Archive: Live stream

As part of the Monument Day 2020

Unfortunately, there were some transmission problems with the live-streamed Berlin programme for UNESCO World Heritage Day on 7 June 2020 via Youtube. We regret this and apologise. However, the greetings and presentations of the web conference by speakers who were connected at home were recorded and can now be viewed as technically optimised individual videos.

Greeting by Senator Klaus Lederer as the first video from a total of 15 lectures and presentations

Technical notes

How do I call up individual presentations ?

In the window above, the complete stream, lasting almost three hours, is played as a sequence of 15 individual videos. It shows the presentations in the order in which they were given. Those who are specifically interested in individual contributions have the following options:

  • Start a contribution individually: Go to the following programme overview of all contributions and speakers and click on the individual contribution that interests you. A new tab will open in your web browser in which this contribution can be started directly.
  • Call up the Youtube playlist: Move the mouse pointer to the upper right area of the video window and click on the "Playlist" icon. In the right-hand column, the individual videos are displayed in the form of a scrollable list and can be selected directly.
  • Fast-forward posts: In the central video window shown above, go to the end of the timeline that appears at the bottom of the currently running contribution. After the last images, the event note is briefly displayed before the next contribution starts automatically.
    Note: Whether this procedure works in such a way that only Triennial contributions appear also depends on your individual settings in the browser when using YouTube.
  • Accessibility: For people with impaired hearing - or also in the case of disturbances in the soundtrack - Youtube offers the possibility of fading in the spoken text as subtitles. To do this, please select the "Subtitle" function in the lower right area of the video window. There you will also find a function to switch to "full screen" mode.

Programme

Diversity Modernism | Modernism Diversity

Video greetings and introduction

Video recordings of the individual presentations

Note: These are recordings from a live event with a conference call on 7 June 2020. Most of the speakers were connected from their rooms. The length of the individual presentations varies between four and 20 minutes. The event was moderated by Robert K. Huber (BHR OX bauhaus reuse / zukunftsgeraeusche GbR) and Ben Buschfeld (buschfeld.com / Tautes Heim / Berliner Forum für Geschichte und Gegenwart e.V.). Peter Winter(zukunftsgeraeusche GbR) was the technical director.

Afterwards in the live stream

Films on the UNESCO World Heritage "Estates of Berlin Modernism"

  • Estates Berlin Modernism. UNESCO World Heritage with a new radiance
    The film, commissioned by the Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Berlin State Office for the Preservation of Monuments), documents the preservation of the historic building fabric and interviews representatives of the residents as well as experts from the fields of historic preservation and architectural and garden history.
  • A Promise Built. Social housing of the Berlin Modernism - [Link to the trailer]
    The film, produced by Marian Engel and Thomas Krüger with funding from Deutsche Wohnen SE, explains the urban development and social concepts, architectural features of the six Estates and sheds light on the residents' perspectives.

Note: Whether the films shown once in the live stream after the presentations will also be permanently available online in full length (45 minutes each) is still being determined in dialogue with the authors and clients.

What is it about?

On the idea of the new interim format
and the content of individual presentations

Berlin is using the UNESCO World Heritage Day 2020, which is always held on the first Sunday in June, as an opportunity to focus more strongly on the architecture of the Modernism, which is present in many places and in a wide variety in the cityscape - a core concern of the "Triennial of the Modernism", a format founded in 2013 together with Dessau and Weimar, which will also be visible outside the three-year period for the first time with the Berlin Streaming Event 2020.

In view of the special situation in times of Corona, the Berlin State Monuments Office and the Berlin network of Triennial of Modernism are therefore presenting a special, because completely digital, World Heritage Day on June 7, 2020. The online event with a program streamed live via Youtube has the motto "Diversity Modernism | Modernism Diversity". It outlines an era in which radical change took place in art, architecture and society. This is also evidenced by the six "Estates of Berlin Modernism", which have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2008. They were built against the backdrop of rampant housing shortages and set a new course in urban planning in the 1920s, which was taken up again after the Second World War. The Triennial of Modernism has set itself the goal of recounting this arc, which was only interrupted by the National Socialist era. In Berlin, voluntary initiatives and professional actors come together under its umbrella, and twelve projects from their environment are shown in the form of digital presentations and broadcast as a live stream starting at 11 am.

