Online cataloguing and presentation of unrealized ideas and visions of West Berlin architects, 1945-1990

On February 1, 2020, Berlinische Galerie was able to present online for the first time around 4,500 select objects from the collection documenting 800 unrealized building projects from the period 1945–1990. These exhibits (sketches, drawings, plans, photographs, and collages) document designs that came from the estates of renowned Berlin architects and the competition archive of West Berlin’s building commission. They are stored in the depot of the museum’s architecture collection and were donated along with publication rights. Funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (eHeritage program) made possible its scholarly cataloguing, digitization, and placement online over a two-year period. Key to this support was the confirmation of a scholarly research interest by Kerstin Wittmann-Englert, professor at the Institut für Kunstwissenschaft und Historische Urbanistik at Berlin’s Technische Universität (TU).

Project team: Ursula Müller, Julia Schubert, Anja Elisabeth Witte