From Rural Construction in Germany to Climate Change in the Philippines

The Deutsches Architekturmuseum, or the DAM for short, organizes exhibitions, programs, publications, and events, awards architecture prizes, and has a large archive. How does the museum see itself under your management?
We are all that and much more: a center, a platform, a network for architecture. Based on our archive, we intervene in current issues with a national and international perspective, but also with a local focus. We are able to do this because we are perceived and valued as neutral mediators, even on politically sensitive topics.

The DAM has a big name, but is only funded locally. How does that work?
Hilmar Hoffmann, Head of Cultural Affairs in Frankfurt, and DAM founding director Heinrich Klotz founded the first architecture museum in Germany in 1979 and gave it the name Deutsches Architekturmuseum. We feel committed to this claim, even though we are a municipal museum. Internationally, that helps us immensely.

How many employees does the DAM have? 
About twenty employees and a circle of freelancers.

You have been at the DAM since 2000 and have been director since 2006. You will retire in summer 2027. What have been the most exciting projects in the last 25 years?
There have been many exciting projects. Of course, the two biennial contributions for Germany: at the 7th Architecture Biennale Sao Paulo, in 2007, we showed “Ready for Take-Off” and at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale we represented Germany with “Making Heimat – Germany, Arrival Country.” The latter exhibition was particularly intensive and, with just six months from commissioning to opening, a major challenge. With our theme of arrival cities as places of immigration, we hit the bull's eye — the topic has lost none of its explosiveness to this day. 

I also fondly remember mammoth projects such as “SOS Brutalism” (2017), which caused a stir with its unpopular concrete monsters, the great discovery “Design for the Soviet Space Program – The Architect Galina Balashova,” (2015) and “Think Global, Build Social! Building for a Better World” (2013), which proclaimed a new attitude in architecture. The exhibition “Paulskirche – A Monument Under Pressure” (2019), in which we warned against the destruction of the postwar monument and which led to a commission by the German President and a competition for a House of Democracy next to the Paulskirche, had a major impact.

Exhibitions with concrete consequences are the most satisfying. After “Adaptive Architecture – Building Upon the Existing” (2022), two large buildings here in Frankfurt were preserved. The DAM Ostend, which we have been using as an interim venue during the renovation since 2021, has now been declared a cultural monument. It's great when an exhibition can provide important impetus: After “Ride a bike! Reclaim the City” (2018), the whole of Frankfurt became a cycling city.

The DAM at Schaumainkai is currently being renovated. What can the public look forward to when it reopens?
A gleaming architectural monument. The delayed completion will now take place at the end of May. We will be showing some exhibitions, such as “Energy + Architecture” with Werner Sobek, “City for All” by a Prague-based group as an opportunity for laypeople to get involved in the development of our cities, and “City Building Today? The Challenges of New Neighbourhoods” about methods of realizing a new urban district today. The last exhibition is part of a series of celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of Ernst May's Neues Frankfurt, which planned and realized the incredible number of 12,000 apartments in just five years.

There have also always been architecture exhibitions at the DAM on the annually changing Guest of Honour countries of the Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair). Is there an ongoing cooperation?
Yes, there is cooperation with the Buchmesse, which brings the cultural representatives of the Guest of Honour countries together with museums like us to discuss the possibility of joint projects. I represent contemporary approaches and suggest finding a curatorial partner in the Guest of Honour country. If the parties involved agree, I look for capable institutions or actors and hope that our joint project will be funded. It's not always easy, but it usually works. Since 2007, we have been able to realize a wide variety of exhibition projects: from Catalonia (“Patent Constructions”), Turkey (“Becoming Istanbul”), South Korea (“Megacity Network”), China (“M8 in China”), Argentina (“From Germany to Argentina”), Iceland (“Iceland and Architecture?”), Brazil (“Nove Novos – Neun Neue”), Finland (“Suomi Seven”), Indonesia (“Tropicality Revisited”), Flanders (“Maatwerk / Massarbeit”), Georgia (“Hybrid Tbilisi”), and Norway (“Hunting High and Low”). Then it was over because of Covid and our renovation.

What makes me a little proud is that from this circle of curators, those from South Korea and Indonesia founded the first architecture museums in their countries. There were also countries that had their own ideas about how they wanted to be represented, but then the Guest of Honour country show was canceled.

