Janice Perry

Lectures / Teaching

Seminars

Performing identity

Creative Writing

Workshops

Performing gender and
identity

Lectures

Performance architecture

Social Performance

About Janice Perry

Grants / Awards

Performance Architecture:
A walk through new urban narrative in Frankfurt and Berlin

The architectural face of Post-War Germany has undergone dramatic change. Old City centers have been re-created in a Disneyesque parody, a mythological retelling of Germany history and creation of a continuous and uniform historical German identity.

Until recently Frankfurt, a major European banking center, has been the locus of international corporate interest, and recipient of a steady influx of new money for designer buildings. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1988 and the subsequent shift of the seat of German government from Bonn have resulted in a 15 year bombardment of post- and supermodernist buildings in the heart of Berlin.

This presentation is a reading of new architecture in Frankfurt and Berlin from an artist's perspective and includes photographic images containing concrete examples and comparisons of the intersection of architecture and identity construction - including work by Norman Foster (Frankfurt Commerzbank and Berlin Reichstag Dome), Helmut Jahn (Frankfurt Messe Turm and Berlin Sony Center), Renzo Piano (Berlin Potsdamer Platz) and Daniel Libeskind (Berlin Jewish Museum).