Ewald Weitz Jürgen Friedenberg, Interbau Berlin 1957. Internationaler Bauaustellung im Berliner Hansaviertel. Berlin- Charlottenburg: Internationale Bauausstellung Berlin Gmbh, 1957.
Paperback, 21 x 20 cm, 260 pp. 2nd, revised edition: 'Vollständiger, gegenüber der ersten Ausgabe geänderter und auf den neuesten Stand gebrachter Neudruck'.
Graphic design by Richard Prinz.
Language: German.
Overall a good copy of this sought-after catalog of one of the most iconic architecture and urban planning programs in post-war Western Europe. Front cover slightly foxed and soiled. Back cover showing shelf-wear, some foxing and soiling. Half-title page foxed, as is the one but last page. Body clean, tight, except for page 257 that has come loose. Spine slightly worn and soiled.
This is the official catalog of the International Building Exhibition 'Interbau' that took place in Berlin from July 6 to September 29, 1957. Illustrated throughout with architectural drawings, floor plans, b&w photographs of buildings, scale models, and areal views of the Hansa district. The catalog also contains nice period ads, mostly in b&w, a foldout map of the Hansaviertel, and a list of participating architects starting p. 41, printed on tinted paper.
Interbau and the Hansa Viertel are 'a unique urban-planning and architectural ensemble of post-war modernism', often considered to be the architectural showcase of Western urban planning and as such West Germany's answer to the GDR/East Berlin's socialist realist model as executed in the Stalinallee project.
As an international building exhibition, Interbau 57 was meant to reconstruct the almost completely destroyed Hansa Viertel, creating direly needed housing for West Berliners. 'Never before had there been an architectural exhibition on such a grand scale. On an area of 25 hectares in the extensively war-damaged Hansaviertel, around 1,300 residential units, a library, two churches, a pre-school, an elementary school, and a shopping mall were built, designed by more than 50 prominent architects from 14 countries, some working jointly.'
Amongst the architects were Luciano Baldessari, Johannes Hendrik van den Broek und Jacob Berend Bakema, Gustav Hassenpflug, Raymond Lopez und Eugène Beaudouin, Hans Schwippert
Read more on the history of Interbau 1957 and the Hansaviertel on the Hansaviertael Berlin website, from which the citation above was taken.
Amongst the participating architects were: Alvar Aalto, Jacob Bakema, Luciano Baldessari, Paul Baumgarten, Le Corbusier, Werner Düttmann, Egon Eiermann, Kay Fisker, Alois Giefer, Walter Gropius, Wils Ebert, Gustav Hassenpflug, Günter Hönow, Arne Jacobsen, Fritz Jaenecke, Sten Samuelson, Ludwig Lemmer, Wassili Luckhardt, Eduard Ludwig, Hermann Mäckler, Hans Christian Müller, Oscar Niemeyer, Frei Otto, Sep Ruf, Otto Heinrich Senn, Paul Schneider-Esleben, Franz Schuster, Hans Schwippert, Hugh Stubbins, Max Taut, Pierre Vago