Greetings by Dr Klaus Lederer and President of the Berlin Chamber of Architects, Christine Edmaier, will be followed by an introduction to the topic by Berlin State Conservator Dr Christoph Rauhut. Afterwards, the two Berlin curators, Robert K. Huber and Ben Buschfeld, will lead through the varied programme with contributions on more and less well-known objects of architectural modernism.

This will be followed by two film premieres, each lasting three quarters of an hour, which will provide insights into the six Berlin World Heritage sites created between 1913 and 1934Estates . The documentary "Estates of the Berlin Modernism." commissioned by the Landesdenkmalamt (State Office for the Protection of Monuments) and produced by Andrea Schmidt and Claus Boeckh. UNESCO World Heritage with New Radiance" shows how the historical building fabric is treated in terms of monument preservation and interviews building, garden and monument experts as well as residents interested in monuments. The film produced by Marian Engel and Thomas M. Krüger on behalf of Deutsche Wohnen SE, "A Built Promise. Sozialer Wohnungsbau der Berliner Modernism", on the other hand, focuses more on the residents as users then and now and sheds light on current trends in public interest and the Berlin housing market.

Starting with the six Berlin World Heritage SitesEstates of the Modernism, which are presented in great detail on a newly developed website, there are many other pearls of Modernism to discover. Two contributions are dedicated to these hidden treasures, which are mostly lesser-known residential complexes, villas and commercial buildings that have been photographed by Anja Steilmann and Carsten Krohn. Most of the buildings portrayed belong to the New Building style. Quite a few of the somewhat lesser-known buildings of the Modernism are based on designs by Jewish architects, some of whose work is still insufficiently researched. A lecture by Dr Günter Schlusche is dedicated to them, who will follow the traces of German architects of Jewish origin.

Many other treasures of Berlin's architectural culture, however, were not created until well after the caesura of the Second World War. Here, the contrast between the loosely built West Berlin Hansa Quarter in the course of the 1957 IBA and the Stalin-era magistrale of Karl-Marx-Allee should be mentioned in particular - two large-scale projects that were created almost simultaneously and in which both political systems entered into direct urban planning competition in 1957. A dualism that is, of course, unique in the world and is therefore being treated as a potential fourth Berlin World Heritage Site under the keyword "The Double Berlin".

In this field of tension of urban development in East and West, the works of the architects Richard Paulick and Otto Bartning are the focus of attention. The contribution on the life and work of Richard Paulick will be given by the architectural historian and former Berlin Senator for Culture Dr. Thomas Flierl. In his lecture, he will show how Paulick moved from the Bauhaus in Dessau via Shanghai to the neo-classicism of the former Stalinallee and to the functional GDR large-scale building projects in Halle-Neustadt. Otto Bartning, on the other hand, is best known as an architect of churches in the style of the Modernism in southern and western Germany. A working group named after Bartning is dedicated to the special topic of the sacred buildings of Modernism and demonstrates how some of Bartning's Berlin churches can be experienced virtually.

The digital broadcasting centre during the streaming event will be the BHR OX bauhaus reuse, the glass pavilion on the central island of Ernst-Reuter Platz, which has quickly established itself as a new cultural and event venue in Berlin. The all-round transparent building has - as the name suggests - an exciting history of use itself, as it is constructed from window elements of the famous Dessau Bauhaus school building designed by Walter Gropius, which originated from its major renovation for the 50th anniversary in 1976.

Robert K. Huber, one of the curators of the event and, together with zukunftsgeraeusche, the operator of the pavilion, talks about the examination of functionalism in Central Europe in the context of conferences and discussions and also describes how, with the renovation of the square furniture of Ernst-Reuter-Platz, a practical educational project is taking place in the form of a permanent digital exhibition and by means of seminars with the TU Berlin and UdK Berlin.

The transnational perspective of Triennial is also strengthened by a contribution by Helena Doudová, curator of the architecture collection of the National Gallery in Prague, who takes an international look at Berlin and Brutalism as a component of post-war modernism. Its buildings are often not listed and in many places are threatened by alterations, conversions and demolition. An important example in Berlin is the Czech Embassy. It was designed by the Czech architect couple Věra and Vladimír Machonin. The original plans of the building belong to the collection of the National Gallery in Prague, which is currently showing an exhibition on Prague buildings of Brutalism.

