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How do people live?
Touring the Ernst May Housing Estates with the CityLab

A tour of the  Ernst-May settlements with the City Lab
From 16 May 2019

 
The New Frankfurt housing estates became world-famos building projects in the 1920s. The CityLab looks at life today in Römerstadt, 'Zick-Zack-Hausen' and the other Ernst-May districts.

Ernst May planned the housing estates at a time of great homelessness. New, affordable accomodation had to be created as quickly as possible. Between 1925 and 1930, around 15,000 new apartments were built in Frankfurt. This new major city planning programme was part of the New Frankfurt. People from the fields of art, culture, politics, architecture and urban development worked together in an interdisciplinary manner to create a modern city.

Even today, questions about affordable housing are central in Frankfurt am Main. Politicians, academics and citizens are looking for the suitable solutions. The CityLab focussed on the urban development programme of the time and approached the housing estates of the New Frankfurt with a simple but crucial question from a contemporary perspective: "How do people live?"

The exhibition was created in close cooperation between the museum and the CityLab technicians. It provides insight into the everyday life of the inhabitants. Topics ranged from the conversion of the apartments and houses to the use of communal roof terraces, the renaming of streets and current questions on housing provision. In addition to the broad range of contributions, the exhibition also gives visitors the opportunity to ask: How do I want to live? How do new districts need to be designed and what will constitute a good standard of living in the future?

It is part of a joint initiative of three Frankfurt museums: the Museum Angewandte Kunst, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, the Historisches Museum Frankfurt and the recently established Forum Neues Frankfurt on the occasion of the Bauhaus anniversary in 2019.

 

Exhibition

16 May - 13 October 2019 at the Historisches Museum Frankfurt

Contact

Katharina Böttger
Phone +49 69 212-49709
Email: katharina.boettger@stadt-frankfurt.de


For booking enquiries, please contactVisitor services.

Funded by

Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes)
Hessen Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts
City of Frankfurt am Main, Kulturamt
Frankfurt Active Neighbourhood Programme
Fazit Foundation