What specific features of postmodern architecture can be identified both in German-speaking countries and internationally? Can regional emphases or characteristics be discerned? What specific challenges manifest in the identification and assessment of postmodern architecture? How can methodological approaches to postmodernism be protected and preserved at all?

More than 30 speakers – mostly from the German-speaking world, but also from Great Britain, Ukraine and Italy – will discuss both these and other questions. Experts and early career researchers working in the fields of architectural history, monument preservation and architecture will come together in five panels as well as for a panel discussion and a poster presentation.

The conference will focus on preservation of an underappreciated epoch in the German-speaking world which, according to its name, is »not complete« or »not to be completed«. Today, the survival of these built testimonies is indeed at stake. The study of the architectural legacy of postmodernism is about an era that was shaped by the energy and oil crises of the late 1970s, the return to architecture as a means of communication and a bearer of meaning, the neoliberalisation of the construction sector, the end of a grand narrative that manifested itself at the very heart of Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the associated transformation phenomena and the spirit of optimism of the early 1990s.

The conference is being organised by the Chair for Heritage Conservation and Architectural History at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (Prof. Dr. Hans-Rudolf Meier, Kirsten Angermann) in conjunction with the Chair of Construction Heritage and Preservation at ETH Zurich (Prof. Dr. Silke Langenberg, Matthias Brenner). Financial support is being provided by the Wüstenrot Foundation and the Bauhaus Institute for History and Theory of Architecture and Planning. moderneREGIONAL is the media partner.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the number of participants present in the Audimax at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar is limited to approximately 50 persons. Interested parties are alternatively able to participate in the conference online.

Programme and registration:
www.uni-weimar.de/denkmal-postmoderne 

In case of questions, please do not hesitate to contact Kirsten Angermann, research associate in the Department of Heritage Conservation and Architectural History in the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (kirsten.angermann[at]uni-weimar.de; +49 (0)3643 58 31 26).