Unusual insights are also provided by a contribution from the Netherlands, in which Nadia Abdelkaui, curator of the museum "Het Schip" in Amsterdam, offers a virtual tour of the special exhibition that opened at the beginning of March, shortly before the Corona Shutdown. It is dedicated to Bruno Taut's early expressionist and utopian work, which is less well-known here in Berlin, and takes a look at the cross-references of his work to social housing in the Netherlands in the 1910s and 20s.

Bruno Taut, architect of no less than four of Berlin's six World Heritage Sites, is also the focus of a picture-rich contribution by the second curator of the streaming event about the restoration of a house in the Hufeisensiedlung that is particularly in keeping with its status as a listed building: the house, named "Tautes Heim" Rentable Museum by Ben Buschfeld and his wife Katrin Lesser, is a homage to Bruno Taut. It is completely furnished in the style of the 1920s, has the character of a journey through time and has been serving as an overnight accommodation for architecture fans from all over the world since 2012. With this offer, the project, which has won several monument awards, enriches Berlin's museum landscape and conveys the idea of Berlin's world heritage in a special way.

Another project for which Buschfeld is responsible on behalf of the Berlin Forum for History and the Present is aimed specifically at students and inquisitive minds. It is a website that is easy to use on a smartphone and was created as part of the Sharing Heritage project of the European Heritage Year 2018 and was funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe and the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The website, which features six tours, lots of information plus an extensive glossary, biography and history section, invites younger target groups to actively explore the architecture and history of the World Heritage siteEstates.

A project by the GRIPS Theatre, which specialises in offers for children and young people, had even younger target groups in mind. The team of the theatre, which is located directly at the Hansaplatz underground station, developed an audio walk for school groups, enriched with performance elements and leading through the Hansaviertel. An offer that deals with the history of the neighbourhood and will be presented by Hannah Ehlers.

In addition to Bruno Taut and Richard Paulick, two other great names of international architectural modernism should not be missed, namely Le Corbusier and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. If you want to follow in the footsteps of Walter Gropius yourself using digital maps, you should install the smartphone app "Gropius to go" produced by the Berlin State Monuments Office in 2016. For the first time, parts of the Landesdenkmalamt's database have been made available for mobile use on site. Berlin's new World Heritage Officer Sabine Ambrosius will present how the app can be used to explore the numerous buildings in Berlin on walks. Gropius occupies a special position within Modernism , as he is the architect from Modernism whose work is most frequently represented on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Just like Gropius, Le Corbusier is also particularly representative of the transnational character of Modernism, which was fed by many national avant-garde movements, which from 1932 onwards were successful and summarised worldwide under the term International Style. This diversity, however, is consciously thematised within the framework of the Triennial of the Modernism and thus also opens up cross-references to many potential partner countries. Le Corbusier's work also bears witness to this: away from the International Building Exhibition of 1957, which was otherwise concentrated in the Hansa Quarter, another imposing building block, the "Unité d'habitation", was constructed not far from the Olympic Stadium. The apartment block refers to a sister building of the same name in Marseille and thus refers to the architect's work, which is mainly located in France and Switzerland and is also listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

What is remarkable about the programme curated by Huber and Buschfeld in close cooperation with the Berlin State Office for the Preservation of Monuments is not only the range of Berlin buildings, sites, formats and themes presented, but also the diversity of actors, often from civil society, who develop, present and promote their own projects with great competence and passion. This commitment of the Berlin network makes for a lively programme, but - as with the Open Monument Day - it requires professional coordination if it is to have an impact as an overall event. Here, the live stream has the character of a pilot project and provides an insight into the multifaceted heritage of an era that was very formative and characteristic for Berlin. A heritage that also needs to be discovered in Corona times and further developed with innovative formats - such as this digital World Heritage Day.

Request for assistance

in the promotion of the event

We ask all friends of modern architecture to promote the event in their networks and news channels. A good way to do this is by linking to the announcement of the Landesdenkmalamt Berlin or via the Facebook page of Triennial of Modernism and a special event page set up there, which you can simply "like", share and use for your own registration.

We are also happy about corresponding postings on Instagram or other social media.
Please use the hashtags #tdm2020 and #TriennaleDerModerne - thank you very much!

More offers

from German UNESCO World Heritage Sites

In addition to Berlin, other of the 46 German World Heritage Sites also have digital offers available, which are linked on a special action portal of the German UNESC0 Commission and the World Heritage Sites Germany Association: