Architecture – never built!

On February 1, 2020, Berlinische Galerie was able to present online for the first time around 4,500 select objects from the collection documenting 800 unrealized building projects from the period 1945–1990. These exhibits (sketches, drawings, plans, photographs, and collages) document designs that came from the estates of renowned Berlin architects and the competition archive of West Berlin’s building commission. They are stored in the depot of the museum’s architecture collection and were donated along with publication rights. Funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant no. 01UG1778X) enabled its scholarly cataloguing, digitization and online publication in the period from 1.12.17 to 31.12.2019. In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Kerstin Wittmann-Englert, Institut für Kunstwissenschaft und Historische Urbanistik at Berlin’s Technische Universität (TU), the Berlinische Galerie also hosted the international conference "Unbuilt Architecture Today. On the Future Relevance of Unrealized Projects since 1945" on 10 May 2019.

Project team: Ursula Müller, Julia Schubert, Anja Elisabeth Witte