Berlin, Germany

Brutalism. A Photographic Approach

This photography workshop deals with the architectural style of Brutalism in Berlin. We will first approach it theoretically, then visit various buildings together and discuss the resulting photographs, and finally present the works together.

For several years now, brutalist architecture has been celebrated in exhibitions, as well as on Facebook and Instagram.

The term brutalism does not mean the adjective "brutal", but the French béton brut, the expression for exposed concrete. Brutalist buildings break almost brute with the familiar of a conventional formal language; they are concrete memories of the post-war period and of utopias of a social coexistence.

We go on a search for clues in Berlin and try to approach the buildings photographically. The Urban Hospital, the St. Agnes or Maria Regina Martyrdom Church, the Czech Embassy, the animal testing laboratory of the FU, the Corbusier House, the Lobe Block or "San Gimignano Towers" in Lichtenberg are some of the buildings we will photograph and talk to their users and inhabitants.

The buildings will be released and examined as a source of material. The aim is a perception-expanding, artistically free access through photographs.

Few architectural styles have such a hard time as brutalism. Experts don't even agree whether one can call it an architectural style. Many see in it only ugly concrete blocks and today several buildings are threatened with demolition. But the expressive buildings were created in a time of experiments, of social upheaval. They embody an attitude of uncompromising, rigorous and radicalism that sees architecture as a social medium. No historical cement like the Berlin Palace or other historicizing fake buildings, no standardized investor architecture.

We use an artistic approach to investigate how ethics and aesthetics are prerequisites for any architect. That facade or technology never creates style, but only the artistic handling of it.

The result is a photographic approach to architecture between everyday life, poetry and theory.


REQUIREMENTS

Sense for architecture and aesthetics.
A camera and laptop will be required.

Course leader

Stephanie Kloss

Fee info

EUR 300: Min. number of participants: 10
Max. number of participants: 20