Stefan Kappelkamm Book order

In the 18th century, the landscape garden concept, originating in England, spread across Europe, moving away from Baroque geometry to a more 'natural' design. Gardens became 'lands of illusion,' featuring Chinese pagodas, Egyptian tombs, Turkish mosques, and classical temples, creating a miniature world where distance intertwined with history. The fascination with a fairy-tale China, evident in gardens and Rococo chinoiseries, waned in the 19th century as European colonial expansion introduced new exotic trends. In England, the conquest of India inspired imagination, while France's occupation of Algiers sparked an Orient-inspired fashion that influenced art, literature, and architecture across the Continent. This undefined 'Orient' was steeped in Islamic culture, stretching from Constantinople to Granada, with the Alhambra captivating writers and architects. Islamic styles, deemed suitable for cheerful, secular buildings, contrasted with the severe Egyptian forms used for somber structures. The allure of this staged Orient promised happiness, boosting the success of coffeehouses, music halls, amusement parks, and even summer residences. Notable examples include George IV's Indian palace in Brighton and a 'moorish' retreat for King Wilhelm I in Bad Cannstatt. Stefan Koppelkamm, an architecture scholar and communication design teacher in Berlin, has explored historic and contemporary architectural themes since his earlier work o

Photographs of a huge building site, taken by night, show a bewildering world of machines, cables and scaffolding, seemingly in total chaos. The viewer‘s gaze enters dim underworlds that look like a modern equivalent of Piranesi’s Carceri. Behind clearly structured, transparent façades we can see office workers, politicians and hotel guests. We can see what they are doing and how they interact with one another. Both everyday work and private life are on public display. Like the propaganda images of totalitarian systems, the vastness of advertising spaces turns our usual sense of proportions on its head. Monumentally large, usually female human figures dwarf houses and people. They look down on the city‘s inhabitants from above. Taken together, the photographs in this book represent a visual commentary on our presentday urban lifestyle. All the pictures were taken in Berlin – but the same scenes can be seen all over the world. The buildings are just as interchangeable as the monumental images of sex and consumerism. Stefan Koppelkamm’s photographs are accompanied by selected monologues from Roland Schimmelpfennig’s drama Push Up 1– 3, which give the inhabitants of this world a voice. These are people who fully subscribe to the images of success and beauty taken from adverts and from the media.

After the wall between the two German states fell in 1989, it was possible to visit places in East Germany where time seemed to have stood still. This work features photographs taken by the author, which make it possible to read the traces time has left in detail, revealing the dramatic social and economic changes that have taken place.