ART_04 – Hansaviertel. The city of tomorrow

Hansaviertel, the City of Tomorrow, is the fourth volume of the Architectural Research Tribune collection, and it presents the reconstruction of the Berlin neighbourhood through the Interbau 57 exhibition. The book presents in redrawn form all the collective and single-family housing projects carried out by a selection of the most important international architects of the time (Aalto, Jacobsen, Gropius, Le Corbusier, Eiermann, Niemeyer, Bakema & van der Broek, etc.), and compiles a series of research texts with diverse analytical approaches ranging from typological and historical to public space or the cultural repercussions of the intervention.

Hansaviertel was at the same time an important architectural competition, one of the last major international housing exhibitions, the reconstruction of a neighbourhood destroyed in World War II (its buildings are developed in very diverse types ranging from high-rise towers to single-family houses, as sample of the residential types that modern architecture had developed in the preceding years) and one of the last opportunities to bring together most of the great masters of modern architecture of the twentieth century.

The book presents complete documentation of each project, including the redrawing of the buildings’ plans, elevations, sections and axonometries (sometimes sectioned); documentation accompanied by new photographs that attest to the current good condition of the neighbourhood and the evolution of its exterior and public spaces. Although the book focuses on residential buildings, it also includes an analysis of the buildings and public spaces built in the neighbourhood.