Exhibition by DAM in cooperation with Ernst May Gesselschaft and the support of Kulturfonds Rheinmain Honorary Patronage: Bogdan Zdrojewsk i, Minister of Culture and National Heritage and dr Gottfried Zeitz , General Consul of Germany in Wroclaw
The presentation at Deutsches Architekturmuseum Frankfurt in 2011 of Ernst May’s creative activity – architect and city planner, one of the most outstanding agents of Classical Modernism in the World - was the first exhibition realized on international scale. Those exhibits will be shown at Architecture Museum in Wroclaw from March to June 2012. This is the first opportunity to view the rich works of Ernst May, starting from the German Garden City Movement dated c. 1910, through the New Architecture era and the period of economic miracle, down to the fall of large estates, which began in Europe in mid 1960’s. As a result of Ernst May’s activity in Soviet Union and his emigration of Africa, the territorial impact of his architectural and city planning ideas covered a number of distant parts of the world, countries with various political systems and social diversity. The location of the first show in Poland of Ernst May’s creative activity was not chosen by chance. Wroclaw was one of the most significant centre’s of Modernism in Europe in the 1930’s. Ernst May, as the director of Schlesische Heimstätte - a government home-building agency in Wroclaw, left a stamp on the architecture of homes and estates in the region at the time. Numerous buildings of May in Wroclaw and Silesia have been preserved to this day.
It was here he also developed ideas decisive to his later international activities. After leaving Wroclaw, as Frankfurt architecture councilor, he worked out a famous and esteemed by architects world over experiment called the “New Frankfurt”, an ambitious program in response to the economic crisis of 1920’s, with the assumption of creating an innovative and adapted to the needs of the society model of city dwellings. The exhibition will present chronologically arranged stages of Ernst May’s creative activities: from the earliest period, through his activities in Silesia, Frankfurt, Moscow and Africa, and down to post-war period in West Germany. The chronological arrangement will be accompanied by more extensive review of most important ideas and conceptions of the architect, as well as satellite cities, functional linear blocks, prefabrication in home architecture, and their impact on creativity of future architects.
The exhibition space is about 850 m². May’s activities are documented by contemporary photographs of architecture, original drawings and plans, fragments of archival films, as well as historical and new models. Frankfurt Kitchen and original furniture from Frankfurt housing estates will be an undoubted attraction. The exhibits are supplemented with explanation text tablets.