This is modern

With the catalog This Is modern, the German Werkbund Berlin presents the status of contemporary architecture in Germany: 22 renowned architecture firms show their designs for a German exhibition pavilion on the Biennale site in the Giardini in Venice. The existing pavilion, built in 1909 and modified in 1938, was hypothetically stated as needing renewal, reopening the question of a contemporary national exhibition building for the whole world to see. The fact that the Werkbund is questioning its status specifically in the year 2014 and in the context of this year’s Architecture Biennale – which is concerned with the Fundamentals of architecture and with 100 years of Absorbing Modernity – is of course linked to the emblematic event of the Werkbund exhibition of 1914 in Cologne. 100 years after this first large-scale exhibition, the German Werkbund Berlin also addresses the question of what insights have been gained by the experience of 100 years of modernity, in the search for an appropriate approach to architectural creation.