Urban architecture between tradition and modernity
Stefanie Brünenberg's publication on Wolfgang Rauda's theory on post-war modern urbanism published
2022/01/10
The Dresden architect Wolfgang Rauda (1907-1971) had difficulty gaining a foothold in postwar modernism. Both in the GDR and, after his escape, in the FRG, he occupied a conflicted position with his architectural stance between tradition and modernism. Trained in the traditionalist Stuttgart School in the 1920s and an aspiring architect under National Socialism, his theoretical and practical work in both East and West created a hitherto little-noticed concept of urban architecture with which he sought to combine tradition and modernity. From today's perspective, Rauda's work, which received little attention at the time, already foreshadows principles of later postmodernism: from the urban planning model of “critical reconstruction” to architectural reconstruction.
Architectural historian Stefanie Brünenberg analyzes Rauda's writings and places them in the context of the great classics of theoretical urbanism. From Camillo Sitte to the directional conflict between tradition and modernity in the first half of the 20th century to the reconstruction in Frankfurt am Main. Rauda designed an idea of urban planning according to “spatial cultural”“ principles, which he implemented in his works: churches, schools, administrative buildings and numerous urban planning analyses and plans originated from his pen. Always with focus on the local specifics and at the same time always in observation of the international developments, beyond world-political borders.
With this book, Stefanie Brünenberg adds another building block to the history of urban architecture and at the same time writes the biography of a politically quite contentious architect who worked in four political systems, remained almost unnoticed and yet left his mark. Wolfgang Rauda – a typical architect biography of its time?
About the author:
Stefanie Brünenberg was a research associate at the Department of History and Theory of Architecture at the TU Darmstadt. Between 2015 and 2019, she received her PhD under the supervision of Werner Durth and Jörg Dettmar.
Since April 2019, she has been working on the DFG project ”Architectural and Planning Collectives of the GDR" at the Historical Research Center.