> Eindrücke

Together with students from our Department of ARCHITECTURE CITIES ECONOMIES, we took a critical look at the legacy of Neues Frankfurt: Who owns the housing estates today and who cares for them? Which utopian ideas from the 1920s are still effective, and which have been forgotten? This exhibition examines the representation of the most important utopian ideas of the New Frankfurt through the lens of contemporary urban relations and the housing industry.

In the centre is a skyline model that juxtaposes current Frankfurt property prices with a map of vacancy in Frankfurt – we call it „The elephant in the room". The installation poses the question of how we deal with the resources of the city today, which can serve as new places for the development of utopias of our time. A part of the exhibition looks to the future and shows how the students envision collective and solidary living arrangements based on the lessons from Neues Frankfurt . Finally it reminds of the expropriation program in the New Frankfurt, which formed an important basis for the planning of the housing estates around city planner Ernst May.

Our exhibition advocates not only celebrating the buildings of the past, but also updating the immaterial concepts on which they are based: social economy, financing through the house interest tax and land provision through expropriation programs. We recall the collective spaces in the estates that have not yet been realized and remind public housing actors (eg. ABG) of their responsibility. The answer to today's housing shortage does not lie in building on greenfield sites again, but in using the vacant areas of the city for affordable housing.