Events
23.10. – 12.02.2025
Lecture Series
»HOUSING AND…«
Workshops
External Events
25.10. – 16.02.2025
exhibition
»OUR HOUSE Artistic positions on living«
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23.10. – 12.02.2025
Lecture Series
»HOUSING AND…«
25.10. – 16.02.2025
exhibition
»OUR HOUSE Artistic positions on living«
11.01.2020
Can the notions of displacement and home affect modern architectural history? Although this question may seem straightforward at first glance, answering it poses considerable demand and requires analysis.
This block seminar focuses precisely on this analysis. It intersects the ideas of displacement, modern architecture and the Atlantic World. Our purpose is not to provide maps of émigré architects. Instead, we will focus on a set of objects in order to adopt a point of departure for analysis.
We will explore German born architect Max Ludwig Cetto’s files preserved in the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and we will consider these files as a critical case to reflect upon the history of modern architecture in the transatlantic world as a history of zigzag movements of ideas, objects and people.
Max Cetto (1903-1980) was a student of the well-known professor Hans Poelzig in Berlin, a collaborator in Ernst May’s housing project for Das Neue Frankfurt and an active protagonist of the German chapter of the Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne CIAM in the interwar period. In 1938 he left Europe and moved to Mexico in 1939 after a short stay in the USA.
How have Cetto’s experiences of displacement affected his intellectual work? How his own comparisons between here (Mexico) and there (Germany), may help us today to examine the historical constructs about Latin American architecture? And what his papers preserved in the DAM can tell us about displacement in architectural history? There are still questions to be answered. And this seminar is a first attempt of making new sense to these writings and debates.
The seminar includes reading sessions, a half-day excursion to visit Cetto’s projects, three-day workshop activities in the DAM library, and finally, a one-day symposium. Language of the Seminar: English/German.
Goethe University Frankfurt am Main | Art History Department
Winter Semester 2019 -2020 | Lecturer Dr. Daniela Ortiz dos Santos
Colloquium
Thursday 16.01.2020 (09.00-17.00)
Place: Seminar room SH 0.106, Campus Westend, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
Guest Critics: Susanne Duessel (Berlin) and Helen Barr (KGI/Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main)
Program
09h00 – 10h30 : Excursion to visit the Umspannwerk (1930) by Max Cetto
10h30 – 10h45 : Coffee Break
10h45 – 11h00 : Welcome and Introduction by Daniela Ortiz dos Santos
11h00 – 11h30 : Presentation Group 1. Max Cetto’s Papers and the Frankfurt Period: Modern Movement, Propaganda & Politics
11h30 – 12h00 : Discussions
12h00 – 12h45 : Lunch Break
12h45 – 13h15 : Presentation Group 2.The Jueterborg-Damm Airport Album:Modern Architecture and Military Architecture
13h15 – 13h45 : Discussions
13h45 – 14h15 : Presentation Group 3. Cetto Correspondence and the Cold War
14h15 – 14h45 : Discussions
14h45 – 15h00 : Coffee Break
15h00 – 15h30 : Presentation Group 4. The Architectural Competition for the Museen-Tiergarten in Berlin
15h30 – 16h00 : Discussions
16h00 – 16h30 : Conclusions
Participants: Katharina Gewehr, Siyoma Dawit, Samira Berger, Vicky Christakopoulos, Hilla Nienke Griesemann, Pia Kuban, Lisa Bockius, Carina Bukuts, Arsiema Katharina Ghebrehiwet, Ebru Cagritekin
This Seminar could not be a reality without the support and generosity from the DAM. Special thanks to Katja Leiskau, Wolfgang Welker, Christiane Eulig, Heike Schuler, Christian Walter, Angela Tonner and Oliver Elser.