What can we expect in 2025?
My heart project, because the next Guest of Honour country is the Philippines, my mother's country. There are no architecture institutions there and architecture exhibitions are rare. Through the first architectural guide to Manila, published by DOM Publishers, I came across a young architect from Toronto who put me in touch with her network in Manila and the United States. The curatorial team is working on an exhibition about contemporary architecture in the Philippines that deals with climate change and borrows from vernacular architecture. Rising sea levels will be life-threatening in the future. How do you deal with this when you have no money? How do architects, who are often trained in the US, react? Where are there role models?

The DAM has an archive with a large collection. What is the current collection policy and how are the holdings handled?
Our archive capacities are largely exhausted. We now often collect according to the parameter of size and very selectively. The focus has been on the postwar period since the 1970s; we are strengthening this and are now concentrating more on individual works than on complete estates. The delicate issue of deaccessioning must be discussed and concepts for this must be developed. After all, we will not be able to map eternal linear growth either in terms of space or personnel.

Do you have a favorite estate and why?
We managed to get a great model of the mobile living pod “Peanut” by Future Systems from Jan Kaplický's widow. This work inspired me as a student, and I was very moved that something of it made it into our collection.

In 2016, you were the General Commissioner of the German Pavilion at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale with the exhibition “Making Heimat – Germany, Arrival Country,” The theme was Germany as a country of immigration. Looking back, what is the conclusion?
Ten years after the refugee crisis, we are currently planning a possible exhibition with a foundation to update the database of refugee buildings from back then. What has become of them? Who lives there? Do they still exist? Some projects have become famous, such as Florian Nagler's Dantebad and Dantebad 2 in Munich, where refugees, welfare recipients, and students live today. Modular construction has increased, but the special regulations from back then have unfortunately all been abolished. Some projects have been dismantled again.

We are living in turbulent times at the moment, in which the political right seems to be regaining hope. At the same time, we are affected by climate change and the need for construction is increasing while materials are running out. Is this also changing the issues that are being addressed in the museum?
These are pressing issues for the construction sector, which is responsible for a large proportion of CO₂ emissions. We are addressing these topics — from “Adaptive Architecture – Building Upon the Existing” in 2022 to “Architecture + Energy” in June and “Too Hot” next year, which will focus specifically on solutions to combat overheating. What positive examples and instruments are there? What have they achieved? The exhibition “Nice Out Here – Architecture in Rural Areas” (2022) showed that a lot has been happening since the coronavirus pandemic and climate awareness, but that rural areas are not yet prepared for it and still follow the earlier narrative of shrinkage. 

How do technological developments in social media and AI affect making exhibitions and the mediation of architecture?
Social media has influence and an enormous reach. Younger people can only be reached there. This raises the question for all museums, publishers and magazines: Who reads our products? We therefore ask ourselves: Which catalogs do we make? How expensive can they be? When does a catalog make sense and when not, when do we offer a PDF for free download? The “Einfach Grün” and “Protest / Architecture” catalogs sold thousands of copies because they were inexpensive and contained a wealth of information. Low prices for huge content is a good method for catalogs.

AI is a new topic. We use it for texts, transcriptions, and translations. We will organize events with architecture firms to find out if and how they use AI in design or competitions. The impact is not yet clear.

What are you particularly proud of?
The creation of the DAM Preis, which we have been running annually since 2007. We nominate and publish around 100 projects in each edition, which are further differentiated by the jury until the winner is determined. This makes all participating architectural firms feel very valued. An honorary award by architects for architects, without any financial benefit of its own. The prize has long since established itself as the “most important German architecture prize for recently completed projects,” according to Bernhard Schulz in the Tagesspiegel. This prize not only connects us directly with the current scene of the best firms and the most exciting young talent – summacumfemmer and Düsing + Hacke were recent winners as newcomers — it also serves us for internal training and for the general public as documentation of the building scene in Germany. The same applies to the International Highrise Award and the annual DAM Architectural Book Award.

Which exhibitions that you would have liked to have made didn't happen?
Many. One that bothered me, for years, which I proposed together with Oliver Elser for the German Pavilion at the Biennale, was about the godfathers of the Green Movement: Frei Otto was still alive, Ot Hoffmann was still alive, and so was Gernot Minke. We visited all three of them: saw crazy things by Minke in Kassel cellars, experienced Otto's studio, and Hoffmann showed us his tree house. Internationally, only Frei Otto was known. What a missed opportunity not to show the three of them in Venice during their lifetimes! [Otto died in 2015, Hoffmann in 2017.] We made the mistake of not simply holding this exhibition at the DAM. Work is currently underway on Minke, but with Ot Hoffmann you can only say: Life also punishes those who come too late.