Review: Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship, and the Urban Renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA 1984/87, by Esra Akcan

Abstract

Esra Akcan Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship, and the Urban Renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA 1984/87 Basel: Birkhauser, 2018, 416 pp., illus. $90 (cloth), ISBN 9783035613742 Researching the International Building Exhibition of 1987 in West Berlin, usually referred to by its German acronym, IBA, is a challenge. The municipally sponsored event that bolstered Berlin's “return to the inner city” kick-started postmodern architecture in Germany and focused international media attention on West Berlin for nearly a decade. It generated not only scores of residential buildings but also mountainous archives and a flurry of publications by the organizers, some of which are considerably biased. Analyzing these traces from an independent perspective is as hard as giving voice to the inhabitants of the newly erected and renovated buildings, who are usually left out of the picture. With both of these challenges, Esra Akcan does a fabulous job. The merit of her book lies in its combination of familiar and unfamiliar perspectives. Akcan provides a well-researched account of the IBA's history, as well as a balanced critique of the works of many well-known architects connected with the event, including Aldo Rossi, Josef Paul Kleihues, Rob Krier, John Hejduk, Peter Eisenman, Oswald Mathias Ungers, and Alvaro Siza. She also highlights the contributions of many lesser-known architects and activists, such as Cihan Arin, Bahri Dulec, and Heide Moldenhauer. Focusing on West Berlin's Kreuzberg district, the IBA's main area of activity, she discusses the genesis of postmodern architecture as well as the different solutions for inner-city living that were developed during the 1970s and 1980s. Most important, Akcan also offers “alternative histories.” She complements her archival research with an impressive number of interviews with residents, most of them immigrants from Turkey, whom she met by “ringing the bell of almost every door in Kreuzberg” (37). The book is thus a unique product of the author's fluency in both Turkish and German, her intimate knowledge of architectural discourse, and her persistent fieldwork over …