How Evil Is Architecture?In Tumbling Ruins the artist Henrike Naumann the art historian
Angela Schönberger and the architect and design theorist Andreas Brandolini develop a project
that draws discursive connections between Naumann's work 'Ruinenwert' (2019) Schönberger's
research on Albert Speer and Brandolini's postmodernist design theory.In the early 1990s the
artist Henrike Naumann (b. Zwickau 1984 lives and works in Berlin) watched the far-right
ideology as the predominant youth culture in her hometown. Her work reflects on the history of
right-wing terrorism in Germany and the widespread acceptance of racist ideas in large segments
of the population today. She scrutinizes the mechanisms of radicalization and how they tie in
with personal experiences and youth culture. Studying the friction between antagonistic
political convictions sparked by the ambivalence of personal aesthetic tastes Naumann builds
immersive installations that combine video and sound with scenographic settings.Angela
Schönberger (b. Kaufbeuren 1945) wrote her dissertation in the 1970s on the new Reich
Chancellery building as a central scene of the Nazis' crimes and on Albert Speer's theory of
ruin value interviewing the architect for her research. After the fall of the Wall the former
managing director of the Internationales Design Zentrum Berlin turned her attention to the
structural transformation of the former East Germany and the emergence of new products and
designs. Schönberger was director of the Berlin State Museums' Kunstgewerbemuseum or Museum of
Decorative Arts until 2010.Andreas Brandolini (b. Taucha 1951 lives and works in Saarbrücken
and Petit-Réderching France) was a cofounder of the avant-gardist New German Design of the
1980s. In 1987 his seminal German Living Room was featured at documenta 8 Jasper Morrison and
Axel Kufus were his partners in the studio Utilism International. As a writer and lecturer
Brandolini calls for furniture that elicits or allows for stories and adamantly rejects the
dictates of functionalism.About the seriesKONTEXT a series produced by DISTANZ Verlag brings
together artists and writers for an exchange between the worlds of writing and contemporary art
on the issues that concern us today.
