There's still room in the sky

摘要

Surprising it certainly is. After all,which German city first occurs to you when the discussion turns to high-rise buildings? And which city is home to the German Architecture Museum? Right both times: Frankfurt am Main!Nevertheless, it has taken 30 years for the (city) museum to examine this phenomenon, which it now does with the exhibition SKYWARD: Highrise City Frankfurt. However, our intention here is not to carp but to praise. The show, for which the ground floor of Unger's "house in a house" on Schaumainkai was largely redesigned, is well worth a visit - both for experts and laypersons. And, because the exhibition links the specialist and popular aspects of the theme in a very clever way so that it also appeals to the local public -most of whom, after lengthy debates, are now proud of living, or at least working, in "Mainhattan" - it will certain be among the crowd-pullers of the DAM year 2014/15. How and why did Frankfurt grow upwards? The exhibition answers this question with a wonderful overview of the history of high-rise buildings in the city that uses drawings, photos, models and films to attract visitors: the area covered ranges from post-war reconstruction to the battles over houses in the Westend ("Bankfurt", "Kranfurt") up to the present era of global finance markets. Curated by Philipp Sturm, the show also illustrates the difficult and at times extremely stony path that led to the creation of the skyline without which Frankfurt today would be unimaginable. It was only in the early 1970s that the city began to develop this skyline, around that time banks and insurance companies competed with each other in erecting tall buildings. This was the start to Frankfurt's career as a high-rise location, before the Second World War it was mostly cities like Berlin, Hamburg or Cologne that were associated with this building type.