1946- rebuilding of Munich
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2002.01.10 11:43
WTC Viewing Platform OR husker du redo
I had dinner with my oldest aunt the other night. She has been diligently writing our family history. She is my mother's first cousin, and she was in the USA during W.W.II, while the rest of the family was in what is now Serbia. My aunt's history relates how it took her and her parents a couple of years to find out what happened to all their European relatives at war's end. She has collected the stories of the survivors -- one story relates a completely chance meeting of a separated brother and a sister at the bombed out Munich train station, whose rubble was covered with posts identifying and searching for those that were missing. I was thinking something like "déjà-vu all over again."
A book I read part of (something like a year ago) compares the post W.W.II rebuilding of Berlin (I think) and Munich. The case of Munich is interesting in that a complete 'reenactment' of the pre-W.W.II town center was what was done, while Berlin took the 'non-historical' approach. I'm not advocating one approach over the other, just calling out what may now be a timely study to know about. Incidentally, the rolling hills adjacent to the 1972 Munich Olympic Center are the "soot hills" created by all the debris removed from the town center during reconstruction.
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2005.03.13 10:25
Re: public/private culture
John asks:
Wasn't the vile practice of saving facades of historic structures originated in Philadelphia, Steve, the fountainhead of American preservation ever eager to get in bed with real estate vultures?
Steve replies:
Philadelphia doesn't originate anything. It just reenacts things.
For example, when Mitchell/Giurgola Architects saved the Egyptian Revival (or should that be Egyptian Reenactment) facade at the new Penn Mutual Tower (1975), I saw this design solution as a reenactment of the James Stirling with Leon Krier Derby Civic Center competition design (1970) where the facade of an historic Assembly Hall at the site was reused as the facing of a band shelter.
I wonder if the reconstruction of Munich, Germany after the bombing of World War II can also be seen as "the vile practice of saving facades?"
Giurgola reenacts Stirling in at least two other designs: the Adult Learning Research Laboratory (1972) at the American College of Life Underwriters reenacts the Florey Building for Queen's College (1966-71), and the Mission Park Residential Houses (1972) at Williams College reenacts the Student Residences for St. Andrews University (1964-68).
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