Schaffendes Volk Düsseldorf

Peter Grund et al.

Authors

  • Frederique van Andel TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

In 1937, a major exhibition was organized in Düsseldorf, at the site where the Nordpark is currently located. The event took place four years after the National Socialists had seized power in Germany, and coincided with the World’s Fair (Exposition Universelle) in Paris. The initiator of the exhibition was the Deutsche Werkbund (the German Association of Craftsmen), which in 1927 had successfully organized the exhibition ‘Die Wohnung’ and constructed the settlement known as the Weissenhof Siedlung. The aim of the exhibition was to allow a previously abandoned exhibition, which had been called ‘Die Neue Zeit’ (The New Age), to in fact take place. But in 1933, the board of the Werkbund had taken on a National Socialist character: from that point onwards, its architect-members needed to have an ‘Aryan Certificate’. The state saw an opportunity to use this exhibition as a propaganda tool for the transformation of the German Reich under Hitler’s Four Year Plan; this plan was meant to make Germany independent in terms of raw materials imported from abroad within four years. The exhibition concept was modified and adapted to the leading political movement, which meant that an exhibition that had been planned as a Werkbund event became a propaganda tool for the Four Year Plan.

Author Biography

Frederique van Andel, TU Delft, Architecture and the Built Environment

Frederique van Andel holds a Master’s degree in both urban planning and architecture from Delft University of Technology. She worked for Mecanoo architecten and DP6 architectuurstudio in Delft, and lived in Barcelona where she worked with architect Toni Gironès. Since 2006, Frederique is a researcher and lecturer in the Global Housing research group of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of TU Delft. Her main topic of interest is affordable housing for growing cities in the Global South. Frederique curated the exhibition ‘Global Housing – Affordable Dwellings for Growing Cities’ (2016) with venues in Delft and Addis Ababa. She is editor of the book series DASH (Delft Architectural Studies on Housing) and coordinates and edits the online Platform for Affordable Dwelling (PAD). Frederique teaches Master courses on Global Housing Design and Bachelor courses on Plan Analysis. She is project manager for the research project ‘Addis Ababa Living Lab: Creating Resilient Dwelling Clusters for Urban Resettlement in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’, funded by the Dutch Research Council and TU Delft (2019-2023).

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Published

2018-06-01

How to Cite

van Andel, F. (2018). Schaffendes Volk Düsseldorf: Peter Grund et al. DASH | Delft Architectural Studies on Housing, 5(09), 110–117. Retrieved from https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/dash/article/view/4884

Issue

Section

Case Studies