V43

Sunday, 7 March 2010

3 pm, Guided tour in the City Museum (Johann Building)

„A City under Reconstruction“

The main focus of discussions at the IBA (International Building Fair) is the topic “Urban Reconstruction in the East”, including an exploration of current terminology such as the “contracting city”. Tying into this discussion, the Museum for Local History is offering a special guided tour to take a close look Dessau’s urban transformation over the past centuries, with special consideration given to economic and social change. 
In a guided tour lasting 1 hour, visitors will find themselves travelling in time from the large marketplace with its booths and gabled houses, to Erdmannsdorff’s stone masterpieces and his dreams of an Academy, to the “Cathedral to Modernity” and the Lilli-Herking-Platz. Beginning with a charter in sandstone whose inscription bears witness to the completion of Dessau Castle in 1341, almost 800 years of urban expansion and reconstruction will be examined: from the prosperous 16th century to the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War, and the later transformation of the urban landscape beginning at the end of the 17th century. The discussion continues with the onset of industrialisation, a period which brought to Dessau a dynamic development, a growing population and expansion into new residential areas. In the 1920s the Bauhaus movement was able to take inspiration from this rapid development in its interdisciplinary fields of activity. A further focus is on the post-war years, during which the city’s energies turned to reconstruction. Under the motto “Dessau – the first socialist city”, the industrialised mass housing built at that time still shape the urban landscape today. And major social shifts which have occurred since the 1990s have also left their mark on the cityscape. Various ideas and approaches have been offered on how best to accommodate these demographic changes into the urban fabric, and these new concepts will also be discussed during the tour.

The tour lasts 1 hour


Ticket Prices in €

	cat.1	conc.
V4	5,00	4,50