more than 75 years.
In an interview, she emphasised that a convincing architectural design has its own expression: “Even if tastes are completely different. You don’t really get anywhere with the criteria of beautiful and ugly. But one thing unites properties that have the potential to survive their time: You can sense that the buildings are based on an idea and that this idea has been followed through.”
Moderation
Melinda Crane
Podium
Charlotte Van den Broeck was born in 1991 in Turnhout, Belgium. She studied English and German Literature in Ghent and Verbal Arts at the Antwerp Conservatory. In 2015, she published her first book of poetry, Kameleon, which was awarded the Flemish Herman de Coninck Prize for best debut of the year. In 2016, she opened the Frankfurt Book Fair with Arnon Grunberg, where Belgium was Guest of Honour. In 2017 she published her second volume, Nachtroer, which was subsequently awarded the Paul Snoekprijs for the best book of poetry in the Dutch language. Her poetry has been translated into German, English, French, Spanish and Serbian, among others. Wagnisse. 13 tragische Bauwerke und ihre Schöpfer received the prestigious Wijnaendts Francken Prize and was also shortlisted for the distinguished Boekenbon Literatuurprijs in 2020.
Hilde Léon is an architect and managing director of the architectural office léonwohlhage, which she founded in 1987 together with Konrad Wohlhage († 2007). She studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin and deepened her studies with a scholarship from the DAAD at the University of Venice. Parallel to her professional development as an architect, Hilde Léon is active in teaching and research. From 1997-99 Léon was visiting professor at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts. Since 2000 she has been a professor at the Institute of Design and Building Theory at the Leibniz University of Hannover and was elected Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Landscape in 2019.
Melinda Crane is chief political correspondent at DW TV and also hosts the DW talk show To the Point. In 2014 she was awarded the Steuben-Schurz Media Award for her service to transatlantic understanding. She regularly comments on US politics for German broadcasters. Her journalistic experience includes work for the New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, The Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor and German newspapers such as Frankfurter Hefte, Internationale Politik and the ARD.
