Public Works - Architecture by Civil Servants

Initially created by Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture for last year’s Biennale of Architecture in Venice, Berlin gallerist Johann Koenig has now invited the exhibition “Public Works – Architecture by Civil Servants” to his still-to-be-renovated St. Agnes Church  in Berlin. Presenting photographs, drawings and background information for public buildings by unknown architects, the exhibition sheds light on innovative city planning in the 60s and 70s and aims to cherish a niche in European architecture that has been overlooked previously.

"Public Works – Architecture by Civil Servants“, St. Agnes, Berlin-Kreuzberg (Alexandrinenstr 118-121), through 14 April 2013.

Curated by Reinier de Graaf and Laura Baird

Below. A timelapse of the opening of AMO's Public Works exhibition in Berlin, Germany.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, large public works departments were common in Europe. Many of these departments employed architects, who, as civil servants, worked to serve the public cause. Even today, the legacy - the public buildings which remain standing - looks refreshingly modern and innovative.

Reinier de Graaf calls the 60s and 70s - the heyday of public architecture - 'a short-lived, fragile period of naïve optimism - before the brutal rule of the market economy became the common denominator.' De Graaf notes 'a strange paradox that precisely the benign ideology of the welfare state chose to be represented by an architectural style known as Brutalism.'

The exhibition, curated by AMO - OMA's research-based think tank - showcases fifteen of these architectural masterpieces realized for the greater good by architects employed by the public sector. On display will be work by architects employed by the Greater London Council, the Public Works Department of Amsterdam, the Dutch Rijksgebouwendienst, the Senatsbauverwaltung of West Berlin, and work from various architects in France and Italy as members of special 'Architect Councils', 'guiding' the public sector on matters of architecture and urbanism.

The exhibition is a mix of photographic record of the buildings in their current state and archival material. It first appeared in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini, as part of the 13th Architecture Biennale, 2012. It has now been relocated to ST AGNES, which is one of the buildings which features prominently in the exhibition itself. It will be open in ST AGNES from March 7 - April 16, 2013.

Txt.- AMO

Photography by Frans Parthesius